Polish Migration Policy: its principles and legal aspects

Project Manager: Izabela Koryś

The project is financed by the Foundation for Population, Migration and Environment (BMU/PME).

After 1989 Poland has undergone deep political and economic changes. Political liberalization and economic growth had brought to Poland noticeable stream of immigrants, which was a completely new phenomenon in a typically sending country. Inflow of migrants issued new challenges, that must have been responded regarding the "old" social and economic constrains (geopolitical situation, deep economic underdevelopment of some regions, high unemployment rate) that Poland is currently facing. Surprisingly, those challenges have been responded by legal regulations, but public debate on migration policy and Polish raison d'etat has never been initiated, thus principles guiding the legislative process are still not verbalised.

There are two main aims of that project: First, to identify, through analysis of legal acts, documents, available publications and other sources, the historical development of Polish migration policy over time, going back as far as to 1918, as it has been expressed through legislation and actual legal practice.

The second aim will be to describe the shape of migration policy carried out by Polish government after 1989 and to identify the most influential actors of political and public scene participating in migration debate. The "actual" shape will be confronted with a "desirable" one, given by politicians, academics and opinion leaders.

An additional aim is to create resources for further migration policy research. These are both human (researchers with experience in migration policy) and information resources (legal acts, some with translations into English, bibliography, links etc. available via www pages).