Introduction

The systemic shift in Poland after 1989 generated great transformations in the spatial mobility of people: outside, towards, and within Polish borders. Migratory movements – i.e. both emigrations and immigrations – adapt to the social, political, and economic changes taking place globally as well as more locally; they illustrate migratory phenomena heretofore unknown or barely noticeable. Still, although Poland continues to be primarily an outflow territory, female migrants from this and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe are shaping new forms and patterns of mobility. These include irregular or circular migrations, or rotational systems of work; women are also taking up predetermined types of jobs in receiving states like Italy or Spain (Metz-Goeckel, Morokvasic and Muenst 2008).

After the shift to democracy and capitalism, Poland became part of a new European migration system in which values, norms, and rules exist in reference to population flows. The mobility is shaped by historical, political, cultural, and geographical factors, but also by situational factors such as sudden events. On the other hand, the migration policy model being created in Poland is influenced by the fall of communism and the process of European integration. The very fact of accession and necessity to implement acquis communautaires, including regulations of the Schengen treaty, implied that work and debates on Polish migration legislation were, to a large extent, a derivative of the process of integration with the EU (Iglicka, Kaźmierkiewicz and Mazur-Rafał 2003, p. 22).