Some 48% of Ukrainians who visit Poland go there for the purpose of employment, according to the results of the sociological survey entitled “Poles and Ukrainians in Daily Contacts” conducted by the Polish company MASMI and the Ukrainian company InfoSapiens.
According to the survey, the majority of respondents from both countries – 79% of Poles and 48% of Ukrainians – indicated tourism as the main purpose of cross-border visits. The same number of Ukrainian respondents (48%) said they go to Poland to work, while 22% visited a neighboring state to see family or friends.
According to the study, the share of visits to Poland for employment has significantly increased compared to previous decades. So, in 2010, less than one third (29%) of Ukrainians visited the neighboring state with a work purpose, and in 2000 this figure was only 16%. The researchers note that such an increase in the number of work-related travel from Ukraine to Poland is a consequence of the economic situation in Ukraine, the visa-free regime introduced in 2017 and the simplification of Polish legislation on the employment of foreigners, making it easier for Ukrainians to obtain a work permit in Poland than elsewhere.
Only 5% of respondents who have been to this country cited education as the reason for their visit. At the same time, Ukraine is not a popular place to work or study for Poles. Only 13% of Polish respondents have been to Ukraine for a work purpose, and even fewer Poles (3%) came for reasons related to education.
In the whole, the study showed that significantly more Ukrainians travel to Poland than Poles to Ukraine. Thus, about 40% of Ukrainian respondents have visited Poland, while only 25% of the polled Poles have been to Ukraine. Also, contacts between Poles and Ukrainians have significantly intensified in recent years. A poll conducted by the Warsaw Institute of Public Affairs (ISP) in 2010 found that only 10% of Ukrainians visited Poland.
According to the survey, for Ukrainian respondents, such words such as “Poland” and “Poles” are closely related to the general idea of the need to work abroad in order to earn a living. A deeper analysis of these associations shows that Ukrainians regard Poland as a country providing such opportunities, while Poles are primarily viewed as employers.
Among the Polish respondents, associations with the word “Ukrainian” are even more closely related to the concept of migration and labor migrants, but in a different aspect: it is emphasized that such migration is a temporary phenomenon and associated with the economic difficulties of Ukrainians.
The organizers of the sociological study were the representative office of The Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Ukraine and Poland, Jan Nowak-Jezioranski College of Eastern Europe in Wroclaw, Foreign Policy Council Ukrainian Prism.
The study was conducted by the Polish company MASMI and the Ukrainian InfoSapiens in parallel in both countries in December 2020 using the online interview method (CAWI) with representative samples from Poland (1,051 respondents) and Ukraine (2,243 respondents).
