Emigration of Poles to the United Kingdom: history,present state and future prospects

The history of Polish immigration within the United Kingdom is several centuries old. Yet never in its history was such a mass migration as that after the Polish accession to the EU in 2004. During the over ten years that followed, almost a million Poles chose to settle in the United Kingdom. This article reviews and analyses past and present Polish emigration to the United Kingdom. It provides answers to questions regarding who the Polish immigrants are, what work they perform and how they have integrated within British society. It also considers the factors that have influenced the future dynamics of migration from Poland. Based on these, we have formed the hypothesis that while the years of 2004‐2016 saw, statistically, the largest emigration from Poland to the United Kingdom in recorded history, in the future, the number of Polish expatriates living in the United Kingdom will drop or at least the number of newcomers will decrease.