The Impact of Migration on Poland: EU Mobility and Social Change

Eva A. Duda-Mikulin of the University of Bradford reviews The Impact of Migration on Poland: EU Mobility and Social Change by White Anne, Izabela Grabowska, Pawel Kaczmarczyk & Krystyna Slany. In this book, the authors offer a new approach for understanding how migration affects sending countries, and provide a wide-ranging analysis of how Poland has changed, and continues to change, since EU accession in 2004. The authors explore an array of social trends and their causes before using in-depth interview data to illustrate how migration contributes to those causes. They address fundamental questions about whether and how Polish society is becoming more equal and more cosmopolitan, arguing that for particular segments of society migration does make a difference, and can be seen as both leveller and eye-opener. While the book focuses mainly on stayers in Poland, and their multiple contacts with Poles in other countries, Chapter 9 analyses ‘Polish society abroad,’ a more accurate concept than ‘community’ in countries like the UK, and Chapter 10 considers impacts of immigration to Poland.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918319855066.