Poland has recently become a country with net immigration, thanks largely to an influx of labour migrants from all over Ukraine. This begs the question of how similar its experiences will be to those of European countries which made the same migration transition in the 20th century. The article explores how recently-arrived Ukrainians experience life in a medium-sized Polish city, Płock, which has itself only recently achieved net international immigration. I argue that one should not overplay Poland’s status as a new receiving country, differentiating it from established receiving countries such as the UK. In fact, there are many parallels between the experiences of migrants in the UK and Poland, primarily linked to 21st century opportunities to establish dynamic transnational migration networks. All receiving countries need to adjust to this unexpected situation. For the Ukrainian factory workers interviewed in this study, its most important aspect is that the majority aspire to bring their families to Poland – just as Polish families rapidly reunited abroad in the aftermath of Poland’s EU accession.

Ambiguous impact of Brexit on young Poles living in the United Kingdom

The paper aims to analyse the impact of Brexit on the social anchoring of young Poles in the United Kingdom in four spheres of their lives: decision and return plans; application for British citizenship; buying properties; well-being and life satisfaction. The article is based on research conducted within the project „CEEYouth: The comparative study of young migrants from Poland and Lithuania in the context of Brexit”. We also handle statistics data from the Office for National Statistics as well as qualitative data from three waves of Qualitative Longitudinal Research of 41 young (aged 19–34) Polish post-accession migrants in the UK. We find that it is hard to unambiguously assess the impact of Brexit on the mentioned spheres of young Poles’ lives. Firstly, it is caused by the fact that different sources of data show results which are contrasting and secondly, the reactions of people are dynamically changing within the lapse of time. Therefore, it could be surely said that Brexit has impacted the lives of young Polish migrants, but it has caused neither mass return, nor the general willingness to naturalise. Although the results of the Brexit referendum have caused disturbance amid many Poles, it has not impacted their life decisions or, according to statistics, their well-being.

The problem under investigation in this text is the role of religious celebrations and practices in the mobile livelihoods of Polish circular migrants in Iceland. The phenomenon is discussed on the basis of qualitative research conducted among the migrants. The study participants are 18 men who work in a 2/2 rotation system for an Icelandic company. The basic findings of the case study analysis show that religious holidays and celebrations are important points of reference in circular migrants’ work calendar as they help to arrange their schedule to meet work and family responsibilities. They go through Sunday rituals like they do at home. Living their lives according to the Polish Catholic calendar migrants celebrate their national identities and better understand their relation to the host society even if their migration is not a permanent one. The implications of the study are also that religious celebrations have great social and cultural significance for circular migrants.

The scale and size of post-accession migration of Poles, especially to the British Isles, was surprising not only for the Polish side. The countries that opened their labour markets for the citizens of the new member states also failed to predict such a massive inflow of Polish nationals. Returning to the home country, however, does not get as much media attention as emigrating. This type of migration was not the subject of such heated discussions and analyses as emigration. The objective of the article is to sociologically describe the re-emigrants and answer questions concerning the motives for emigrating and returning, as well as how the emigration decision is assessed in retrospect. The paper is based on in-depth interviews conducted with individuals who had emigrated from Poland following the enlargement of the European Union and decided to return to their home country after a few years. Importantly, in order to detect readaptation problems, the respondents were selected from amongst those remigrants who had already been living in Poland for one to three years. The article shall present the results of these studies and the classifications of emigration, returns and remigrants.

The purpose of this paper is to study the mechanisms of online networking and exchange of social support among members of a migrant virtual group of Russian-speaking women in Poland on Facebook. The research was based on content analysis and non-participant observation during two weeks in November and December 2019. I also had two online conversations with the moderator of the group based on a prepared list of questions. It appeared, that members of the group used networking to improve communication on a wide range of issues. Conversations available online provide insight on how migration determines daily issues and social life but also as a source of socially-reproducing precarity. Informality as a social model of inter-group relations prevails among members of the Russian-speaking community. Four main types of social support emerged from communication on the forum – informational, instrumental, emotional and community building. Russian-speaking women use Facebook group to share information, empower each other, boost self-esteem and find companionship. The findings allow to consider the role of the online group as a complementary mechanism for adaptation and improvement of well-being of migrants in Poland.