Unit 5 topic 3

• International Migration


  Poland to the UK
• Ten countries admitted to the EU - Malta, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary


  1 April 2004
• Residents of those nations then had the right like all other EU citizens to move between the member states
• Eight of the ten countries

  • Significantly less wealthy than other countries within the EU
  • Poland had an unemployment rate of 18.5% in 2005 and youth unemployment was at 40%
• It was anticipated that once they joined the EU there would be large-scale migration of workers to the wealthier countries of the EU
• By July 2006 nearly 500,000 people from Eastern Europe had applied to work in the UK
• 62% of the 500,000 were from Poland
• In January 2016 before the UK voted to leave the EU there were an estimated 900,000 Polish nationals living in Britain
• Polish is the second most widely spoken language in the UK
• This international migration stream far exceeded the original predictions and had wide-ranging impacts, both in the donor country of Poland and the destination country of the UK