Demographic and labour-market impacts of migration on Poland

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 24, Number 3, 2008, pp.599–624

Demographic and labour-market impacts of migration on Poland

Abstract Post-2004 labour migration from Poland turned out to be one of the most spectacular migratory movements in contemporary European history. This outflow on a massive scale is surmised to impact on demographic, economic, and social phenomena both in Poland and in the receiving countries. The aim of this paper is to assess the demographic and labour-market impacts of the recent migration of Poles. We argue that selectivity patterns in the post-accession period differ significantly from those noted in the pre-accession phase. Recently, a stronger propensity to migrate is observed among young and relatively well-educated people who, at the same time, originate from economically backward areas characterized by limited employment opportunities. This observation is consistent with our assessment of the labour-market impacts of recent migration from Poland. From the analyses presented it follows that the short- and medium-term impacts of migration on the Polish labour market are moderate. However, as we argue, recent outflow might contribute significantly to a crowding-out of the economy in the long term. Key words: migration, EU enlargement, demographic impacts, labour-market impacts JEL classification: F22, F24, J21, J24

I. Introduction The aim of this paper is to assess the demographic and labour-market consequences of recent migration from Poland. Post-2004 migration from Poland is perceived as one of the most spectacular population movements in contemporary European history. Not only the United Kingdom—which recently became the leading destination country for Polish migrants—but also many other EU15 countries are witnessing an intensified inflow of migrants from Poland. Such a massive outflow of human capital is surmised to have a significant impact on the developmental trajectory of the sending country, comprising demographic, economic, and social phenomena. We are attempting to analyse a relatively new, dynamic, and still ongoing process, and so, at this stage, rather than weighty conclusions, we can only hope to offer rather preliminary findings and observations. While exploring the various effects of international mobility, ∗ Centre

of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, e-mail: [email protected] of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, e-mail: [email protected] doi: 10.1093/oxrep/grn029 C The Authors 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. For permissions please e-mail: [email protected] ∗∗ Centre

Downloaded from oxrep.oxfordjournals.org at Warsaw University on October 25, 2010

∗∗ Paweł Kaczmarczyk∗ and Marek Okolski ´

Pawe ł Kaczmarczyk and Marek Okolski ´

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II. The importance of post-accession migration for Poland (i) What volume of flows we are talking about? Poland is one of the European states that can still aptly be called an ‘emigration country’. Indeed, roughly from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, international movements of persons have played an important role in Poland’s demographic and labour-market developments. Migration—constrained during the first three decades after the Second World War1 due largely to political restrictions imposed by the communist regime—began increasing in the early 1970s. This increase coincided with the normalization of Polish–German relations as well as with the liberalization of cross-border movements, and came to a peak in the late 1980s. According to an estimate based mainly on the data extracted from the police register of foreign travel by Polish citizens,2 the long-term outflow of people in that decade amounted to between 1.1 m and 1.3 m (i.e. 3 per cent of the total population). In addition, more than a million Poles became short-term migrants (Kaczmarczyk and Okólski, 2002). As with many other countries, the measurement of the size of outflow from Poland presents a difficult task. The basic statistical source is the central population register, which includes all residents of Poland. Apart from the new-born, new entries consist of immigrants, i.e. those who have arrived from abroad and have been actually registered as permanent residents3 in any basic administrative unit of Poland. In turn, new exits include the deceased and emigrants, i.e. those who have been deregistered as permanent residents owing to their departure to a foreign country. However, many ‘permanent residents’, who as such have continued to represent an entry in Poland’s population registers, have also become emigrants and have de facto ceased to live in Poland. In official statistical sources, however, the de facto emigrants are included in the estimates of Poland’s population as long as they figure in the registers as ‘permanent residents’. The only way to remove someone from a register of permanent residents is his or her voluntary act of cancellation of residence, which most of Poles perceive as unnecessary if not disadvantageous. For this reason, official estimates of Poland’s population might be seriously biased by not accounting for a sizeable group (and excluding that group) of the 1 Strictly

speaking, we have in mind the period since the proclamation of ‘cold war’ in 1948. 2 The register was discontinued in 1990. 3 A ‘permanent resident’ of Poland is someone who has been registered as such at any specific address in Poland.


we base our study on two major arguments. First, because the structure of its population does not meet the needs of the labour market, Poland is still a country with a relatively large migration potential. Second, one of the necessary pre-conditions for achieving modernization (in economic terms) is the completion of a process of massive outflow (crowding-out). In Poland’s case, this process became possible only after the EU enlargement. As a result, recent migration from Poland may have serious long-term consequences. The paper proceeds as follows. We begin with a general overview of migration trends from Poland and an elucidation of the crowding-out hypothesis. The second section describes selectivity patterns in the pre- and post-accession period. The two sections that follow include a discussion of demographic factors, and of the impact of migration on the labour-marketrelated phenomena. The last section concludes.


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4 Since 2007 a temporary migrant is a permanent resident who has been continuously absent from Poland for more than 3 months. 5 In the period 2000–7 the average annual number of officially recorded emigrants was 25,000. 6 The Polish LFS seems the most reliable data source available to monitor intertemporal changes in Poles’ mobility. A clear advantage of using LFS data is that the so-called sample stratification has been based on regional division, which makes it possible to estimate some variables at regional level (the NTS2 level) and compare those estimates with the corresponding national data. However, the CSO suggests using it with caution as the LFS data on migration from and into Poland are not fully representative. Additionally, these data pertain only to persons aged 15 and older who, at the time of the survey, had been abroad for longer than 2 months (since 2007—3 months) and who had at least one household member still staying in Poland. 7 However, the institutional framework did not change drastically at the time of EU enlargement. Only three countries—namely Ireland, the United Kingdom and Sweden—opened their labour markets to Polish citizens directly after the EU enlargement. Other EU15 countries took 2 years (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Finland, Italy) or 3 years (the Netherlands, Luxembourg) to allow the citizens of newly acceded member countries freedom of mobility. In the remaining few EU countries (including Germany), transitional arrangements are still in force.


former ‘permanent residents’ who de facto live in some other country. In official Polish sources the category ‘Poland’s population’ denotes the total number of ‘persons actually living in Poland’, which at national level includes all ‘permanent residents’ irrespective of the place (be it Poland or a foreign country) of their actual residence. In short, at national level all persons registered as permanent residents of Poland are considered to be actual (de facto) residents. Permanent residents who have stayed in a foreign country for longer than 2 months are called temporary migrants.4 The stock of temporary migrants is being estimated on the basis of data extracted from population censuses (conducted in 1988 and 2002) and the microcensus of 1995. Since 1994 the Polish labour force survey (LFS) serves as a data source for estimating, at each quarter of the year, the stock of temporary migrants aged 15 or over. On the basis of a combination of population census and LFS data, supplemented with statistics concerning the stock of Polish migrants in major destination countries, Poland’s Central Statistical Office (CSO) estimates the stock of all temporary Polish migrants. It should be observed at this point (stemming from the CSO data) that the flows of temporary migrants tend to outnumber by far official emigration from Poland.5 Notwithstanding the difficulty of measuring migration, most of the data available suggest that, in the very first phase of transition, the international mobility of Poles declined. This is clearly visible when analysing the LFS6 data, which indicates a significant decline in the scale of migration between 1994 and 1998 (from over 200,000 to 150,000 persons staying abroad every quarter—see Figure 1). However, since the late 1990s, migration from Poland has been on the rise again. This was confirmed by the findings of the 2002 population census, which indicated that around 790,000 permanent residents of Poland (1.8 per cent of the total population) were staying abroad (of which approximately 630,000 for longer than 12 months). According to the census data, the annual number of migrants who went abroad in the early 1990s amounted to 50,000, then dropped to 20–25,000 (1993–6), and finally reached 80,000 in 2001. Generally, prior to the 2004 EU enlargement, Poland continued to be one of the most important migrant-sending countries in Europe, with significant numbers of its citizens employed in such countries as Germany (with seasonal migration playing an important role—around 250,000 people a year in the early 2000s), the United States of America, and southern European countries (Italy, Spain). On 1 May 2004 Poland—together with a group of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries—entered the European Union.7 An increase in the spatial mobility of Poles was anticipated but the actual scale and dynamic of Polish migration is perceived today as spectacular and largely unexpected. It is displayed in Figure 1 by means of quarterly LFS data.


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Figure 1: Stock of residents of Poland staying abroad for longer than 2 months, 1994–2007 (thousands)

According to the LFS in 2004, an average of 250,000 Polish citizens were staying abroad for longer than 2 months—constituting a 20 per cent increase in comparison to the numbers recorded in 2003. This trend continued over the next 3 years. The average number of migrants in 2006 was over 40 per cent higher than in 2005, and in the first three quarters of 2007 the number of persons staying abroad was higher by 34, 38, and 19 per cent, respectively, in comparison to the corresponding quarter in the previous year. In keeping with the described increase, the total number of migrants reached 522,000 in the third quarter of 2007 (Ke¶pińska, 2007).8 The spectacular dynamics of the massive post-accession migration of Poles is indicated by the data obtained from major destination countries—particularly from the UK, which turned out to be the most attractive destination country for Polish migrants after May 2004: – according to the International Passenger Survey in 2006, the number of visitors from Poland was 4.8 times higher than it was in 2003, exceeding 1.6 m;9 – from the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) data it appears that over 500,000 Poles registered with the system up until September 2007; the dynamics of the inflow was particularly high in 2005 and 2006, and only began diminishing in 2007; – beginning in the fiscal year 2003/4 Polish citizens appeared among the top ten countries of origin of incoming migrants that were allocated a National Insurance number—the total number of such numbers allocated to Poles between 2003 and 2007 was around 470,000; Poles thus constitute the most important migrant group, accountable for over 30 per cent of the total inflow of foreigners to the insurance system;

8 It should be noted that in 2007 the trend exhibited the first signs of slowing—this tendency is observable when analysing both data from Poland (LFS) as well as from destination countries (WRS). 9 Note that these data refer not to migration per se but rather depict the scale of and trends in mobility, including tourism.


Source: Kaczmarczyk and Okolski (2008a). ´


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Table 1: The stock of temporary migrants from Poland, by major destination countries (thousands) May 2002

2005a

2007a

2008a

Total European Union Austria Belgium France Germany Ireland Italy Netherlands Spain Sweden United Kingdom

786 451 11 14 21 294 2 39 10 14 6 24

1000 750 15 13 30 385 15 59 23 26 11 150

1950 1550 34 28 49 450 120 85 55 44 25 580

2270 1860 39 31 55 490 200 87 98 80 27 690

Note: a As of 1 January. Source: CSO (2008).

– the data presented above are clearly supported by the UK LFS data, which indicates that between early 2006 and early 2007 the number of Poles residing in the United Kingdom increased from 209,000 to 406,000 (Kaczmarczyk and Okólski, 2008a). The remarkable dynamics and diversity of flows renders providing a general assessment of recent migration from Poland impracticable. We argue that the recent estimates of temporary migration provided by the Polish CSO constitute the most reliable data set made available thus far (see Table 1). According to the estimates presented above, the stock of temporary migrants from Poland has more than doubled since the EU enlargement. Around 80 per cent of Polish migrants in 2006 were residents of other EU countries (57 per cent in 2002), while the most important destination country became the United Kingdom (30 per cent of total stock). Germany—the most favourable destination country for Polish migrants in the pre-accession phase—hosted only 23 per cent of the stock. The most notable increase, however, was observed in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. With regard to the composition of the migrating population, post-accession migration from Poland can be expressed both in terms of continuity and change. The most important aspect of continuity is the predominance of labour migration. According to the LFS, around 80 per cent of migrants take up employment while staying abroad. The prevalence of shortterm mobility also remains more or less stable (see Figure 1). In the first half of 2000, a significant proportion of all temporary migrants (over 60 per cent) stayed abroad for less than 12 months.10 However, a trend towards more long-term mobility began to emerge after EU enlargement, e.g. the proportion of short-term migrants in the total decreased from 63 per cent in 2005 to 54 per cent in the second quarter of 2007 (Ke¶pińska, 2007). This may suggest a tendency for migrants to prolong their stay abroad. The data presented in Table 1 illustrate one of the most prominent changes in the structure of Poles’ post-accession mobility—the emergence of new important destination countries. However, according to available data, recent migration from Poland is not best understood in terms of a particular concentration in selected countries (i.e. mostly in the UK and Ireland) 10 This observation seems to be even better founded if we consider that LFS data does not include most seasonal migration from Poland (typically lasting for less than 2 months).


Destination

604


but rather as a gradual ‘spilling over’. In fact, Polish citizens are targeting (on a massive scale) almost all EU/EEA countries and have become increasingly active contributors to their labour forces. The widening range of destination countries for Polish migrants is not the only element undergoing change. In general, recent Polish migration is more regular than irregular (that is, more frequently legal than clandestine), more of a long-term duration than circular, and more individualistic than related (subordinated) to household strategies (Kaczmarczyk and Okólski, 2008a). These and other features will be more closely examined in sections of the paper to follow.

We argue that Poland still remains a country with a large migration potential. The number of people, their spatial distribution, and their human-capital characteristics do not match the needs of a currently modernizing economy, a process that began around 1990. It is for these reasons that there are many migrants from Poland elsewhere, and that a major motive behind their outflow is gainful employment. We further argue that, in order to complete the modernization of their economies, European countries had to undergo, among other things, a process that could be referred to as ‘crowdingout’. As Layard et al. (1994) suggest, such was the function of mass overseas emigration from western and northern Europe in the late nineteenth century and of the massive outflow from four southern countries—Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain,11 mainly to the west or north of the continent, in the middle of twentieth century. Because of their peripheral status in late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and for political reasons over the period of communist rule, emigration from many eastern European countries, including Poland, could not produce a crowding-out effect. Finally, taking the long view, we argue, first of all, that all contemporary European societies, over recent centuries, witnessed significant changes in the spatial mobility of their populations that involved the volume and forms of movements, and, second, that those changes displayed a similar pattern.12 Major characteristics of that pattern included: (i) a growing incidence (and volume) of mobility in general; (ii) a shift from the predominance of circular mobility confined to culturally homogeneous (and geographically close) areas, towards diversified forms of mobility with a mass migration between culturally (and geographically) distant areas as one of its eminent forms; and (iii) in terms of international mobility, a shift from net emigration to net immigration. Behind those arguments there lies a more general conceptual framework, which places the development of capitalism, market- and money-dominated economy, and modernity in the very centre. In adopting this view we refer to structuralist tradition in social sciences and, especially, the longue durée approach to the study of history (Braudel, 1979). In doing so, we are by no means the pioneers. An account of plentiful migration-related research work adhering to the historical-structural approach can be found in Penninx (1993) and Hochstadt (1999). A secular change in political and social regimes in a number of European countries, whose origins date back to around the middle of the past millennium, underlies the coincidence of 11 Former

Yugoslavia should perhaps also be included in these countries. first attempt at sketching that pattern in the literature was offered by Zelinsky (1971) in his hypothesis of the mobility transition. 12 The


(ii) The underlying logic of massive outflow


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13 On the importance or, indeed, inevitability of putting the demographic transition at the core of theories explaining socio-economic structural transformations in contemporary society, see Dyson (2001). 14 Typically, the sector serves as a buffer in case of ‘emergency’, e.g. when a circular worker loses a job, or contracts a disease, or becomes homeless.


urbanization and industrialization, which, coupled with the demographic transition, became the main forces of European modernization (or, in other words, the nineteenth and twentieth century development).13 Cutting a long story short, and leaving aside the mainstream of political, social, and economic changes, and accompanying historical events, it might be argued that the logic of population change in the course of the demographic transition was a major factor in shaping the European pattern of spatial mobility change described above. Over the incipient phase of the transition, when the natural increase was unusually high, a huge surplus of population appeared in the rural areas and people were forced to move from small towns and surrounding villages to newly developing industrial centres in cities. Those who could not be accommodated in urban areas of close proximity migrated to faraway destinations, including overseas. Most migrants of that time were the peasant-born, whose economic activity prior to migration had hardly any links with the market. By moving to cities they turned into workers; they left behind a predominantly subsistence economy and became a part of the money-based market economy. As suggested by some authors (Meillassoux, 1975; Geschiere, 1987), migration of that kind continues until those two ‘modes of production’ are in existence. In the transitory period, they argue, when subsistence (or pre-capitalist) and market (or capitalist) economies coexist, circular mobility develops because, owing to low wage levels, some peasants might be compelled to supplement income in cash with proceeds from the traditional sector.14 By the end of the demographic transition, when the natural increase is close to zero, the native working-age population declines and the old-age dependency ratio becomes very high, the subsistence economy has been eradicated, and economic transactions are exclusively carried out on markets and are highly monetized. No longer are any meaningful surpluses of domestic labour available. In such circumstances, a steady demand for foreign workers arises. In order to fill the deficit, potential immigrants are sought in third countries, in the predominantly traditional areas, which are gradually introduced to the market- and moneyoriented economy. Such a view of long-run change in the European migration pattern seems fully consistent with the dualistic perspective of socio-economic development and the three ensuing migration theories of Marxist provenience: ‘imperialist’ (Galtung, 1971; Castles and Kossack, 1973), ‘dual labour market’ (Piore, 1979), and ‘unequal exchange’ (Portes and Walton, 1981). Social changes, as described above, entail a mass migration from the periphery to the centre caused mainly by relatively uneven distribution of the population. It may be argued that the population surpluses hamper or preclude the modernization of peripheries. Therefore the outflow or ‘redundant’ people constitute one of major premises that undermine the completion of modernization process (although it is not capable of either initiating or substituting for modern reforms). Subsistence or the natural sector in a modernizing society can be conceived of as a relic in the body of economy. People functioning in such a sector have little chance of changing their social and economic roles or positions unless they abandon the sector—in the majority of cases it will happen through out-migration. On the eve of transition to the market economy, Poland’s economy was structurally backward, characterized by strong regional and sectoral disparities. Its labour market was highly regulated and syndicalized, and, in effect, inflexible and inefficient. A relatively large proportion of the population lived in rural areas—in villages or tiny towns. Characteristic for

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those areas were low levels of human capital and visible remnants of the subsistence sector. As regarded the local demand for labour, a great part of their working-age population was redundant, both because of its excessive size and the skill mismatch. This superfluity of labour remained the case until just recently. Interestingly, until very recently the outflow from Poland—despite the fact that for several post-war decades Poland belonged to the major European sending countries—had little impact on its population and economy. After the gradual lifting of administrative barriers to foreign travel that began in the 1970s, over 2 m people moved to the West in the 1980s, and even more (excluding masses of short-term travellers or tourists) took part in various kinds of international movement in the 1990s. Many of those persons were circular migrants, but many (probably around one-half) settled abroad. Despite such a sizeable outflow—and the absence of an inflow of foreigners at that time—the population of Poland was continuously on the rise. Growing numbers of people can be attributed to a positive natural increase, which in the period 1980–99 alone amounted to 3.7 m persons. Migration from Poland in the 1980s and 1990s was undertaken mainly for economic reasons, but it relatively rarely comprised people from peripheral areas. In the first of those two decades, departure from Poland and entry into Western countries was rationed, which made for the selection of rather narrow groups of people as migrants. The selectivity mechanism appeared to privilege people from major cities: that is, those who had easy access to useful information, passport offices (and administrative establishments in general), and other strictly controlled services facilitating foreign travel, or else persons who had close relatives or friends living abroad and ready to support them. In the second decade, after the fall of communism, nearly all travel restrictions were lifted and, in addition, entry into many Western countries became easier—albeit only for people travelling as tourists or for other recreational purposes. A commonality shared by those two decades was that Polish migrants encountered significant difficulties in gaining access to the official labour market in destination countries. Since a large majority of them sought employment, they were pushed to the least attractive jobs, the secondary segment of the market, and to the shadow economy. This particular regimen of Poles’ international mobility led, among other things, to a robust selectivity mechanism among potential migrants. The major ‘selectors’ included migrants’ access to migration networks, their level of education or skill, and their region of residence in Poland. Access to networks was further strongly correlated with the region of residence and its particular emigration history. This, in turn, affected the geographical distribution of flows: Germany attracted the largest proportion of migrants owing to its well-developed networks and special institutional (bilateral) arrangements. Italy, another important host country, offered easy access to informal employment (mainly in the household sector), and the United States offered a combination of extended networks and an availability of jobs in the shadow economy, especially its highly ethnicized ‘Polish segment’. In other destination countries, including Belgium and Norway, networks (and related specific recruitment procedures) were also of crucial importance. This sort of (selective) migration mechanism upheld, and even led to an increase in, the eligible working population/workforce. Expendable or superfluous labour, on the other hand, constituted a protracted burden on society (a result of necessary measures taken for wage redistribution and (re)allocation of public benefits), which slowed and/or weakened modernizing reforms—especially within the labour market. Let us at this point briefly talk about the factors that distinguish the outflow of Polish migrants after the moment of Poland’s accession to the European Union (1 May 2004) from that which took place up until that point. It might be argued that the main role here was played by the 2004 enlargement-related institutional changes, which affected migrants’ entry into and status in the destination countries.


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III. Effects of the accession on migrant selectivity Poland’s accession to the EU was expected to affect the migration patterns of the Polish population in many ways. In this section we focus on the effects that are likely associated with the crowding-out hypothesis. We present an account of the scale and diversity of those influences by juxtaposing migrant characteristics of the immediate pre- and post-accession period.16 In the analysis to follow we first highlight the change in the geographic directions of the migration—that is, the regional and locality-type distribution of migrants’ residences prior to migration. Thereafter, selected demographic and social characteristics of migrants, including sex, age, and education level, are discussed, and comparisons between the postaccession and pre-accession periods are drawn.

15 Already in the 50 years or so that preceded the moment of the 2004 EU enlargement, it had become clear that the intensity of emigration from Poland was very sensitive to the degree of liberalization of the administrative rules that pertained to entry into or exit from the country and entitlements to residence and employment in the foreign country. Of all those rules, however, by far the most important proved to be the right to leave and return to Poland, decided upon by the Polish authorities (Fihel et al., 2007). 16 The analysis is based on two migrant databases extracted from LFS: one includes all the residents of Poland aged 15 or above who, at the time of the survey, had resided in a foreign country for longer than 2 months (hereafter referred to as ‘temporary migrants’), while the other is limited to those temporary migrants whose stay abroad did not exceed 1 year (hereafter, ‘short-term temporary migrants’). The number of migrants in the former database was 6,693; in the latter, 3,700. All migrants in the databases were divided into two groups according to the time of their departure from Poland: more specifically, those who left between the first quarter of 1999 and the first quarter of 2004 (‘pre-accession migrants’), and between the first quarter of 2005 and the fourth quarter of 2006 (‘post-accession migrants’). For analytical reasons, migrants recorded between the second quarter of 2004 and the fourth quarter of 2004 were not included in the databases. The contribution of Marta Mioduszewska (Centre of Migration Research (CMR)) to setting up those databases is gratefully acknowledged.


Among them, first and foremost, there was the removal of administrative and legal constraints to the access of Polish workers to the labour market in a number of other EU countries, especially to a huge and labour-hungry British market. It was not just lifting barriers to the access to labour markets that mattered. In addition, in all EU countries and such countries of the European Economic Area as Iceland and Norway, migrants from Poland could benefit from other important liberties, including the rights to residence, establishment, and to render services. By the same token, they were also granted access (albeit temporarily limited) to social benefits, public education, national health care, and so on.15 Needless to add, the abovementioned provisions were previously largely denied to those migrants. All these changes were likely to contribute to lowering the risks encountered by migrants in the destination countries. As it seems at least plausible to argue that one of the basic guiding principles of one’s migration strategy is aversion to risk, we may assume that the institutional changes related to the accession must have seriously affected Poles’ migration strategies. In many countries of destination, Polish migrants came to be better protected against abuse and discrimination, as well as in any legal proceedings. The access of those migrants to local institutions and services widened, and the prospects for their professional careers or the educational progress of their children improved. This is why we suggest that, after 1 May 2004, the intra-EU institutional set-up was more favourable to out-migration from Poland than in the preceding period and a post-accession rise in the outflow of people was expected.


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Table 2: All and short-term temporary migrants from Poland sorted by major groups of destination countries before and after EU accession (%) All migrants Group of countries

Before

After

Before

After

12.1(9.7)

42.2(31.3)

10.3(8.2)

46.5(34.4)

62.9(31.9)

36.1(18.8)

63.7(38.2)

34.8(20.4)

12.7 12.3

11.0 10.7

13.9 12.1

9.5 9.2

Notes: a the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden; b Germany, USA, Italy; c France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands. Source: LFS/CMR databases.

As depicted in Table 2, within a very short time the accession seemed to have a significant impact on the geography of outflow. The top three countries of the pre-accession period—those that accounted for almost two-thirds of the total outflow—lost their predominance in the postaccession period, replaced by three countries whose importance before 1 May 2004 was, at most, moderate. The former three countries consisted of destinations known for extensive and well-developed (and, in the case of Germany and the USA, long-lasting) networks of Polish migrants, whereas the latter three happened to be the only EU countries which, on the day of Poland’s accession, did not introduce restrictions to the access of Polish migrants to their labour markets. These notable changes notwithstanding, the relative position of these six countries, taken together, was reinforced by the effects of enlargement, as the share of other target countries was reduced from around one-fourth to around one-fifth. It is worth noting that the shift in the geography of outflows was more marked in the population of short-term than all other migrants. The resulting hypothesis, that suggests a shift, concurrent with enlargement, from predominantly network-driven to predominantly labour-demand-driven migration, is further corroborated when one compares the distribution of migrants (sorted by their region of residence prior to migration) in the period before 1 May 2004 with that which occurs in the period after that date. This sort of comparison was made here by breaking down all 16 regions (principal administrative units) of Poland into three groups, according to their share in the total outflow, and by making use of selectivity indices (SI).17 Given the indicators presented in Table 3,

17 The

migrant selectivity index is illustrated by the following formula: S I V =i =

MV =i PV =i M − P PV =i P

where: SIV = i is the index for category i of variable V; MV = i and PV = i are the number of migrants and number of people in the general population, respectively, falling into category (or value) i of variable V; and M and P are the overall number of migrants and people in the general population, respectively. The selectivity of outflow takes place if the index assumes a non-zero value for any category (value) of a given variable. A positive SI value means that migrants falling into a specific category (variable) of a given variable are relatively more numerous than people in the general population with the same characteristics, whereas a negative SI value (but equal to or higher than –1) means the opposite. The higher the positive value or the lower the negative value of SI, the stronger the selectivity.


Countries granting Polish citizens a free access to labour market after 1 May 2004a (of which the United Kingdom) Top 3 countries of the pre-accession periodb (of which Germany) Countries whose share in the total outflow was at least 3 per cent in any periodc Other countries

Of which, short-term migrants


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Table 3: All and short-term temporary migrants from Poland, by region of residence prior to migration, before and after EU accession Migrant selectivity index (SI) All migrants

% share per one region

Of which, short-term

All migrants


Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Top 5 Middle 6 Bottom 5

0.75 −0.34 −0.30

0.20 −0.09 −0.21

0.79 −0.21 −0.50

0.16 −0.16 0.02

10.6 5.0 3.3

9.6 6.0 3.5

10.9 4.8 3.3

9.3 6.0 3.5

Source: LFS/CMR databases.

Table 4: All and short-term temporary migrants from Poland by type of residence (category of settlement) prior to migration, before and after EU accession (%)

Category of settlement Town, 100,000 or more inhabitants Town, up to 100,000 inhabitants Village

All migrants


Resident population (mid-2004)

Before accession

After accession

Before accession

After accession

29.1 32.3 38.6

21.0 35.8 43.2

25.5 34.9 39.6

20.1 35.5 44.4

24.0 35.7 40.3


it can be concluded that the post-accession migrants were more evenly distributed across regions than were the pre-accession migrants. Moreover, the regional selectivity of migrants in all three territorial groups diminished. Among the regions with the highest share of the total outflow, an initial, relatively high positive SI value became a relatively low positive value, while, in the two other groups, relatively moderate negative values became relatively low negative (or zero) values. Overall, the pattern of a rather strong regional selectivity of migrants was replaced by a pattern of a rather weak selectivity. Temporary migration became more readily accessible to people across Poland, which seems consistent with the hypothesis that stresses the role of demand as an impetus for outflow. Additionally, such massive (and accessible) migration can become a ‘crowding-out’ tool. A change worth noting that occurred immediately after the 2004 EU enlargement was a decline in the proportion of residents of the rural settlements within the migrating population, as well as a rise in the number of residents of the urban areas. A general tendency both in the pre- and post-accession period (as shown in Table 4) was an overrepresentation of migrants originating from rural areas (relative to the respective resident population) and, albeit to a lesser extent, from medium and small towns. With regard to the sex and age of migrants, the observed selectivity was consistent with what might have been expected. Both before and after the EU accession, males were weakly positively (and females weakly negatively) selected, and migrants of ‘mobile age’ (20–39year-olds) were strongly positively selected. For both variables, however, the selectivity index took a higher value in the post-accession period compared to the pre-accession period. The SI value for male migrants increased from 0.20 to 0.35 and for mobile-age migrants from 0.97 to 1.21.


Group of regions

610


Table 5: Migrant selectivity indices (SI) for post-secondary and vocational education before and after EU accession (all migrants), by selected countries of destination Educational level/country of destination

After accession

0.02 0.34

0.42 0.30

1.09 0.07

1.13 0.11

−0.29 0.51

−0.52 0.57


Table 6: Migrant selectivity indices (SI) for post-secondary and vocational education after EU accession (all migrants), by categories of settlement (migrants’ places of residence prior to migration) Category of settlement Town, 100,000 or more inhabitants Town, up to 100,000 inhabitants Village All settlements

Post-secondary

Vocational

0.27 0.55 1.10 0.42

0.18 0.18 0.46 0.30


Probably the most conspicuous tendency within migrant selectivity was that which was related to education levels. A predominant part of Poland’s population aged 15 and over comprises (as of mid-2004) people with educations below secondary level, where only 12 per cent have university diplomas (or their equivalent).18 Before the accession no selectivity effect was observed among people with post-secondary education, while those with vocational education, being by far the largest group among migrants, exhibited a moderate positive selectivity. After the accession, the SI value remained almost unchanged in the latter group and became much higher in the former group. As follows from Table 5 and Table 6, the reality was much more complex than that. In fact, the selectivity of migrants in various categories of education levels was diversified according to the target country and category of settlement. In an effort to remain concise, we compared only two major destination countries—Germany and the United Kingdom. Generally, the United Kingdom strongly ‘attracted’ the highly educated and appeared largely neutral with regard to the poorly educated, whereas, in a striking contrast, Germany ‘repelled’ the highly educated and moderately (positively) ‘attracted’ people with low education levels. Those two destination-specific tendencies appeared to be reinforced after accession. As a result of those two opposite patterns, the overall picture is rather misleading. A substantial increase in the SI value for individuals with a post-secondary education did not result from much a stronger attraction of the highly educated in either of the two countries, but rather from a relative shift in the flow of migrants—with Germany losing and Britain gaining in 18 Tertiary education—usually at least 16 years of schooling; post-secondary and secondary completed—at least 12 years of schooling; vocational education—at least 10–11 years of schooling.


All countries Post-secondary Vocational United Kingdom Post-secondary Vocational Germany Post-secondary Vocational

Before accession


611

IV. Demographic consequences of post-accession outflow of people A ‘robust’ estimate of the number of Poland’s inhabitants who are, in fact, temporary migrants19 living and working in other countries, speaks of 1.95 m persons on 1 January 2007.20 It might be argued that the size of that category of the population increased by 1.07m after 1 May 2004. Since over the corresponding period approximately 80,000 people emigrated from and 25,000 people immigrated to Poland,21 the total net loss of population between the date of EU accession and 1 January 2007 seems close to 1.1m, which amounts to 2.8 per cent of the total resident population. This estimate further ‘translates’ into 1.01 m people aged 15–59, which represents 4 per cent of the resident population at that age (Mioduszewska, 2008; Grabowska-Lusinska and Okólski, 2008). In the following considerations we consistently refer to the population and the ‘postaccession migrants’ aged 15 or more.22 Our concern here is the impact of outflow from Poland on the resident population according to certain important demographic and social characteristics. A point of reference is 3.3 per cent, which is the share of net outflow in the post-accession period relative to the respective resident population (on 1 May 2004).

(i)

Sex and age

The outflow of men was more than 50 per cent greater than that of women; the loss in males amounted to 4.4 per cent of the population, while the loss in females was 2.2 per cent. The largest loss according to age was noted in the group 25–29 years, and it stood at 9.3 per cent.

19 Official concepts, followed by Poland’s statistics, of ‘temporary migrant’ as opposed to ‘emigrant’ are explained in the introductory paragraphs of section II(i) of this paper. 20 The estimate was made by the CSO of Poland on the basis of the 2002 population census, the register of temporary migrants, and quarterly LFS data. 21 See section II(i). 22 Resident population aged 15+ at about the date of Poland’s accession to the EU was nearly 31.8m, and we estimate the total loss due to the post-accession migration (15+) at 1.045 m.


importance. On the other hand, a slight decrease in the overall SI value for individuals with a vocational education occurred in a parallel fashion, with slight increases observable in both Britain and Germany. As data for the post-accession period indicate, respective SIs were also diversified according to the migrants’ type of residence in Poland, with large towns having a small effect on selectivity for both educational categories and villages affecting that selectivity to a much stronger degree. We may conclude, albeit cautiously, that the accession and, especially, the opening of the vast British labour market to Polish migrant workers, did, indeed, not only attract more Poles to the United Kingdom, but above all made migration worthwhile for many more highly educated individuals (in particular males ‘in their prime’) originating from villages or medium and small towns.

612


The other groups lost, respectively: 20–24 years—8.8 per cent; 30–44 years—3.8 per cent; 45+ years—1.1 per cent; and 15–19 years—0.8 per cent.

(ii) Educational attainment

(iii) Urban/rural population The population loss of rural areas was 3.5 per cent (4.7 and 2.4 per cent, respectively, for males and females) and it exceeded the loss of urban areas by 0.4 point. In fact, among the inhabitants of towns the tendency was further diversified. Dwellers in large towns (population above 100,000) displayed a distinctly different pattern from that represented by the dwellers of medium-sized and small towns, which, in turn, happened to be very similar to a rural population pattern. For instance, in the age group that was the most strongly affected by the population outflow, i.e. 25–29, the loss in the rural population amounted to 9.5 per cent and in the population of medium-sized and small towns to 10 per cent, whereas in the population of large towns it was 8.2 per cent. In the group aged 20–24 it was 9.6 per cent for rural areas and small and medium-sized towns, and 7.0 per cent for large towns.

(iv) Region of origin (prior to migration) In a cross-regional perspective (16 regions being at the same time principal administrative units) the loss varied from 1.8 per cent (Mazowieckie, with the capital city Warsaw) to 7.2 per cent (Podkarpackie, in the very remote south-east of Poland). The smallest loss in the male rural population was in Slaskie in the south (1.8 per cent), and the largest in Podkarpackie (9.0 per cent), while for the male urban population the smallest loss was in Opolskie in the south (2.7 per cent) and the largest in Swietokrzyskie in central Poland (10.3 per cent). The losses in female rural and urban populations were much lower—in the range of 0.6 per cent (Mazowieckie) and 5.9 per cent (Podkarpackie). This brief account of the immediate demographic consequences of the post-accession outflow points to a great variation in the intensity of migration among various groups of the population. In a search for clues regarding the factors of that variation we make use of the analysis presented in the preceding section. In particular, we refer to the migrant selectivity index (SI), which measures a degree to which a group of migrants having a given characteristic is overrepresented or underrepresented in all migrants relative to a


Three categories of educational attainment encountered a pretty similar loss, namely around 4 per cent. Those were: tertiary (university diploma or equivalent); other post-secondary and secondary completed; and vocational. In the group with an education level lower than vocational the loss was merely 1 per cent. There were, however, considerable differences between males and females. Males with post-secondary (other than tertiary) and secondary education suffered the largest loss (5.8 per cent), followed by those with vocational education (5.4 per cent), tertiary (5 per cent), and lower (1.4 per cent). In females the largest loss was noted among those with tertiary education (3.3 per cent); whereas women with post-secondary and secondary education lost 3.1 per cent; with vocational, 2.4 per cent; and with lower, 0.6 per cent.


613

proportion of the group of resident population having the same characteristic in the total population. The migrant selectivity indices suggest that:

A general tendency might be put as follows. Young and relatively well-educated men were particularly prone to migrate, especially if their destinations were countries that on 1 May 2004 did not impose restrictions on the access to their labour markets (such as the United Kingdom). However, middle-aged and not highly educated men also displayed a strong inclination to migrate, but only if their destinations were countries whose labour markets were difficult to access (such as Germany, Italy, or the Netherlands). In both cases a strong propensity to move out of Poland was reinforced if the residence prior to migration was in a village or not highly urbanized region. This brings us back to the crowding-out hypothesis, which claims that a great part of the post-accession outflow involved redundant population living in regions or sub-regions or in some other enclaves with a significant share of semi-subsistence economy (or remnants of subsistence economy). To test this hypothesis we looked at the correlation23 between migration rates in the pre- and post-accession period and selected socio-economic characteristics in a cross-regional perspective (see Table 7 and Figure 2). Analysis of presented data reveals that intensity of migration from Poland is strongly linked to the level of economic development (measured by GDP per capita) and is relatively higher in more backward regions. Correlation between mobility rates and unemployment rates is moderate (and not significant), but this observation is consistent with other studies on recent Polish migration.24 However, there are relatively strong links between migration and selected demographic factors. Migration was relatively more intensive in regions with a relatively lower level of urbanization and those with

23 Owing

to a low number of observations, it was not possible to apply more advanced statistical methods.

24 In terms of labour-market characteristics, Polish regions are highly heterogeneous. Thus, it would be necessary

to analyse links between labour-market developments and migration on lower levels and this is not feasible owing to data availability.


– the impact of sex was weak (in the case of men favourable, and for women unfavourable to migration); – the impact of age was strong (in the case of ‘mobile age’, e.g. 20–39, it was positive, and in the case of other groups negative); – the impact of educational attainment was diversified—from weak to strong (negative and strong for education lower than vocational, positive and weak for vocational education, and positive or moderate for tertiary and secondary education); – the impact of the region of migrant’s origin was very diversified—from weak to strong; SI was positive and high (above 0.75) in some less highly urbanized regions of the east (Podkarpackie and Podlaskie), and negative and high (around –0.5 or below) in the most highly urbanized regions (Lodzkie, Mazowieckie, and Slaskie); – the impact of the above mentioned characteristics was amplified in conjunction with the type of residence; for instance for tertiary education, in the case of large towns, SI was positive but low (0.27), in the case of medium-sized and small towns it was positive and medium (0.55), while in the case of villages it was positive and strong (1.10); on the other hand, for vocational education, in the case of large towns and also medium-sized and small towns SI was positive but very low (0.18), while in the case of villages it was positive and medium (0.46).

614


Table 7: Correlation between pre- and post-accession migration flows (migration rates) and selected socio-economic variables (based on the data for 16 Polish regions)

Variable

Intensity of migration,a post-2004

−0.322 . 0.203 . −0.056 . −0.708∗∗ 0.352 . 0.094 . −0.650∗∗ . 0.178

. 0.128 . −0.044 . 0.771∗∗ −0.583∗ . 0.403 . 0.253 . −0.660∗∗ 0.129

0.232 −0.219

0.400 −0.447

Notes: ∗ Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level. ∗∗ Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. a Number of migrants per 100 inhabitants (migration rate). b A measure of the economic size of a farm business based on the gross margin imputed from standard coefficients for each commodity on the farm. Source: Own elaboration based on LFS/CMR databases, Polish LFS, and CSO data (regional databases).

younger populations (particularly in the post-accession period). At the same time, there was a positive—although moderate—correlation between intensity of mobility and indicators of subsistence or semi-subsistence economy (measured by share of rural population that owned small land plots and average ‘economic size units’ (ESU) of farms). The latter is more clear while comparing variables that might reflect the scope of subsistence economy in respective region with the number of post-accession migrants aged 18–44 from rural areas only.25 Generally, data provided might suggest that an important post-2004 migrant group comprises young and relatively well-educated people leaving relatively backward regions, with weak labour markets and remnants of a semi-subsistence economy. We argue that such a process can be described in terms of overflow rather than drainage.

V. Impacts of migration on the Polish labour market Links between labour market and mobility lie at the core of the economic theory of migration. With regard to labour-importing countries, numerous theoretical approaches and empirical studies have concentrated on the labour-market performance of immigrants and their impact on the situation of receiving labour markets (Card, 1990, 2001; Friedberg and Hunt, 1995;

25 The Pearson coefficient R proved to be strikingly high (0.805) in the case of people in a household that owned an agriculturally cultivated land plot of below 5 hectares, while it was much lower (0.566) in the case of all rural population and some other variables.


Unemployment rate 2002 Unemployment rate 2006 Share of long-term unemployed among all unemployed 2002 Share of long-term unemployed among all unemployed 2006 Youth (15–24) unemployment rate 2002 Youth (15–24) unemployment rate 2006 Share of inhabitants in cities over 100,000 Share of population living out of social welfare 2002 Share of population living out of social welfare 2006 Share of population aged 15–39 2002 Share of population aged 15–39 2006 GDP per capita 2002 GDP per capita 2006 Share of rural population with agriculture as main economic activity Share of rural population with agriculturally cultivated land plots smaller than 5 ha Average Economic Size Unit (ESU) of farmsb

Intensity of migration,a prior to 2004


615

Figure 2: Pre- and post-accession outflow and selected socio-economic variables (Polish regions)


Source: Own elaboration based on LFS/CMR databases, Polish LFS and CSO data (regional databases).

616


26 The

outflow of workers should have a negative impact on product, although additional issues such as capital/labour stock or migrants characteristics are to be taken into account. 27 There is a broad literature on the consequences of highly skilled migration on sending countries (Grubel and Scott, 1966; Bhagwati and Hamada, 1974; Stark et al., 1997; Beine et al., 2001; Docquier and Marfouk, 2004; Dumont and Lemaˆıtre, 2005). However, studies dealing with CEE countries are relatively rare (Wolburg 1996; Straubhaar and Wolburg, 1999; Radu, 2003). 28 Additionally, based on outcomes for three countries (USA, Canada, and Mexico) authors found that the average wage response to international migration in each of them was similar and equalled a 3–4 per cent opposite-signed change in wages for a 10 per cent change in labour supply. 29 The Polish labour market in the transition period was characterized by serious structural problems, including low levels of human capital, regional professional and educational mismatches, low volume of mobility, etc. These imbalances were among the most important factors responsible for an extremely high unemployment rate, a large share of long-term unemployed, high unemployment among young persons, and very low participation and employment rates.


Borjas et al., 1997; Zimmermann, 1998; Borjas, 2003; Kahanec and Zimmermann, 2008). Interestingly, the number of studies on the impact of migration on sending countries is limited. According to migration theory, the effects of a massive outflow of migrants (labour force) for the labour market in a sending country should result in a decline in unemployment (in the short term), a rise in the number of positions available, in pressure on wages (in the medium term), and, ultimately, upward occupational (and social) mobility and immigration of foreign labour (in the long term) (Borjas, 2004; IOM, 2005). Two effects are of crucial importance: the impact on unemployment and the wage level. Out-migration is also supposed to influence output26 and human-capital formation in sending countries.27 A large part of studies published were devoted to analyses of Mexican–US mobility. With regard to this particular flow, Mishra (2007) found a positive correlation between domestic wages and emigration. The elasticity of wages with respect to out-migration estimated over the period 1970–2000 equalled 0.4, while the cumulative increase in wages due to the outflow amounted to 8 per cent. Hanson (2005) examined changes in labour supply and earnings in Mexican regions in the 1990s. He found that average hourly earnings in high-migration states rose by 6–9 per cent as compared to low-migration states. Similar results were presented by Aydemir and Borjas (2006). However, their analysis went beyond the basic approach and showed that the impact of migration is diverse for selected groups of workers (e.g. the relative wages of low-skill workers were lower).28 The scientific discourse on impacts of migration on labour markets in the CEE, including Poland, is limited. One of the most important issues in the pre-accession public debate was the so-called unemployment-export hypothesis, which predicted a potential positive impact of outgoing migration on the situation in the domestic labour market. We argue that this hypothesis appears to be supported to only a limited extent. To discuss it, we start with basic information on the labour-market developments in the early 2000s and then we present outcomes of a few empirical studies. In the pre-accession period, Poland—as was the case for many other CEE countries—was struggling with serious job shortages and high unemployment (in 2002 the unemployment rate reached approximately 20 per cent).29 The gradual improvement of the situation in the labour market was already visible in 2003, but has gained much momentum after May 2004. Between the second quarter of 2004 and the first quarter of 2007 the number of unemployed individuals decreased from 3.1 m to 1.5 m. In 2007 the unemployment rate (according to LFS) fell below 10 per cent.


617

Figure 3: Migration and labour market phenomena according to the LFS, 2000–7 15 500

4 000 Unemployed

Employed

Out of labour force

15 000

3 000

14 500

2 500 14 000 2 000 13 500 1 500 13 000

1 000

2007/Q1

2006/Q3

2006/Q1

2005/Q3

2005/Q1

2004/Q3

2004/Q1

2003/Q3

2003/Q1

2002/Q1

2002/Q3

2001/Q3

12 000 2001/Q1

0 2000/Q3

12 500

2000/Q1

500

Source: Kaczmarczyk and Okolski (2008b). ´

Massive migration seems to lead not only to the reduction of unemployment. Since 2005 the number of job openings has been rising rapidly. Only 1.8 per cent companies reported hiring difficulties in the fourth quarter of 2005 and 12.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2007. The shortage of workers became particularly severe in construction (where over 30 per cent of companies reported hiring difficulties) and in manufacturing (15 per cent). Since 2007, labour shortages have been declared (by companies) as the most important barriers to growth. The average vacancy rate is still relatively low (just over 1 per cent in 2007), but in some sectors (e.g. construction) it has exceeded 5 per cent (NBP, 2007; World Bank, 2007). Stylized facts on the labour market would also suggest that since the 2004 enlargement, migration constitutes serious labour-market relief (in terms of unemployment) and, in a relatively short period, it has led to labour shortages. Figure 3 reveals that, in recent years, significant changes with respect to unemployment were noted. Back-of-the-envelope analysis allows us to conclude that a gradual decrease in unemployment (since 2002) was accompanied by increasing employment and stabilization in numbers of those who were not active on the labour market: upon closer scrutiny of the relationship between the unemployment rate and the number of Polish migrants staying temporarily abroad (both according to LFS), it appears that from the late 1990s until EU enlargement, unemployment was one of the most important push factors, which is clearly indicated by a very high positive correlation.30 However, since 2004, the rising intensity of migration was accompanied by declining unemployment, which, in sum, led to an inverse change in the relationship.31 While analysing recent developments on the Polish labour market, Bukowski et al. (2008) attempted to distinguish between three potential sources of changes observed: demographic 30 The 31 The

–0.98.

Pearson correlation coefficient for the period 1999 (fourth quarter) to 2004 (first quarter) equalled 0.80. Pearson correlation coefficient for the period 2004 (second quarter) to 2007 (second quarter) equalled


Unemployed and migrants

3 500

Employed and people out of labour force

Migrants

618


32 Note that the introduction of the migratory factor into decomposition presented seems possible although rather difficult (in methodological terms). This is due to the fact that migration impacts both on demography and labour-market performance (activity rates), additionally, outcomes would be seriously biased owing to—discussed in previous parts—self-selection mechanisms. 33 A similar pattern was observed in the age group 25–44.


changes (changes in numbers of persons (size of cohorts) entering and leaving the labour market); changes in economic activity in a given age group (participation/non-participation); and changes in numbers of employed.32 According to Bukowski et al. (2008), the increase in unemployment in the late 1990s and early 2000s was predominantly a consequence of the declining number of job places available, and consequently of a fall in employment (particularly in years 1999 and 2001–2). Other effects were of moderate importance and, additionally, acted in the opposite direction. In other words: the inflow of new cohorts of workers was more or less compensated for by decreasing participation rates (particularly in the case of older age groups). Recent data reveal that these relationships remain stable after the EU accession. The most important factor influencing unemployment (in a negative way) remains employment and the process of job creation. Indeed, mainly owing to very good economic prospects (partially related to the EU accession) the number of employed individuals increased from 13.7 m in 2004 to 15.2 m in 2007. Effects of both remaining factors were marginal; however, there was an impact of the changes in economic activity noted which can be attributed to migration. Namely, a decrease in participation rates observed in 2005 and 2006 and leading—together with a large-scale process of job creation—to a significant decline in unemployment will be attributed, to a degree, to the outflow abroad. Some migrants, even if still registered as permanent citizens of Poland, are not visible in Polish statistics either as unemployed or as economically active, and therefore impact the value of unemployment rate. This tendency is visible particularly in the case of persons in the younger age brackets. Over the years 2003–6 the number of unemployed persons in the age group 15–24 decreased by over 260,000.33 Of this number, more than 110,000 can be attributed to changes in employment, but the rest mainly to changes in participation patterns. The latter factor is to be linked with two processes: a growing tendency to obtain tertiary education and massive post-accession outflow. This observation is consistent with arguments presented in the previous section of the paper where we argued that the potential impact of migration should be the highest in the younger age brackets. The impact of migration on the labour market was addressed directly by Budnik (2007) who used the steady-state solution to evaluate the effect of migration on the Polish labour market (the migration scenario versus the counterfactual one). Outcomes of her study revealed that massive post-accession mobility had only a moderate impact on the estimated steady-state shares of people with different labour-market statuses. Particularly, in the case of the unemployment rate the bias due to migration (the difference between unemployment rates estimated for migration and non-migration scenarios) was rather small and in 2005–6 estimated—on average—at around 0.4 percentage points. However, it was clearly stressed that the effects of migration can be far more severe for particular regional and local labour markets. This observation is in line with recent analyses of the labour-market situation in other CEE countries, indicating that the increasing number of job openings is not necessarily a result of outflow, but rather the offshoot of a favourable economic climate (clearly visible in the case of Hungary or the Czech Republic, both of which also noted significant job shortages despite the lack of (mass) (e)migration).


619

Table 8: Transition probabilities on the Polish labour market, average for years 2000–6

Employment Unemployment Non-participation Migration

Employment

Unemployment

Non-participation

Migration

97.2 9.1 1.1 1.7

1.3 85.1 1.3 1.5

1.4 5.3 97.5 1.5

0.1 0.5 0.1 95.4

Source: Budnik (2007).

34 A set of multinomial logistic regression models was applied to explain factors influencing migratory behavior on both household and individual level (Kaczmarczyk, 2008).


Additionally, Budnik (2007) analysed gross flows on the Polish labour market (flows between labour-market states) in consecutive quarters over the period 2000–6. Contrary to previous studies (e.g. Góra and Walewski, 2002; Fihel, 2004), she proposed augmenting standard labour-market flows analysis and treating migration in the same manner as other labour-market states—i.e. employment, unemployment, and non-participation. Thus she was able to estimate transition probabilities for all labour-market states, including migration (precisely: temporary migration from Poland as measured by LFS data) (see Table 8). Data presented in Table 8 reveal, first of all, the low mobility of workers on the Polish labour market—in most cases the probability of changing status on the labour market between consecutive quarters was lower than 5 per cent. Additionally, from the LFS data it follows that probabilities of changing status (in the case of all states) were on the decrease from 1994 to 2000 and have started to rise since then. This is particularly true in the case of migration: the probability of transition from the home to a foreign labour market was around 0.1 per cent in the pre-accession period and 0.3 per cent in the post-accession period. Post-2004 transition probabilities from employment and unemployment to migration equalled 0.3 per cent and 1.5 per cent, respectively. The effect was relatively strong in the case of both groups, which may suggest that, owing to institutional arrangements, introduced Polish citizens are more likely (and able) to substitute a foreign labour market for the domestic one. Data presented in Table 8 show also that the probability of moving abroad was much higher in the case of the unemployed than the employed or those not active on the Polish labour market (0.5 versus 0.1). This outcome may support, at least to some extent, the export-of-unemployment hypothesis. From the aggregated data it follows that labour-market phenomena should be perceived as a major pro-migratory factors. This suggestion is strongly supported by the outcomes of several regional and local studies. Based on survey data gathered for one of the Polish regions in the late 1990s, Kaczmarczyk (2005) has shown that unemployment was by far the most important push factor in the transition phase. Recent analysis dealing with the labour outflow from four Polish regions (based on the ethnosurvey data) supports this observation to a limited extent only. It follows that nearly half of the individuals leaving to work abroad have had a stable job in Poland before their departure, over 25 per cent were unemployed, and 14 per cent were not economically active. As indicated by the results of the econometric analysis,34 the impact of unemployment on migration propensity was positive and significant, but much smaller in the post-accession period than in the previous phase of transition. In general, international mobility in the pre-accession phase belonged to the domain of the unemployed, whereas in

620


35 Wages

data are presented in real terms. also that if we compare the scale of migration (even as massive as it is in the Polish case) and the scale of other labour-market aggregates (employment, unemployment) the most reasonable conclusion appears to be that the outflow of persons cannot influence the situation on the domestic labour market in a very significant way (see also Massey et al., 1999). 36 Note


the case of the most recent migration, an individual’s employment status within the labour market was of relatively less importance (Kaczmarczyk, 2008). With regard to wages, no significant wage pressure was noted on the aggregate level in the early post-accession phase. Between 2004 and 2006, wages in Poland rose rather moderately (by around 2 per cent).35 However, in 2007, the average monthly salary rose by around 9 per cent and in a few sectors the increase was significantly higher (agriculture—11 per cent; construction—15.7 per cent) (World Bank, 2007). Budnik (2008) attempted to assess—in a quantitative way—the impact of migration on the wage level. Her analysis was based on a comparison between a real and contra-factual scenario (emigration rate fixed at the level from 2002). The overall migration effect on wages was moderate: a 5.5 percentage point increase in the migration rate was expected to change the wage rate by 1.3 per cent only (over the years 2002–6, i.e. in the period of massive outflow and emergency of labour shortages). From the preceding analysis it follows that, as we argue, the short- and medium-term impact of the post-accession outflow on the Polish labour market has been moderate.36 Poland is a traditional emigration country, with significant outflows of persons observed in the pre- and post-transition phase. Since 1989, migration went hand in hand with a massive restructuring of the economy, which significantly influenced the labour market. The situation within the labour market can be understood as an outcome of the interplay of many factors, including economic growth (business cycle), the gradual restructuring of the economy (e.g., the privatization of state-owned companies, inflow of FDI, etc.), as well as the international mobility of persons. Within these factors, migration plays an important, but definitely not decisive, role. However, as we argue, one significant factor is completely absent from most analyses. As suggested in previous parts, the crowding-out phenomenon may be a necessary precondition for newly acceded countries to catch up with the core countries of the EU15. With regard to this hypothesis, the long-term impact of the recent outflow is of extreme importance. Even if it does not directly result in a decrease in unemployment, international migration is bringing about significant changes in the labour market’s institutional make-up. Clear indications of such tendencies include, though are not limited to, gradual changes in relations between employers and employees and higher spending on training and recruitment—all of which are likely to produce very positive effects in longer term (KPMG, 2008). In this context the labour-market strategies of Polish migrants appear as important as implied by aggregate data. Analyses at the regional level as well as the selectivity analysis provided above suggest that one can distinguish between two structurally different patterns of migration and identify two relevant migration streams. The first one refers to people under 35 years of age, usually without children, often single or in informal relationships, and relatively well educated. For these persons, language competencies (English!) and the opportunity to legalize their work and stay abroad were important factors influencing their decision to migrate. It is for this reason that they predominantly opt for the UK and Ireland as destination countries. The second stream comprises people with previous migration experiences, no language skills, and an inferior position on the labour market. Those migrants rely to higher extent on migrant networks and choose more ‘traditional’ destinations, such as Germany, Italy, Spain, or the USA (or countries with blocked entry on the labour market).


621

VI. Conclusions—could that be an (ultimate) crowding-out? The post-accession outflow from Poland turned out to be one of the most spectacular migration processes in modern European history. Within a very short time-span, between 1 May 2004 and 1 January 2008, approximately 6 per cent of the working-age population (15–59) had gone abroad, a predominant majority with the purpose of finding a job. In this paper we have pointed out that the post-accession outflow of people from Poland might be contributing significantly to a crowding-out of the economy. The crowding-out hypothesis is strongly supported by the analysis of selectivity patterns observed in the pre- and post-accession period. A substantially stronger propensity to move was observed among people originating from economically backward regions, characterized by very limited employment opportunities, a high proportion of the population living in medium-sized or small towns and in villages, and a relatively large semi-subsistence sector. Owing to recent migration, those regions, more than the others, lost many young and highly educated persons. Increasing numbers of those migrants were the newcomers to the labour market, the people who had just completed their formal education. However, if we take into account the selectivity of migrants and local/regional labour-market conditions, a significant portion of the outflow is to be understood in terms of brain overflow and not drainage.


From the analysis provided in section III of this paper, it follows that the spectacular increase in the scale of Poles’ mobility can be attributed primarily to the growing activity of the first group, which mostly originates from tiny towns or rural areas. As suggested before, in the case of this particular group, the indirect effects resulting from diverse labour-market strategies appear far more important than the direct effects proffered by the unemploymentexport hypothesis. The major motivation of this type of migrant is not necessarily a lack of employment opportunities. Moving abroad can be a means of completing or beginning education, gaining professional experience, or accumulating the necessary capital to start a private business upon return to Poland. Major motivations may still be related to labourmarket phenomena, but in this case it would appear that a sufficient reason to migrate is the lack of a good job (in terms of salary and working conditions) and not the lack of jobs in general. Such a kind of strategy is innovative to some extent, and may lead to new types of professional careers, which more and more often seem to include at least some (temporary) experience abroad. This relatively new behaviour is not only a consequence of demand factors, but also of factors related to the Polish labour market. After the transition, the human-capital endowment of the younger part of the Polish population improved significantly. This change was not matched by structural changes on the domestic labour market. As a consequence, a large share of the working-age population became redundant in economic terms (owing both to its size and skill mismatch), as well as ‘trapped’ in rural areas or tiny towns that cannot offer many prospects in terms of the labour market. From the studies carried out at the local and regional level presented here, it follows that the opening of the EU labour markets and a strong demand for foreign workers generated by most of the western European economies created new opportunities for this particular group and the international mobility of its representatives was not constrained by already existent migrant networks. Along with the crowding-out effect, it also put forth an opportunity for a significant improvement of the situation on the domestic labour market in the long term—which may be of markedly higher importance than the short-term decline in unemployment.

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On the other hand, we have aimed to present the most up-to-date debate on the effects of the post-accession outflow on the Polish labour market. Concomitant with high out-migration was a rapid decline in the unemployment rate and a growing labour deficit in the case of some sub-regional markets or some professions, and, as a result, increasing flexibility of the Polish labour market (e.g. wage adaptation to labour shortages, more active recruitment strategies by employers, and employers’ contribution to growing investment in human capital). Although migration had a positive impact on the labour market overall, the changes observed in the labour market had much more complex sources, which at this moment prevents us from drawing any far-reaching conclusions. All in all, bearing in mind the time scope, the current demographic and economic effects of post-accession migration seem important, both in quantitative and structural terms, particularly in the long-term perspective. Above all, those effects seem to be largely consistent with what might be expected from the crowding-out perspective, which has been adopted in this paper.


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