Informal Practices, Unemployment, and Migration in Small-Town Poland

The article applies a livelihood strategy approach to understanding how potential migrants in Poland make decisions about finding employment in Poland or abroad, in the context of a Polish labour market characterised by the highest incidence of temporary employment in the EU; regional economic inequality; and local pockets of high unemployment. More specifically, it examines the situation and perspectives of long-term unemployed people in depressed small towns and rural areas. It explores how—in the view of forty interviewees—informal practices influence their lives and prospects. It is well known that unemployment can lead to migration, but not all unemployed people migrate, begging the question of why and when do they do migrate. The article, based on a small sample, cannot provide definitive answers to such questions, but detailed interviews about individual livelihoods can establish some patterns of causation: for example, whether and why interviewees see migration as preferable to informal work in Poland. Interviewees tended to attribute their lack of employment in Poland to not having useful connections who could secure them “decent” work; they felt they were being pushed abroad because the only alternative was local jobs which were informal in the sense of being in breach of labour law. By contrast, many interviewees had more useful contacts abroad than at home; networks represented both escape routes and opportunities. Interviewees often expressed a preference for using informal channels to migrate, though their stories also illustrated the riskiness of depending on networks