Over the past decade, Poland has undergone two significant shifts in terms of migration. The first was the transition from an emigration country to an immigration destination, and the second was the politicization and securitization of migration in the public discourse. In this short text, we aim to outline the current state of Polish migration policy and point out possible future developments.
Becoming a country of immigration
As a result of the Second World War and its aftermath, as well as being a part of the Eastern Block, Poland became a country with an almost homogenous population. During the period of communist isolation, the number of migrants coming to Poland was minimal. After the collapse of communism and Poland’s political and socio-economic transformation at the turn of 1989/1990, it ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention on the status of refugees in 1991. Since then, the average number of foreigners applying for international protection has remained relatively low compared to the main receiving countries in the EU, with a peak of more than 15,000 in 2013. However, the average recognition rate of asylum applications until 2020 was very low (approximately 17 percent), even excluding from statistics the substantive category of “transit asylum seekers” who left Poland before getting a decision. In 2021-2023, the recognition rate increased to 60-75 percent due to the positive examination of applications filed by citizens of Belarus and Ukraine.
Overall, in 32 years of applying the Geneva Convention, Poland has recognized only 7,500 applicants as refugees. Even if we add 15,500 beneficiaries of subsidiary protection and 11,000 foreigners who received a permit for humanitarian or tolerated stay to this number, the figures remain low compared to countries like Germany or France. One of the reasons for low recognition rates was the practice applied by asylum seekers from the former Soviet Union to treat Poland as a transit country: Between 1992 and 2023, almost 120,000 applicants left Poland before their asylum applications were processed. This was mainly due to Poland's geographical location and because crossing the country’s borders was relatively easy. After submitting an application for international protection in Poland, migrants usually continued their journey to other EU countries, often Germany or Austria.
The main countries of origin of asylum seekers have changed over the years. For a long period, the main group seeking asylum in Poland were Russian citizens of Chechen origin. In 2021-2023, most asylum seekers in Poland were Belarusians while in the first half of 2024 the biggest group were Ukrainians.
The immigrant population
According to the 2011 national census, approximately 57,000 foreigners resided in Poland (0.15 percent of the population). These numbers grew rapidly after the first phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and according to the most recent census in 2021, the figures exceeded 1.4 million. The COVID-19 pandemic – despite numerous and frequently changing mobility restrictions – did not cause a sudden outflow of economic migrants from Poland. Instead, the number of foreign citizens residing in Poland has grown even further since the start of the full-scale aggression on Ukraine in February 2022. According to the Office for Foreigners, there were more than 1.8 million foreigners legally residing in Poland on January 1, 2024. Among them were 950,000 Ukrainians who had fled the war and were holders of temporary protection.
However, people who have sought refuge in Poland are not in the majority among migrants in Poland. Instead, most migrants holding temporary or permanent residence titles came to Poland to work or study there, or for family reasons. Most of them originate from post-Soviet countries, but there is also a growing number of Indian and Turkish citizens. These data might not reflect the entire migration phenomenon in Poland. Some observers assume that the real number of foreigners living in Poland might exceed 3.5 million if persons benefiting from Poland’s simplified procedure for hiring foreigners and circular migrants on visa are counted. Nationals of five countries – Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine – benefit from the simplified procedure – a pathway created in 2006 that allows employers to hire foreigners for a period of up to two years by making a simple declaration that does not require conducting labor market tests or applying for a work permit. Russian citizens, who used to be included in this scheme, have been excluded since October 2022. The actual numbers must be closer to 2.5 million if we include third-country nationals (TCNs) whose title of stay is a visa or who are awaiting a renewal of their residence cards. According to Poland’s Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), in March 2024, foreigners constituted almost seven percent (1,138 million) of the labor force in the country, contributing to the national social security and pension fund.
Migration discourse
For a long time, Poland was primarily a country of emigration, with immigration rarely entering public discourse. However, the issue of immigration became a deeply polarized topic in 2015 during the so-called European migration crisis, when the European Commission sought to relocate 160,000 people in need of international protection from Italy and Greece to other EU member states. Although the size of Poland’s pledge was largely symbolic, the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party successfully stoked fears that accepting asylum seekers posed significant security risks, claiming they were “the source of criminality and diseases”. The PiS government, emphasizing their allegiance to Catholicism, has fueled islamophobia and promoted a radical rejection of non-white people.
This type of discourse intensified during the so-called Polish-Belarusian border crisis of 2021, when Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenka, in an effort to destabilize the EU, began exploiting migrants by facilitating their journey to and passage through Belarus to the Polish border and into the EU. The Polish government responded by reinforcing the border and allowing for illegal pushbacks to Belarus. Following the change of government in Poland in late 2023, official policy towards migrants on the Polish-Belarussian border remained largely unchanged. However, the new government shifted the rhetorical focus to security, moving away from the “religious” rhetoric of the previous PiS government, which pretended to defend Poland’s character as a Christian country by keeping out Muslims. Notably, despite pushbacks being heavily condemned by the Polish Ombudsman, NGOs, some scholars, the Polish Bishops’ Conference and celebrities, and even some Polish court rulings, they did not generate significant conflict between the PiS government and EU institutions. For the EU also regarded Lukashenko's actions at the Polish-Belarusian border as a form of 'hybrid attack' orchestrated by Belarus with the support of Russia. Similar border policies as those installed in Poland were also implemented by several other EU member states, including Latvia and Lithuania.
The strategy of securitizing migration remained a key political tool of the PiS party. During the 2023 electoral campaign, then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stoked fear by warning Warsaw could become a “suburb of Paris” with “burning cars” and “looted shops”. Despite this heightened securitization of border and asylum policies, the central government’s general approach to immigration policy was driven by economic logic, as Poland faced significant labor market shortages.
Migration policy
The change of government in late 2023 did not significantly alter Poland’s migration policy. Even before once again becoming Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, published a video entitled “Polish people must regain control over their country and its borders” , referring to a draft resolution proposed by the previous government aimed at easing the process of obtaining Polish visas. In April 2024, now serving as Prime Minister, Tusk emphasized that he had always stated that “the main task of European institutions and nation states is to protect their territory and control their borders”. The members of the European Parliament belonging to the Polish party alliance “Civic Coalition”, which is part of the European People’s Party (EPP) group, abstained from voting on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, with one exception. During his visit to Brussels on October 25, 2023, Tusk declared that Poland would not take part in the “new” obligatory relocation mechanism included in the New Pact. It seems that Tusk's strong position on this matter was driven by fears that supporting a permanent mandatory solidarity mechanism as part of the EU’s new migration management strategy would harm his party's prospects in both national and European Parliament elections.
In early 2024, the new coalition government, officially formed in December 2023, announced the commencement of work on a new comprehensive, responsible and secure migration strategy for Poland, covering the period 2025-2030. This initiative is being led by the Ministry of the Interior and Administration. In 2024, the Ministry commissioned the Committee on Migration Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with migration researchers, to prepare and conduct a nationwide online survey on key areas of the migration strategy. The survey targeted institutions and organizations from the public, social and private sectors, and was supplemented by discussions during closed expert panels. The resulting research report is expected to inform the drafting of the initial version of Poland's migration strategy.
Although the new government is seen as pro-democracy and pro-European, it seems that some of the previous practices to manage migration will continue, including a militarized response to the situation on the border with Belarus and an on-going emphasis on security over the protection of the rights of migrants. In certain areas, such as the legalization of residence for foreign students, the rules might be tightened, a tendency that has already begun in response to the “visa scandal” under the previous government, resulting from the questionable and untransparent issuance of visas. The newly initiated development of a new migration management strategy, however, shows a stronger focus on integration issues – for example, a new Department for Social Integration has already been established within the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy. Additionally, preparations are underway to establish centers for the integration of foreigners in 49 Polish cities, all of which were formerly capitals of administrative districts (voivodeship).
Attitudes towards migrants
One important reason why migration policy remains difficult to change is a deep-rooted negative attitude within Polish society towards Islam and Middle Eastern refugees: In 2019, as many as 45 percent of Poles expressed aversion to Muslims, and from 2017 to 2022, Arabs were the least liked group. Islamophobia in Poland rests on two pillars – the nationalist and rural base, represented by right-wing populist parties such as Law and Justice (PiS) and Konfederacja, and the liberal strand, shared by well-educated, affluent urban segments of society. Observations of public discussions on migration matters (e.g. in liberal media forums) indicate that Polish liberals consider the country’s progress and ‘Western’ identity to be fragile and constantly threatened by the far-right. In this context, Muslims, perceived as even more conservative than the Polish right, are seen as capable of undermining Poland’s liberal future so strenuously built since 1989. These attitudes could influence the new coalition government’s approach to migration. Moreover, the leaders of liberal parties’ fear that normalizing the migration discourse might result in losing the support of their constituencies, who have been strongly influenced by the anti-migration rhetoric of recent years. This is why they continue to prioritize security over fundamental rights.
Outlook
In this context, introducing a more open-door migration policy seems unlikely, at least until the 2025 presidential elections. However, a potential driver for more liberal policies towards migration could be the labor market. Notably, the current coalition government includes parties (e.g. of the political electoral alliance Trzecia Droga/The Third Way) that advocate for the interests of entrepreneurs and farmers who are in need of foreign workers. As the ruling coalition is grappling with many other issues strongly polarizing public opinion, such as abortion rights, predicting the final outcome of the intra-governmental political dynamics remains challenging.
