Country report: Poland. Welcoming spaces in relation to social wellbeing, economic viability and political stability in shrinking regions

Abstract

This report aims to present findings of the research conducted in Poland within the Work Package 1 of the Welcoming Spaces project, namely “Welcoming spaces” in relation to economic viability, social wellbeing and political stability in shrinking regions. The main aim of the mentioned research was to examine how welcoming initiatives are organised and implemented in the selected shrinking localities in Poland. In particular, the creation of welcoming initiatives concerning social wellbeing, economic viability and political stability was assessed. To accomplish this objective, five localities were selected purposefully, namely Łomża (city with powiat status) and Zambrów (urban commune) in Podlaskie Voivodeship and Łuków (town), Wohyń (rural commune) and Zalesie (rural commune) in Lubelskie Voivodeship. Within these localities, 23 welcoming initiatives were identified, out of which 12 were chosen for in-depth research. The field research was conducted in all five localities between March and December 2021. During this period, the SGH Warsaw School of Economics team conducted 43 interviews with institutional stakeholders (representatives of local governments, schools, non-governmental organisations – NGOs, religious organisations and private companies) and individuals (both migrant newcomers and native residents). In addition, local government representatives were surveyed to compare their policies, measures and stances toward migrant inhabitants and local development. The research was also complemented with the literature review, policy documents analysis, and local media outlets discourse analysis. Until February 2022 and the outbreak of war in Ukraine, welcoming spaces in Poland were scarce and spatially limited to the big cities like Warsaw, Cracow, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Lublin or Białystok, governed by liberal mayors and city councils open to accept migrants and treat them as a valuable human asset of the city community. However, in smaller cities, towns and rural areas, especially in shrinking regions, welcoming spaces have been highly conditioned by welcoming initiatives carried out mainly by civil society organisations (CSOs). It is very likely that the war in Ukraine will completely change the situation we write about in this country report. However, this crisis and its consequences were not the subjects of our desk research and fieldwork in Poland, which ended in December 2021. As of late July 2022, the number of border crossings from Ukraine to Poland is almost 5 million and the number of forced migrants registered for temporary protection or similar national protection scheme concern 1.3 million people (UNHCR 2022). However, the number of those who have decided to stay in Poland is estimated at around 1.5 million (Duszczyk and Kaczmarczyk 2022). Such a large influx of forced migrants from Ukraine within five months already affects the demographic situation in the country and access to public services, mainly in large and medium-size cities1 . Depending on the development of events in Ukraine and the number of migrants who will decide to stay in Poland in the following months, the functioning of the domestic labour market, education, health service, and social assistance may significantly change. The following months may also bring new changes in the law relating to foreigners, aimed at their easier integration in the country. Access to housing in cities is already a considerable challenge, which may result in measures to encourage foreigners to settle in smaller towns and rural areas. Given these dynamic changes in the migration situation of the country, as well as in the area of admission and integration activities, Poland seems to be slowly becoming one great welcoming space. It is worth mentioning that the main institutional actors in this area have been NGOs and local governments since the beginning of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. An important supporting and coordinating role has also been played by international organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which launched its inter-agency Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRRP) in early spring to address the most urgent needs of the population of forced migrants and their host countries in this part of Europe (UNHCR 2022a; UNHCR 2022b; UNHCR 2022c). Based on the number of newly emerged welcoming initiatives and the pace of this emergence, they will soon become an everyday reality for every municipality in Poland. Therefore, it is difficult to find more up-todate circumstances for the “Welcoming Spaces” project objective, which is “to rethink ways forward in creating inclusive space in such a way that it will contribute firstly to the successful integration of migrants in demographically and economically shrinking areas and simultaneously to the revitalization of these places”. Furthermore, the initiatives we selected as case studies for our research should be widely promoted and treated as a model of migrants’ inclusion into the new communities. On the other hand, we need to emphasize here that the empirical material was collected between March and December 2021, before the outbreak of war in Ukraine. As such, it does not reflect the new reality in Poland