Poland’s immigrants go against the flow
about 7,000 EU citizens moving to Poland in a given year, but the data are not very sound because migrants are not required to register with Polish authorities, said Krystyna Iglicka, a demographer with Warsaw’s Centre for International Relations, a think-tank.
By Jan Cienski in Wroclaw
The troubles in the eurozone periphery are reversing the flow of migrants in Europe. If Poland was known just a few years ago for huge outflows of workers, now Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians are being tempted east.
“My home is here now – I think of Portugal mainly in terms of eventually retiring by the sea,” says Hugo Varzielas, 33, a native of Portugal now working as a business analyst for HP’s Global Business outsourcing centre in the western Polish city of Wroclaw.
Mr Varzielas is not alone. As many as 10 per cent of the 100,000 people now working in the outsourcing sector are foreign nationals, according to Jacek Levernes, head of the association of Business Leaders in Poland, a lobby group representing the fast-growing sector. Poland’s outsourcing industry is expected to expand by about 20 per cent this year.“If you look at the long term in Poland it’s going up, up, up, while the other countries of western Europe not so much,” he says.
Official statistics show about 7,000 EU citizens moving to Poland in a given year, but the data are not very sound because migrants are not required to register with Polish authorities, said Krystyna Iglicka, a demographer with Warsaw’s Centre for International Relations, a think-tank.
“This is an invisible flow based on anecdotal evidence, but there is no doubt that such a flow exists,” she said. “We can assume that the trend will strengthen, although of course it does not compare in size to the outflow of Poles.”
The reason they are coming is Poland’s relatively strong economy. It was the only EU member to dodge recession in 2009. Now, despite a sharp slowdown, the economy is still eking out growth of about 2 per cent, far better than in the troubled fringes of the eurozone.
Although unemployment is at 14.2 per cent, a six-year high, it is much lower in large cities – the kinds of places that are drawing growing numbers of investors building back-office and outsourcing centres, as well as language schools and other businesses that attract skilled foreigners.
“A lot of Italians are still looking to move to the classic nations like Germany, England, Switzerland and France, but fewer people are aware of how Poland is growing,” says Flavio D’Amato, a 29-year-old Italian with long hair and sunglasses tucked into the neck of his shirt. He spent five years working at a call-centre in Italy before leaving for Poland in 2009.
“Here I am building my CV and maybe I’ll go home in 10 to 15 years, but with the current situation that’s pretty hard to imagine.”
In the 1990s, a wave of west-European expatriates helped Poland’s transition to a market economy. They brought the expertise needed to set up modern banks, shops and factories and even advised the government on economic reforms and the creation of the stock market.
But the era of French executives running supermarkets or Germans overseeing production lines – all on expensive foreign contracts – has largely ended. The new workers are coming for Polish pay, which for outsourcing workers varies from 6,000 zlotys ($1,900, €1,450) to 9,000 zlotys a month.
“They get less than they would at home, but that’s assuming they could find work back home,” says Wieslaw Blysz, vice-president of marketing at REC Global, a software firm that is eagerly hunting for programmers for its Wroclaw office. He is seeing an increasing number of résumés coming from countries like Spain.
Przemyslaw Berendt, vice-president with Luxoft, a financial software maker, estimates that about a fifth of his workforce is foreign.
“Our target hire is a well qualified 25-year-old,” he says. “In Spain there is 50 per cent unemployment for people like that, while here they can get work immediately – and the ability to speak Spanish is in demand as well.”
That is why Cesar Tascon, a 27-year-old from Spain, is in Wroclaw for HP.
“I have a good job and right now is a good time to be abroad,” he says. “There are more and more companies setting up in Wroclaw, so there are a lot of opportunities here.”
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