Peripheralisation of Migrant Workforce in Poland: Inbetween Policy Paths and Regulatory Approaches

Migration of people is a multidimensional phenomenon that combines various aspects. Complexity of migration processes, its variability in time, diversity of economic, demographic, political or cultural determinants pose considerable challenges on the European labour market on many levels, starting from theoretical ones-related to the adoption of a uniform definition of migrant workers, and ending with the practical ones-relating to the establishment of the sustainable migration policy measures that would aim at safeguarding their fully-fledged participation in it guaranteed by various regulatory norms and standards. The article aims at presenting a rudimentary analysis of the specificity of labour migration in Poland against the background of European countries, in order to elucidate the deficiencies of the present regulatory approaches in addressing the phenomenon of sui generis peripherilization of migrant workforce in Poland. Its content has been enriched with comparative overview of the results of the case studies conducted in one of the key sectors for European labour market exposed to this phenomenon-namely pork meat value chain. Notably, problems related to wage levels and working conditions of migrant workers observed in this sector are as much industry-specific, as exemplary of wider global trends in industries that offer low pay, low status, little career advancement and stressful work environment.