Contemporary Mass Economic Migration from Poland to Greece

Abstract

Mass migration from Poland to Greece started by political immigration in the eighties has been continued till now by economic migration. The former was illegal according to the Polish authorities of that time, the latter is illegal according to the Greek authorities. On the whole political immigrants from Poland emigrated further to overseas settlement countries, but they left behind several institutions, which laid the base for today’s economic migration and until now have been serving already illegal Polish migrants. These have been: Polish language weeklies, the Polish Club and primary school. Present day illegal economic migration from Poland to Greece consists of : seasonal work migration and work migration for the unlimited period of time. Both types of migrants are false tourists who come to Greece with a short-time tourist visa. Due to the lack of other opportunities all of them work in Greece illegally, it is associated with the threat of immediate expulsion. On the basis of the analysed documents about Polish illegal migrants we can say that s/he is a qualified worker or secondary vocational school graduate, is young, comes from southern or eastern regions of Poland from small or medium-sized provincial towns, migrating very often in the company of friends from the same place or neighbouring areas. The flow of undocumented workers is to a large extent due to the very high unemployment in Poland and to the already occurring chain migration from certain places and regions of Poland.