Poland’s Ukrainian refugee assistance as a transformational experience

A photo from the Polish-Ukrainian border in the early days of the full-scale invasion. As of mid-October 2022, 7.5 million refugees from Ukraine have fled the country and have been recorded across Europe. The number of border crossings on the Polish-Ukrainian border has reached 6.9 million. Photo: Adam Reichardt

Moreover, there was a real emotion and readiness to help among Poles and civil society organisations. Thanks to these two factors, we did not see the images and footage we normally see, such as during the 2015 refugee crisis, which showed large congregations of people gathered in temporary (at least in theory) refugee camps. The vast majority of refugees in Poland found temporary accommodation with Polish families (and Ukrainian who lived in Poland before the invasion), who became hosts and helped to mitigate this unprecedented movement of people into Poland.

What did work at the state level, was the political reaction to the war and refugee influx. The Polish government has shown and maintained, alongside the other Central European states (excluding Hungary), unequivocal support which soon translated into financial and material support, including military equipment. Undoubtedly, support for Ukraine has become an important component of investing in Poland’s own security, but one may not notice that in this case, political action went hand in hand with a dominant social and moral attitude.

Crisis in numbers

In terms of numbers, the refugee influx has quickly outgrown initial assumptions by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). As of mid-October 2022, 7.5 million refugees from Ukraine have fled the country and have been recorded across Europe. The number of border crossings on the Polish-Ukrainian border has reached 6.9 million. However, this does not translate into such a high number of people staying in Poland. Hence, there is no clear data of how many people from Ukraine currently live in Poland, with different estimates. The most regularly updated source of information in this regard is the governmental database about the number of applications submitted for a Polish identification number (PESEL). Poland’s government made such a procedure possible by adopting a special bill called the “Act on Assistance to Ukrainian Citizens in the Context of the Armed Conflict in Ukraine”. It allows Ukrainians access to the public health care system, public education and social protection (e.g. Ukrainians are included in the 500+ programme which grants five hundred zlotys (about 100 euros) for each child in the family every month.

As of mid-October, there are one million people who have been assigned PESEL numbers. Almost 70 per cent are women (the most numerous group is women between 18 and 64 years old). People under 18 account for 42 per cent of the cohort. Regarding education opportunities, Ukrainian pupils choose either to continue education in Ukraine (remote education) or enrol in the Polish school system. According to data provided by the Polish ministry of education, there are 192,000 Ukrainian pupils in Polish schools for the 2022-23 school year. Out of this, 164,197 pupils (85 per cent) are in pre-schools and primary schools (between six and 14 years old). There is no clear evidence of how many pupils attend Ukrainian schools (online) from Poland and how many remain outside any school system, which could be a significant problem as there would be a large group of school-aged children who are receiving no education.

Overall, in terms of hard cash Poland has been at the top of the list of the countries supporting Ukraine. According to estimates by the Polish Institute of Economy (PIE), the value of private aid to Ukraine by Poles amounts to ten billion Polish zlotys (around 2.12 million euros). Overall, Poland’s support has been up to one percent of the country’s GDP (as of mid-2022). In terms of the ratio of aid to the country’s GDP, Poland is third behind only Latvia and Estonia. Poland is also the third biggest military support provider (after the US and UK).

 Growing Ukrainian diaspora   

The post-invasion cohort of people has only enlarged the Ukrainian diaspora that lived in the country before and grew particularly after 2014 due to the war. Therefore, according to Maciej Duszczyk, a professor at Warsaw University and a recognised authority on migration issues, there are now between 2.3 to 2.5 million Ukrainians in Poland. Besides the one million mentioned above, 850,000 or so people have access to the Polish job market and around 380,000 hold another residence status (the last two groups are mainly people who came to Poland before February 24th). Ukrainians outnumber other nations in having work permits granted in Poland. Ukrainians accounted for 65 per cent of all work permits issued to foreigners in Poland in 2021 alone.

Without a doubt, the existence of a large community of Ukrainians has contributed to the mitigation of the refugee crisis after the invasion broke out. Like many Polish families, they hosted the newcomers in their homes as well and have been (and still are) involved in the self-organisation of help for people trying to settle here or travel further to other countries. In public discourse, one may hear that Putin’s war against Ukraine has boosted a positive image of Ukrainians in Poland. While one should not overestimate this factor, the results of regular opinion polls and studies confirm that Ukrainians enjoyed positive attitudes among Poles even before the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Annual research by the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS) indicates that more Poles have positive feelings about Ukrainians than those who have negative ones. In 2022 (results were published before February 24th), 41 per cent of Poles declared warm feelings towards Ukrainians, while 27 per cent were indifferent and 25 per cent were not sympathetic. Seven percent had no opinion. The numbers were pretty similar to the year before.

Although between 2014 and 2022 the relation of sympathy/antipathy towards Ukrainians has been changing, and not always positive, sympathetic attitudes have outweighed the negative ones. The long-term perspective shows a general improvement in this regard when compared to the beginning of the 21st century, when almost 60 per cent of Poles declared negative attitudes towards Ukrainians and only 16 per cent declared positive ones. In fact, one can argue that the invasion led to a situation where Polish-Ukrainian disputes over common history have become marginalised. No mainstream political party plays the anti-Ukrainian card since it would most likely not find any support among the broader public. This does not mean there were no attempts to stoke anti-Ukrainian sentiment and it would be a miscalculation to expect that these kinds of tensions could not re-emerge sometime after the war.

The lesser-known Other

The reaction of Polish society to the refugee influx came as a surprise to the world and helped create a positive image of a country open to others. In a public speech in May this year, the US ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, called Poland a “humanitarian superpower”. This posture stands in harsh contrast to what happened at the Polish-Belarusian border in 2021. Back then, Poland was a victim of an artificial refugee crisis engineered by the President of Belarus Alyaksandr Lukashenka. For several weeks, the Belarusian public services and military were transporting people to Belarus from many remote places in the Middle East and Africa, and afterward sending them to the borderland with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Although one may not compare the Belarusian-provoked crisis to what is happening now due to the war in Ukraine, back then the general unwillingness of the Polish authorities to support those people who found themselves in very harsh conditions in the forests on the borderland (many of them ultimately died), was met with a broader social apathy. Only a few civil society groups and activists such as Grupa Granica have been organising help for these people crossing the border.

From a moral point of view, it was difficult to find a justification for such indifference even if there was a general awareness of the political aspect of this crisis, which was defined as a threat to national security. It is also noteworthy that the Polish government’s subsequent decision to build a fence on the border with Belarus and push back the migrants, found full backing from the EU side.

A similar reluctance to host refugees was also present during the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe. Poland, alongside other Central European states and the Baltic republics, was in opposition to letting the newcomers into Europe. At that time, a dominant factor was fear or indifference expressed towards people of a different religion (mainly Muslims). As a result, many people and the Polish government supported the idea of hosting only Christians from outside of Europe.

The long-term perspective

After 1945 Poland found itself in a situation of being a homogenous country. For decades an average Polish citizen has not been exposed to dense relations with people of different cultures. If they were it was rather within the comfort zone of people from other satellite countries of the Soviet Union. Russia’s current war in Ukraine and the refugee crisis stemming from it, have the potential to become a transformational experience for Poland in its relations with the Other.

As the results of the last census show, the population of Poland in 2021 decreased by one per cent in comparison to 2011. What is more, there are almost two million people more in the 60/65+ age group and every fifth citizen is older than 60. In other words, Poland faces a demographic collapse and it is difficult to imagine that there will be no pressure from the job market to absorb more and more people from abroad each year. In the first half of 2022, the largest number of work permits was granted to Ukrainians (more than 75,000) but it was followed by countries like India, Uzbekistan, Belarus and the Philippines (in total between 10,000 and 15,000). In other words, the pool of people who are from countries with cultural proximity to Poland is limited and it is likely that more and more people from remote countries and cultures will be coming to Poland in the years to come.  

The fact that Ukrainians have been present in the Polish job market, academia and within Polish society as such for the last eight years has undoubtedly contributed to the manifestation of support and help towards Ukrainians arriving to Poland due to the invasion. The other factor is the general aversion (motivated also by a deeply rooted fear of domination) of Poles towards Russia, resulting in political solidarity with the countries which the Russian Federation wants to keep in its sphere of influence. Poland also supported Ukraine during the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-14 and the Orange Revolution in 2004, as well as Georgia in 2008.

At this point, it is still not clear what the dominant strategy of the Ukrainians who are now in Poland will be after the war eventually ends. One may assume that the majority of them will be willing to go back and contribute to the rebuilding and recovery efforts. On the other hand, it may occur that the level of destruction will inhibit a move to Ukraine and many people will find it more secure to stay in Poland.

If the number of Ukrainians remains at the current level, it means that the population of Poland will cross the threshold of 40 million and Ukrainians may account for five per cent of the Polish population. The majority of them will be people of working age, active in the job market. It will be a positive development for the Polish economy and a negative one for Ukraine, which may become a factor in Polish-Ukrainian relations in the future.

What is more, if the trend of the inflow of people from other countries (mainly Asian) increases, Poland might become a much more demographically diverse country in the next decade. Hopefully, the state and society will learn some lessons from recent refugee-related experiences (good and bad ones), and will translate them into a more mature migration policy towards others who are coming to Poland.

Maciej Makulski is a contributing editor with New Eastern Europe. The views expressed by the author are his own.

Poland, Polish aid, Polish response, Russia's war against Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees