This article continues a theme recently raised in this journal by Małek (2019) and Krzyworzeka-Jelinowska (2019). It analyses the activism of Polish women living abroad, as headteachers, teachers and parents at Saturday schools, and demonstrates that Polish migrants are not as socially passive as sometimes assumed. We define civil society as ‘a society of active citizens, associating together and working for the collective good’. Our study of seven schools suggests that the Covid-19 lockdown stimulated some schools to broaden their activities as civil society organisations. Although some local links were weakened, for example because Polish Clubs were shut, the schools’ online activities expanded: more networking took place between headteachers UK-wide, and the schools reached out to a range of Polish and non-Polish organisations: locally; elsewhere in the UK; in Poland; and in third countries. Within the schools, the pandemic represented an opportunity to teach children about their civic responsibilities and involve parents more directly in children’s education. However, the lockdown also raised difficulties for all Saturday schools, not just Polish ones, when their credentials as ‘educational’ organisations seemed challenged by both UK government policy and some mainstream schools.

The aim of this article is to analyse the Polish migration policy. However, it is not about the content of the policy but about the gaps, paradoxes and stages of its creation. The thesis of the article is that the Polish migration policy created “from above” is full of paradoxes, which makes it internally incoherent. On the one hand, the economic logic of the market dictates that the policy should be open to foreigners, while the logic of the policy tends to be closed. In the phases of the migration policy-making cycle proposed in the article we cannot go beyond the second phase. “Policy on paper” is our domain. As it is constantly changing, we cannot move to the implementation and evaluation phase. This text is based on methods characteristic for political science and administration (institutional, systemic, decision-making) and legal science (legal-dogmatic).

The topic of migrant children becomes more popular not only in the public discourse but also in academic research. In Poland, the topic of migrant children has become more popular over the past decade due to mass immigration. However, most of the work concentrates on the macro-level topics, such as changes to the national curriculum, schools and teachers’ preparation and willingness to work with multicultural classes. Less research has focused on the socialization of children with a migrant background. Moreover, most of the existing work deals with adult-centred research, thus ignoring the importance of giving a voice to children in assessing one’s biographical experiences. This article presents the results of the empirical qualitative research based on a child-centred approach. The results come from 20 semi-structured interviews with migrant children in Poland. The analysis presents the main aspects of the perception of the Polish school by migrant children regarding education, socialization, and relations with teachers and peers.

In Poland, on average, there are 2.4 doctors per 1,000 population (Eurostat 2020), and thus Poland ranks last in the European Union in terms of the number of doctors per capita (OECD 2019). The data on the number of nurses and midwives look similarly unfavourable. This problem seems to be highly pressing in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 epidemiological crisis, which additionally exposed staff shortages in Polish health care and somehow “forced” the authorities to take action to fill these gaps with the help of foreign medics. The emergence of such a category of migrants may arouse contradictory emotions as, despite the obvious need to employ them, the attitude towards newcomers currently polarises Polish society. The aim of this article is to analyse the media representations of highly qualified migrant medics (doctors and nurses) who decided to live and work in Poland. The article explains how the media coverage creates the image of various groups of highly qualified medical migrants in Poland and what factors influence this image. The analysis results show that the image of foreign doctors has not yet been sufficiently recorded in the media, but with the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic there has been a growing interest in this issue. However, the migration of workers in the medical sector is analysed mainly in the context of staff shortages in the health service, and the descriptions are usually not accompanied by strong emotions towards migrants.

The aim of this article is to discuss how selected Polish magazines in the years 1931–1939, in the time between the new phase of the conflict between China and Japan and the outbreak of World War II, presented Shanghai. It was discussed in the context of: the modernization of China, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the activities of the Shanghai Polish Diaspora. And also, as today, it was perceived as one of the symbols of the Middle Kingdom. In the first case, the editors of the magazines emphasized his special role in the political, economic, and cultural situation in the Middle Kingdom. Journalists usually judged the metropolis as a city of many cultures, opportunities, and social contrasts. In the case of the Sino-Japanese conflict, the fate of the bombed Shanghai and its inhabitants became a symbol of Japanese atrocities and war crimes in the Polish press. Journalists also praised the bravery of Chinese soldiers who generously defended the city. Polish magazines did not mention much about the Shanghai Polonia. Usually, these were the only short notes on the subject or individual mentions added when discussing other issues.

Vietnamese charitable activity was only to a small extent taken up in world literature. It also did not attract the attention of Polish researchers. This paper attempts to fill the gap drawing on the theory of generalized exchange, belonging and cultural determinants. I analysed charity actions directed to Polish society before and in the initial phase of the pandemic based on netnography, in-depth interviews and analysis of media reports. The scale and wide range of Vietnamese actions brought mutual benefits profitable also for Polish politicians. At the value level, the desire to pay off the debt of gratitude was one of their incentives to help. At the instrumental level, beside individual interests to build business brand recognition, a positive image of the community in the eyes of Polish society was one of the benefits inspiring further actions. Proactive responses to actual Polish needs, creating a shared value and care for reputation constituted the Vietnamese way to manifest belonging in Polish conditions.

This article aims to review and synthesise research on educational migration in Poland, particularly youth immigration from Ukraine. The paper collects statistical data from 2004, which allowed for the analysis of the existing trends in educational migration in Poland. The research on the largest group of foreign students – citizens of Ukraine – was reviewed, which resulted in identifying research gaps regarding student mobility in Poland, both in terms of demand and supply of educational migrations. The practical implication appears to show that the governments of the host countries, the business sector, and the academic units – due to the increase in the number of foreign students – can expect positive effects in the form of obtaining qualified human capital for the local labour market and the improvement of the demographic situation, provided that foreign students remain in the country and the family there.

Following its accession to the EU and the progressing relaxation of the legislation on employment of foreign workers, Poland started to attract more and more job seekers from other countries, mainly from Ukraine, who saw opportunities in its expanding labour market, increasing demand for workers, falling unemployment and rising wages. The inflow of workers from countries east of Poland has benefitted its economy in many ways, including the narrowing of the demographic gap and increased funding for the national budget and the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS).

This study was undertaken to determine the types of factors causing Ukrainian and Belarusian nationals seeking employment in Poland to prefer one Polish county over the others and to assess their role. Based on the review of studies on the key determinants of migration, and given the limited availability of data, three major groups of factors that can be associated with their choices were selected for analysis – the distance between the migrant’s home and Polish counties, their socioeconomic status, and the presence of migration diasporas.

The analysis was performed by means of the widely used gravity models that describe population movements as a function of a geographical distance, and a taxonomic measure of counties’ socio-economic development.

The main sources of data used in the article were Statistics Poland (www.stat.gov.pl) and Ministry of Family and Social Policy (https://psz.praca.gov.pl/web/urzad-pracy) and Educational Information System (https://dane.gov.pl/pl/dataset/1426,liczba-uczniow-cudzoziemcow-wedug-gmin/).