Mobilities in the crisis and post-crisis times: migration strategies of Poles on the EU labour market

ABSTRACT

In the post-enlargement period, hundreds of thousands of ‘new Europeans’ from the New Member States embarked on their migration journeys in search of better jobs and living conditions. With over two million citizens staying temporarily abroad, Poland became one of the most important migrant sending countries in Europe. A few years after the 2004 enlargement round, most of the EU-15 labour markets and immigrants themselves were confronted with the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s. Such circumstances are presented as a test of how migration flows respond to changes in economic conditions and to what extent they may increase the adjustment capabilities of labour markets. Against this background, this article takes the migration of Poles as a case study in exploring the ways in which migrants respond to crisis-driven changes in the socio-economic environment. Based on two complementary data sets, we analyse the structural features of Polish migration and the strategies of mobile Poles on the EU labour market. The results indicate that links between the crisis and migration are more nuanced than suggested by economic theory. Furthermore, we show that labour market impulses can be effectively realigned by other factors of both economic and social nature such as access to welfare benefits or family-related strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration strategies
• post-enlargement migration
• crisis
• adjustment mechanisms
• migration from Poland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This is the case of Poland and many receiving countries such as Ireland.

2. These observations should be treated with caution. The 2007 peak levels reflect not only the pre-crisis general trends, but also the effects of the 2007 accession of Bulgaria and Romania, which greatly influenced flows in some countries such as Italy (European Commission 2014; OECD 2014).

3. This data set comprises responses to quarterly surveys with samples covering between 0.2% and 3.3% of the population of a given EU Member State. This approach poses a serious challenge in case of immigration studies. The coverage of the immigrant population varies heavily between countries and is particularly questionable in case of those with relatively limited numbers of foreigners and also those hosting predominantly short-term or seasonal migrants, who are extremely difficult to capture by means of traditional sampling methods.

4. Polish data show a slightly different picture. According to estimates of the Central Statistical Office, the stock of Polish nationals staying temporarily abroad in EU countries amounted to approximately 750,000 persons in 2004. In 2007 (the peak year) this stock was estimated at around 1.9 million, fell to 1.6 million in 2010, and gradually increased again to 1.8 million in 2013.

5. In net terms; unfortunately, we are not able to analyse the structure of the labour market in terms of flows.

6. The surveys are conducted with Polish citizens aged 16–65, residing abroad at least three months, who migrated for work-related reasons. The sampling methodology assures wide coverage, but not full representativeness of the Polish migrant population (Hołda et al. 2011). Data courtesy of the National Bank of Poland.

7. Hołda et al. (2011) note that although the sample is not representative, the structure with respect to major uncontrolled variables, such as education, resembles that from representative studies conducted in Poland, such as the Polish LFS and Diagnoza Społeczna.

8. There is an obvious selection bias in the data due to the fact that we do not observe those migrants who decided to leave the country. In our analysis, we focus particularly on strategies of those who are still present in destination countries, however.

9. The share of very young migrants decreased.

10. This result is even more striking in view of the fact that the share of migrants registered in the social security systems in the sample has remained stable or even decreased (in the UK) during the studied period.

11. Note that due to the use of different variables, the value of the two indicators for a single migrant need not sum up to 1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre under grant ‘European Welfare Systems at Time of Mobility’ [number 2014/14/Z/HS4/00006].