POLAND – Migration and demographic patterns in Central-Eastern Europe

This report is a part of deliverable “D.6.2. Report on migration and demographic patterns in the EU CEE countries and potential source countries” from the project FUME – Future Migration Scenarios for Europe (870649), financed with the Horizon 2020 programme. In particular, this country report focuses on critical analysis of immigration data from Poland. The analysis consists of an overview of stock and flow data on migrants, including such dimensions as age groups, gender, country of origin, education levels and length of residence. This report is a first step in the analytical exercise of this deliverable which aims to determine migration potential from and to Poland and furthermore, to provide necessary data input for fine-tuning of the FUME migration projection model.

Poland as the biggest economy of the Central and Eastern Europe region is an example of a migration transition country. In just 5 years, Poland has changed from an intensive labor-exporting country into one of major destination countries for third-country nationals in the EU. This report presents the historical framework of this transformation, major national groups of immigrants and their demographic structure. It also provides critical analysis on the validity of various statistical sources of data, and draws some initial conclusions on the temporality/permanent nature of immigrants in Poland.