Poland was commended for welcoming over a million Ukrainians fleeing war

Poland’s support for Ukrainian refugees often gets portrayed as a success story. Key to this was the creation of the ‘special law’ (specustawa). Enacted just weeks after the war broke out in February 2022, this extraordinary piece of legislation granted all Ukrainian refugees immediate access to the labour market.

The special law led to an impressively high rate of employment among newcomers. It allowed refugees to start their new lives in Poland without many of the barriers present in other EU countries. Yet behind this seemingly open-door policy lies a far more complex reality. Challenges in the recognition of qualifications, high numbers of people employed far below their skill levels, and precarious working conditions – all on a wide scale – have amounted to significant structural barriers and underemployment for Ukrainians in Poland.

For many refugees, what began as an open door has morphed into a glass ceiling. As the war has become protracted, Poland has exposed its limited appetite for integration measures that would offer Ukrainians truly long-term protection and prospect. Instead, anti-refugee sentiment is on the rise and prolonged precarity has become a norm. This is not only bad for Ukrainian refugees, but also a missed opportunity for Poland.

A labour market primed to accept newcomers

Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland was operating one of the most progressive systems for labour market access among foreigners in Europe. Known as the ‘declaration procedure’, this mechanism allows citizens of certain countries, including Ukraine, to work legally based on a simple declaration of employment submitted by the employer to the local labour office. This simplified path to employment has helped turn Poland into one of the leading destinations for labour migration in the EU.

So, when Ukrainian refugees – most of them women and children – crossed into Poland after February 2022, they entered a country willing to receive (certain) foreign workers and with a pre-existing Ukrainian community.

Long-term temporariness and the care duties of Ukrainian mothers has undermined the surface-level potential of the special law

These two groups of Ukrainian migrants – those who arrived before, and those who arrived after the war began – are similarly sized, with just over a million in each group. They are also similarly educated – the share of post-2022 arrivals with higher education is only a few percentage points greater than for those who arrived earlier.

But two main differences between these groups stand out. Pre-war migrants generally came to work temporarily in Poland and maintained ties with Ukraine. They also showed a relatively even gender split: 54% women and 46% men. War-time refugees, in contrast, are 76% women and 24% men. They arrived with children or elderly relatives in need of care, fleeing immediate danger and their length of stay uncertain.

Both groups could access the labour market, but these socioeconomic differences have led to different outcomes. Ukrainian female heads of households have particularly struggled. Despite work rights, their care duties have proven to be a severe disadvantage. Research from the National Bank of Poland shows that refugees with children faced a higher risk of unemployment, especially those with more than one child.

For pre-war migrants, family circumstances have had a far smaller impact on economic activity. This is because far fewer had brought their children with them, and those who did generally also came with partners – so are now more able to share care duties than those who arriving effectively as single parents.

Doors wide open

The special law didn’t happen in a vacuum. In response to high numbers of Ukrainians fleeing the conflict after February 2022, the European Council activated the Temporary Protection Mechanism for the first time in its history. This afforded refugees residency, employment and social security rights in member states.

Poland implemented this directive and went a step further by enacting its own legislation, the Act on Assistance to Citizens of Ukraine in Connection with the Armed Conflict on the Territory of that Country (the special law). This law was exceptionally liberal: any person who legally entered Poland from Ukraine after 24 February 2022 was granted a national ID number, access to healthcare and social benefits, and, crucially, an expedited right to work under conditions nearly identical to those of Polish citizens.

The effects were immediate. Reports from 2022 and 2024 show that employment rates among Ukrainian refugees quickly reached around 65%, and among working-age women, even exceeded 80% – one of the highest such figures in Europe.

But the Temporary Protection Mechanism and the special law were originally designed as short-term emergency measures. Both have been repeatedly extended, but never to the point of offering a chance at long-term integration. This temporariness translates into job insecurity (e.g. employers were not able to sign contracts longer than the duration of the protection) and little incentive for professional development. This, like the care duties of Ukrainian mothers, has undermined the surface-level potential of the special law.

The underemployment problem

This brings us to the heart of the issue. While the system made it relatively easy for Ukrainian refugees to find some form of employment, it has proven largely ineffective in helping them find stable work that matches their qualifications.

A recent report by the Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE), a Polish research institute, details the lengthy and expensive process for recognising foreign credentials in Poland – which can take over a year and cost hundreds of pounds. It brings forward testimonies of refugee professionals – teachers, doctors, nurses – who struggle to navigate inconsistent procedures, limited information, and language barriers, often rendering years of education irrelevant to the Polish labour market.

Migrants are welcomed into the economy, yet excluded from the national narrative of belonging

The process is particularly challenging for medical professionals, who are required to complete several months of unpaid internships before their qualifications are recognised and they are allowed to practice. This barrier holds even for people who have previously worked in the Polish healthcare system under temporary permits.

Compounding the issue are fundamental mismatches between educational systems. Certain Ukrainian degrees have no direct equivalent in the Polish framework, blocking recognition from the outset. The need for official translations of documents further drives up costs and prolongs the process of accessing the type of work that someone has trained to do.

As a result, a significant proportion of Ukrainian refugees work in jobs well below their skill levels. According to analyses by the National Bank of Poland, the EWL Migration Platform, and the Polish Economic Institute, between 40% and 70% of working refugees are underemployed. Doctors become caregivers, engineers take up factory work, and accountants end up waiting tables.

Domestic work as a precarity trap

A significant number of Ukrainian refugee women – perhaps as many as 100,000 – work in domestic and care work. Many of these women are qualified for work in other sectors, but can’t access that work because their qualifications are unrecognised. The flexible hours and promises of quick, often same-day payments make domestic and care work one of the few accessible options for refugee women with family caregiving responsibilities.

The sector operates predominantly in the informal economy, with little regulation. Our recent research shows that domestic and care workers are often employed without a contract, legal protections, or access to social security. Workers are excluded from paid sick leave, holidays or pension plans.

GettyImages-1245561821 — UNHCR representatives offer support at a job fair for Ukrainian refugees in Krakow, Poland, in December 2022 | Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images. All rights reserved

This informality creates high vulnerability to exploitation. Employers can unilaterally change conditions, increase workloads or delay payments, knowing that the worker lacks ways to assert her rights. As one employer in our study bluntly admitted: “they are not informed of any rights because they have no rights. If I were just ‘a wheeler‑dealer’, I could tell her to clean up everything with a toothbrush and then not pay her.”

Furthermore, the private, isolated setting of domestic work can intensify social disconnection, cutting workers off from support networks and making it harder to seek help. What initially emerges as a survival strategy can thus become a long-term precarity trap.

A political climate hostile to long-term support

Removing structural barriers to employment and integration should be a clear priority – particularly given the evident contributions that newly arrived Ukrainian refugees can make to the Polish economy. Unfortunately, Poland seems to be going in the opposite direction. It’s centre-right government has largely continued the anti-immigration rhetoric of its predecessors, and the rise in support for far-right parties has led to political inaction and, at times, overt hostility to refugees and migrants.

This tension lies at the heart of Poland’s migration paradox. On one hand, Polish governments – across the political spectrum – have embraced liberal labour market instruments that facilitate the employment of foreign workers, particularly from neighbouring countries like Ukraine. The declaration system, in place since 2006, and the post-2022 special law were both driven primarily by economic pragmatism: employers, especially in sectors like agriculture, logistics, and care, urgently needed migrant labour, and the state responded accordingly.

On the other hand, this policy openness has coexisted with consistently sceptical or outright hostile political discourse about migration – especially non-European migration – which is often leveraged for domestic electoral gain. While the legal frameworks remain open, they are rarely accompanied by comprehensive integration policies. This creates a situation where migrants are simultaneously needed and instrumentalised, welcomed into the economy yet excluded from the national narrative of belonging.

That hostility has coincided with a decline in public support for refugees, which was high in the initial phase of the war. Recent opinion polls show a noticeable cooling of attitudes towards long-term assistance for Ukrainians. The political shift stands in sharp contrast to hard economic data, which shows that Ukrainian refugees contribute significantly more to Poland’s tax and social insurance systems than they receive in benefits.

Poland threw its doors wide open, but failed to build the structures necessary for long-term progression

Despite clear evidence of refugees’ net positive contribution to the Polish economy, the dominant narrative in public discourse increasingly portrays them as a burden. Integration programmes have become political bargaining chips, often threatened not by formal repeal but by neglect, delay, or withdrawal under pressure.

One striking example was the proposal – raised during the 2025 presidential campaign by both a winning far-right candidate and his main liberal contender – to limit access to Poland’s flagship child benefit programme “800+” for Ukrainian families, allowing eligibility only for working parents. This condition, notably, does not apply to Polish citizens.

Other services for migrants have faced similar forms of quiet erosion. While the Ministry of Education ultimately retained a dedicated support programme for migrant children in schools, work on its continuation was temporarily frozen in early 2025, raising fears of cancellation. Meanwhile, plans for a nationwide network of migrant integration centres – initially supported by the Ministry of the Interior – have faltered at the local level. One by one, county administrations have opted out of hosting these centres, citing limited funding, administrative burden, and public resistance shaped by prevailing political narratives.

Poland needs to go further

Poland’s liberal policy of labour market access for Ukrainian refugees offered a crucial opportunity for rapid economic inclusion. But structural barriers – particularly in qualification recognition, language training, and access to stable employment – have undermined its potential from the start. Without systemic reforms in these areas, as well as in the provision of tailored institutional support and anti-discrimination efforts, the early momentum risks stalling or even reversing.

Systemic reform would mean more than maintaining legal access. It would require simplifying the complex and costly recognition of foreign qualifications, ensuring free and accessible Polish language instruction, and embedding migrant integration services into public institutions. Local labour offices, for example, should offer vocational counselling and legal assistance adapted to the needs of displaced workers. Some of these efforts have been piloted by civil society actors, but remain fragmented and underfunded without long-term government backing.

Many refugees who eagerly entered the Polish workforce have encountered a glass ceiling. A system that threw its doors wide open failed to build the structures necessary for long-term progression. Without the political will to address these structural shortcomings, the positive outcomes of an open labour market risk being undone—and the potential of hundreds of thousands of skilled and motivated individuals may be permanently lost.

Yet this is not a uniquely Polish dilemma. Across Europe and beyond, governments often respond generously to crises with temporary protection schemes, but falter when it comes to enabling lasting integration. Initial solidarity is replaced by austerity debates, political ambivalence, and policies that maintain a state of managed impermanence. Poland is now at that crossroads. Whether it treats Ukrainian displacement as a passing emergency or as a long-term social reality will shape not only refugee futures – but its own economic and social cohesion for years to come.