Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Poland: State Neglect In Integrating The ‘Invisible’ Immigrants

Marta Siciarek 13th July 2016

Marta Siciarek

Marta Siciarek

Poland, along with other central European countries, has been dealing with several problems concerning integration of immigrants and refugees: their invisibility, reluctance of governments to tackle migration and implement integration policies, ceding responsibility for supporting migrants to the third sector and cutting funds for measures to help them integrate. Opportunities, however, seem to rise at the municipal level.

The fact that Poland has been becoming an ‘immigration state’ has not been acknowledged officially nor debated. The notion of ‘homogeneity’ within Polish society after WWII has been strict and resulted in an inability to see and discuss the changing dynamics of Polish demography. Even so, immigrants make up less than 2% of Polish society of 38 million.

But Poland has been changing: since the 1990s over 120,000 refugees have registered in Poland, and 13,000 refugees came in 2015 alone – mainly from Russia (Chechnya), Ukraine and Tajikistan. This shows how political / ideological the resistance of the Polish government to accept the EU quota of 7000 refugees has been! Nevertheless, owing to this lack of viable migration and integration policies at the level of the state, most of the refugees have left Poland. One could ask – how could they not leave Poland if no integration tools have been put in place? In consequence, less than 4000 of those seeking international protection have stayed and found a home in Poland.

Despite inadequate statistics (showing only 230,000 registered foreigners in Poland), many researchers say there are close to a million Ukrainian immigrants alone in Poland. Apart from the dominant Ukrainian diaspora, there are big communities of Russians, Belarusians, Vietnamese and Chinese among others as well.

How has society been managing this new diversity? Without government policies to address rising integration challenges the work has been ceded to the third sector. Most NGO workers would agree that they have been left alone with expectations beyond the regular responsibility any NGO could or should handle. Lack of systematic integration and public institutions’ incompetence in delivering services to migrants make NGOs the only safe address for a refugee or immigrant. Migrants tend to ask for information or help in every possible aspect, from legal and job/house-seeking advice to language courses etc.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

NGOs have been treated rather instrumentally by both the state and local authorities. Public institutions need to use the social sector’s expertise and dedication in dealing with their responsibilities and crisis situations, e.g. within Individual Integration Programs for refugees When a relationship involving an inevitable ‘taking’ from an NGO takes place, we can speak of ‘good inter-sector cooperation’. But mostly, apart from some rare exceptions, the exchange is not mutual. Just recently, a very renowned NGO providing legal services to refugees had to crowdfund in order to ensure it could sustain its services. Another NGO lost its office after commenting publicly on the lack of integration policy within Gdansk. Other organizations are struggling to make ends meet and keep their office open.

Funding and its distribution is a serious problem. AMIF (Asylum, Migration and Integration Funds) are the only funds set aside for integration despite the fact that they should come on top of the national funds spent by the state. The relationship between the Ministry of Interior (operator of AMIF) and social sector can hardly be called a partnership. The funds have been scarce, and now – with the new government in power – even scarcer. Despite increasing needs, the funds are blocked by the government. Many NGOs struggle to survive.

The biggest cities in Poland do transfer some funds to integration / services addressed to migrants. However, they are hardly ever higher than 20% of an NGO’s yearly budget. Mostly, it seems as if the services delivered to refugees and immigrants should be done quietly and – again – invisibly. The aim probably is not to give the local communities/electorate a feeling of any support for immigration.

But migrants live in the cities, so municipalities need to take initiatives as regards immigrants’ integration. Some cities try to organize and coordinate teams for integration. A comprehensive process for migrants’ integration has been taking place in Gdansk. Gdansk City Council has just adopted a resolution on Immigrants Integration Model. A bottom-up process aimed at immigrants’ integration turned into a multi-sector cooperation based on the mayor’s intervention. A team of almost 150 people and 70 institutions have been working on a Model of Immigrants Integration in eight areas: education, health, employment, violence & discrimination, culture, housing, local community and social help.

Communication with the local Gdansk community on why a Model of Integration is a necessary policy has not been an easy task. In the current political atmosphere and the nationalistic direction that Law and Justice, the ruling party, is driving Poland, more mayors feel they have nothing to lose and can stand up for basic democratic values. This is a chance for civil society and the public sector to work together for a more inclusive and just society, open to migrants.

This column is part of a project Social Europe runs with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung offices in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Marta Siciarek

Marta Siciarek is the Head of Immigrant Support Center, Gdansk, co-coordinator of work on Immigrants Integration Model with Gdansk City Hall and 80 other bodies.

You are here: Home / Politics / Poland: State Neglect In Integrating The ‘Invisible’ Immigrants

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube