The impact of migration on Poland 1 Pre-2004 impact

This book is not about the influence of migration on Poland historically.

However, it is worth highlighting some continuities. In the early twentieth century, Thomas and Znaniecki (1918–20, 1984) studied the corre-spondence and therefore the transnational practices of migrants and stayers – how stayers’ lives in Poland intertwined with those of migrants in Chicago. This has arguably always constituted the main type of migra-tion impact, even if today transnamigra-tional communicamigra-tion takes different forms, and migrants can keep in touch with much wider networks of stay-ers. During the communist period, particularly after Stalin’s death, con-tacts were often quite close between Poles in Poland and their relatives abroad (Sword 1996). Western material goods – comparatively rare in Poland but more available there than in other CEE countries thanks to migration and visits abroad – constituted ‘a recognised barometer of social status, personal style and taste’ (Burrell 2011b, 145).

THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON POLAND 22

When international migration became a common livelihood strat-egy in some Polish regions in the 1990s, the money migrants earned, as in other societies, was mostly used for consumption. While it made a dif-ference to individual households, it had little or no traceable impact on the economy, even on a local level, except perhaps in Opole Silesia, where migration was most intense (Jończy and Rokita-Poskart 2012; Kacz-marczyk and Nestorowicz 2016, 144). A sense of loss and missing family and friends pervaded life in some locations with high volumes of migra-tion, especially when family members worked undocumented abroad and therefore could not easily return for visits.

I’ve never set eyes on my mother-in-law. She went to the States before I met my husband [c.1993]. . . . She married off her two sons, but she wasn’t at either wedding. It’s so sad. But that’s life.

Thanks to her being in the States her children had their weddings.

Otherwise they couldn’t have afforded them. (Eliza, Grajewo, 2008, knows her mother-in-law only from telephone conversations)

One impact of migration was to breed more migration, as adult children with migrating parents often followed in their footsteps (Kaczmarczyk 2008). ‘Migration cultures’ emerged in local communities, both in the sense that migration was an expected and acceptable livelihood strategy, and also as ways of understanding and doing migration. One aspect of local migration cultures, for example, was a heavy reliance on networks of friends and relatives to facilitate migration (Osipowicz 2002). This was to become less essential after EU accession.

5.2 migration influences after 2004

Dzięglewski’s survey of Polish weeklies’¹⁶ coverage of EU mobility from 2004 to 2012 reveals an upbeat framing of new mobility opportunities around 2004, followed by increasing concern about social problems linked to migration, and eventual loss of interest in the topic. Clement’s (2017) analysis of articles in popular daily tabloids¹⁷ during 2013 suggested, how-ever, that this section of the press had not lost interest in migration, which was often framed negatively, with Eurosceptic overtones.

Survey data from January to March 2014, before the 2015 refugee crisis and its politicisation, showed that ordinary Poles were more posi-tive than negaposi-tive about the impacts of EU-facilitated migration. When asked to express in their own words the pros and cons of EU membership, only 1 per cent identified labour migration and its consequences as a

disadvantage, and only 1 per cent expressed concern about immigration, Islamism and Roma (lumped together as a single answer). The most often mentioned benefits were open borders and freedom of movement (named by 31 per cent of respondents). See table 2.3.

Golinowska and Kocot, in their book about regional development (2013), see migration as a pernicious influence that removes young and educated people from Poland. While acknowledging that circular migra-tion and brain gain – where migrants acquire new skills and knowledge abroad – are potentially positive outcomes of migration, they argue that these are not very evident in Poland. In their profiles of individual regions, they therefore treat net out-migration as symptomatic of underdevelop-ment. The best outcome, from their perspective, would be more ade-quate investment outside the flourishing metropolises – in line with EU cohesion policy – which would enable Poles to stay in Poland and make better use of the human and natural resources in regions currently seen as lagging.

Other analysts, influenced by international discourses of ‘harness-ing the diaspora’ (see chapter 3) are more optimistic about potential ben-efits of ties created by migration, and suggest the need both to involve Polonia organisations in a greater range of economic – as opposed to cultural – links with Poland and to encourage entrepreneurship among returnees (Anon. 2015). Since 2003, Polish governments have attempted to find ways to support return migration, chiefly by providing information for potential returnees. Originally they hoped that Poland could emulate Ireland (before its 2008 crisis), and used Poland’s GDP growth as an incen-tive to attract back migrants (Lesińska 2010). However, of course this depended on economic growth occurring not nationally, but also in the home locations to which migrants actually wanted to return. It seems that Table 2.3 The ‘main benefits of EU membership for Poland’

(answers related to migration benefits only, as percentages) Open borders, free movement, the Schengen Agreement, visa-free travel

31

Freedom to work within the EU, freedom for business, lower unemployment in Poland

17

Opening up to the world, integration with the world, no cultural barriers, mutual understanding, erosion of stereotypes, feeling of community [with Europe]

3

Freedom to study abroad 2

Benefits, opportunities for young people 2

Source: Roguska 2014, 188–93.

THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON POLAND 24

most regional governments believe that to some extent migration can facilitate development. Heffner and Solga (2013, 224) report that only three regional governments did not regard migration as offering any potential benefit: Lubuskie (on the German border), Wielkopolska (centred on Poznań) and Mazowieckie (centred on Warsaw).

Our book complements the edited volume whose title can be trans-lated A Decade of Polish Membership of the EU: Social Consequences of Post-2004 Polish Migration (Lesińska et al. 2014), which sums up the state of knowledge about migration’s impact on Poland. Decade arose from a report aimed at policymakers (Slany and Solga 2014) and presents con-tributions by leading Polish migration scholars, including Grabowska, Kaczmarczyk and Slany. Impressively detailed, it illustrates how impact is intertwined with other aspects of migration – migration motives, expe-riences of life abroad, and the labour market trajectories of individual returnees. It recognises that the consequences of migration are region-ally differentiated. Decade is typical of migration impact scholarship in referring quite often to costs and benefits, although it is far from pre-senting a simple cost-benefit analysis, and in according high priority to demographic and economic impacts. It treats a rather narrow range of social impacts, focusing mostly on those relating to the economy (labour market outcomes and skills), as well as on families (in itself a large and multifaceted topic).

A comparison of the content of Decade with the list of Polish social trends outlined earlier in this chapter suggests that many trends are not covered in migration research. Considering the scale of migration from Poland, one might suppose that all kinds of social change are somehow influenced. It would be interesting to know what influence migration has, for example, on religion, trust or tolerance. Public figures and the media are not shy about ascribing migration impact in these areas – for example, suggesting that migration contributes to an ongoing corrosion of moral values in Polish society by exposing Poles to Western consumerism, by focusing their thoughts on material success and by separating family mem-bers. Such arguments, however simplistic and often not evidence-based they might be, are powerful partly because they adopt a holistic, inside-out approach. Supposedly, Polish society is going in the wrong direc-tion, and migration contributes to this by promoting consumerism and so forth.

An inside-out approach has the merit of making impact easy to grasp within the overall context of Poland’s (imagined) trajectory. There is no reason for scholars to avoid this approach as long as they can find evidence and convincing arguments. This is why, in our book, we turn inside out

the analysis in Decade (chapter 5 by Kaczmarczyk and chapter 6 by Slany) and also present a wider array of impacts (chapter 4 by Grabowska, chap-ter  6 by Slany and chapters  7 and 8 by White). Before presenting our findings, however, it is important to discuss how mainstream sociologists do or do not themselves factor migration into their explanations for chang-ing Polish society. If migration scholars are not, in general, writchang-ing about such matters – apart from mentioning them in passing – one would hope that mainstream sociologists could fill the gap.