Poland has opened its arms to nearly 1 million Ukrainian refugees, but will they be able to stay for the long term?

By Kate Golebiowska, Charles Darwin University, Marta Pachocka, Warsaw School of Economics, Sabina Kubiciel-Lodzińska, Opole University of Technology

Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European landscape has been completely transformed by Ukrainian migrants fleeing their homeland.

According to the European Union, around 4.2 million Ukrainians currently receive temporary protection in EU countries, which entitles them to residence permits, working rights and access to health care and education.

The largest number are in Germany, where 1.2 million Ukrainians were living as of November 2023. Surprisingly, the second-largest number of refugees (960,000) are in Poland, a country with no significant history of accepting forced migrants.

In the weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Poland immediately opened its borders and became the primary recipient of Ukrainian refugees. By May 2022, 3.5 million Ukrainians – or 53% of all people who fled the country – had crossed the border into Poland.

Many have since returned to Ukraine or settled elsewhere, but many have stayed. Why has Poland been so open to this large number of migrants – and how long will they be able to stay?

Why Poland?

The large number of refugees was no doubt facilitated by the 530-kilometre border shared by the two countries. But Ukraine and Poland have much more in common. They share a complex, intertwined history marked by territorial wars, mutual antagonisms and historical disagreements, as well as linguistic and cultural similarities and first-hand experience of communist rule.

During Poland’s post-1989 transition to democracy, migrants from Ukraine became an important part of the labour force. Then, in 2014, conflict sparked by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine drove more Ukrainian migrants to Poland.

Before the 2022 Russian invasion, roughly 2 million foreigners lived in Poland – some 1.35 million of them Ukrainians. These Ukrainians were largely male workers, benefiting from the huge demand for labour in a country with an ageing and shrinking workforce.

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