THE POST-ACCESSION MIGRATION OF POLES - CONTINUITY OR CHANGE? (Poakcesyjne migracje Polakow - ciaglosc czy zmiana?)

The day of becoming one of the European Union Member States appeared as a key moment in developing migration processes in Poland. Obviously, it is the magnitude of the outflow that population of Poland is experiencing since that moment, that makes this emigration unique. However, as Grabowska-Lusinska&Okolski (2009) show, it is also its structure. Grabowska-Lusinska&Okolski proved that the key factor of post-accession change in migration processes was opening of British and Irish labour markets for New Member States workers. In this paper we are trying to examine if the 'late' post-accession period (2007-2009) brought a similar change, as during these years 10 EU Member States allowed Poles to access their labour markets without any restrictions. By using a synthetic measure of selectivity index (Cieslak 1992: 252) we show that the structure of emigration in the 'late' post-accession period seems to stay unchanged, even though there are some premises that the opposite holds true.