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U.S. Economy and Transatlantic Relations Institute at Lazarski University

43 Swieradowska Str.
02-662 Warsaw
Poland

Phone: +48 22 54 35 325
Phone: +48 22 54 35 326

e-mail: us.institute@lazarski.edu.pl

CENTER FOR DEMOGRAPHY AND MIGRATIONS

Center for Demography and Migration, founded in June 2008 at the initiative of Professor Krystyna Iglicka, aims to initiate debate on demographic issues. These issues are of crucial importance to Poland, Europe and transatlantic relations and will be discussed at conferences, seminars and academic and political reports – organized and published by the Center.

More information about Professor Krystyna Iglicka and the Center’s staff available on: STAFF

LATEST PUBLICATIONS

The latest monograph by Professor. Krystyna Iglicka – Okolski “Returns of Poles after 2004.The loop traps of Migration” has been appeared from Scientific Publishing House Scholar.

“The book is an extremely valuable study of the cognitive study of return, set on the axis of demographics and political-economy. Taken innovative proposals for solutions in the context of emigration analyzed the comprehensive management of this phenomenon.

Very inspiring are author’s empirical findings, as a result of original research, which shows us the wide range of emerging themes exit, decisions, migration and professional life on the socioeconomic background of the return situations … ‘(with Prof. reviews. PhD. Krystyna Slany, Jagiellonian University).

The book “Kontrasty migracyjne Polski. Wymiar transatlantycki” (”Polish migration contrasts. Transatlantic Dimension”) is one of the top publications by Krystyna Iglicka, Ph.D.

SUMMARY

This book is a testimony of a period of important geopolitical changes and modernization, and of the accompanying deep transformations, both quantitative and qualitative in their nature, in the area of international mobility as perceived in its transatlantic, European (EU), and Polish dimension.
The author, basing on the analysis of the strategies for the migration policies of two countries: the USA and Great Britain, both of which are united by the transatlantic idea and cooperation, seeks and answer to the fundamental question about the factors underlying a state’s decision not to spare efforts and initiate the required changes in its migration policy. On both the sides of the Atlantic there are countries with a similarly long history of being immigrant-receiving territories and with a similar culture in this context. Both of them have worked on effective mechanisms to absorb migrant labour force for years, in both of them there are migration channels that have stood the test of time, and both of them have a strong tradition of receiving and accepting migrants.
The attempt at reforming the American migration law by the administration of George W. Bush in the years 2004-2007, and the opening of the British labour market to migrants from the new Member Countries by the government of Tony Blair in 2004 constitute the fundamental changes leading towards the liberalization of the migration policies in both the countries: either with regard to visas (the USA) or as regards the legal job migration management (Great Britain, and a failed attempt on the part of the USA), or a radical change in the traditional flow directions (Great Britain).
Great Britain’s active and liberal migration policies in the area of job migration which had led to a mass job migration from Poland met with a response on the part of Poland which amended its own immigration law. The changes resulted in a gradual but quick liberalization of the rules governing the access of migrant workers from the eastern neighbouring countries to the Polish labour market. The restrictive policies of the USA towards legal migration from Poland, in combination with the liberalization of the relevant policies on the part of Great Britain, Ireland, or Sweden, have resulted, to a considerable degree, in a decrease in the historically and emotionally positive attitudes towards the USA, and, in consequence, to a fall of the American myth as a job and settlement migration destination in the eyes of young Poles.

Professor Dorota Praszałowicz, Ph.D., writes in her editorial review:
“From the first sentence, the work (…) introduces the reader into the world of remarkable observations and apposite statements on the mechanisms of contemporary immigration processes. (…) There is also basic information about the comparative studies on Polish migration to the United States and Great Britain, the results of which are discussed in the subsequent parts of the work. The use of a comparative analysis, both in a diachronic and synchronous dimensions, is  especially worthy noticing. There are absolutely too few such analyses in the field of migration studies. And these are ones that enable general theses on regularities of immigration flows to be proposed. (…)The comparison of the old and new destination countries of the Polish economic immigration turns out to be right on target. It meets a postulate suggested by Frank Thistlethwaite, one of the migration research classics, half a century ago, to tear off a curtain of salty water and analyze migration from both the American and the European perspective.”