The new wave of polish migration after EU enlargement - current state, determinants and outlook

Following Poland’s accession to the EU there has been a major change in outward migration patterns from Poland. In the last three years Poland has witnessed an increased outflow of workers, especially to Great Britain and Ireland, two countries that opened up their labour markets as early as in May 2004. By analyzing different sources of data we try to obtain a fairly consistent view of the scale of migration from Poland to these two countries and of the profile of Polish migrants with respect to such characteristics as age, education, jobs held in the country of immigration, earnings, intended length of stay and reasons for migration. In light of the theories of migration, empirical evidence as well as results of recent surveys of Poles working in Britain and Ireland, the wage-differential between Poland and the two destination countries of migration appears to be a valid explanation for the recent post-accession wave of migration. Given this result we run a simulation of development of wages in Poland, the UK and Ireland to find out if the ‘wage-differential’ motive for migration is likely to be influential in the coming years. We find that this motive is unlikely to lose significance, even despite the rapid growth of Polish wages in the last few months.