Crisis-Induced Changes in Migration Laws and Policies: Investigating the Impact of Crises on Migrant Workers and Forced Migrants in Poland

Crises are often considered to induce restrictive changes in migration laws and policies, and Poland was forced to respond to the plethora of crises in the recent years: from economic through health and socio-political to migration crises. Thus, this working paper seeks to identify a nexus between different crises and Polish migration laws and policies and aims at determining directions and target groups of the identified legal and policy changes prompted by those crises. For those purposes, Polish extensive legislation in the field of migration adopted in the period of 2008-2024 was scrutinized. The legal analysis was supplemented by the examination of the respective domestic policies. This investigation has shown that crises indeed altered migration laws and policies in Poland, albeit not all of them had such an impact. Majority of the analysed crises led to changes restrictive for third-country nationals; however, beneficial modifications were also identified. Interestingly, irrespective of the type of the crisis, the restrictions were implemented rather with regard to forced migrants than migrant workers.