Paweł Kaczmarczyk Joanna Tyrowicz BULLETIN No. 3 January 2008

Transcription

1 Polish Seasonal Migration to Germany Paweł Kaczmarczyk Joanna Tyrowicz BULLETIN No. 3 January 2008

2 Foundation for Social and Economic Initiatives Warsaw, January 2008 Print run: 20 Graphic design: Frycz Wicha Layout: Mirosław Piekutowski Translation: Christopher Smith All rights reserved. Reprinting or reproduction in any form of all or part of this Bulletin without written consent of the Foundation for Social and Economic Initiatives is prohibited.

3 Polish Seasonal Migration to Germany Paweł Kaczmarczyk Joanna Tyrowicz

4 BULLETIN No. 3 Why seasonal migration? The challenges of the contemporary world, particularly transformations on the labour market, cause many countries to seek workers from abroad. One of the most common forms of these searches is bilateral agreements between the governments of the interested countries covering issues of recruitment, influx and stay of employee immigrants. Treaties of this type began to appear on a broad scale in the 1950s and concerned not only Western European countries, but also the United States, Canada and Asian countries. It is estimated that in 2004, there were more than 170 treaties in force among OECD member states governing rules for recruitment of foreign workers. The number of these treaties grew drastically in the early 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the opening of Eastern Bloc countries, and also at the end of the decade, when the countries of Southern Europe began intensely searching for foreign workers. Regulations addressing the procedure and rules for seasonal migrations play an important role on this migration map, particularly when we examine the numerical extent of the phenomenon. They cover short-term migrations typically lasting from three months to one year, and are closely tied to sectors with a clear seasonal variation in production and employment, such as agriculture, construction and food service. The treaty between the Polish and German governments, under which some 200,000 to 300,000 workers migrated annually during the 1990s and the early years of the current decade, is considered to be a spectacular example of this type of regulation. By comparison, another of the programmes considered very effective, with Canada, involves about 15,000 to 20,000 workers annually, and in the case of France the figure is fewer than 10,000 seasonal workers per year. Seasonal departures are significant not only in terms of the goals and interests of countries who are inviting the workers. We will attempt to demonstrate their significance also for the Polish labour market, for the migrants themselves and for their families. Seasonal migration origin and scale of the phenomenon Alongside the United States, Germany has traditionally been the important country for emigration by Poles. Because of geographical proximity and social and political ties, it became the destination for large-scale migration by Poles in the 19th century. Short-term seasonal departures were also traditionally one of the most important forms of migration to Germany; departures for Saxony in particular became proverbial. Germany has made use of a foreign workforce on a large scale since the end of the 19th century. These actions intensified following World War II, when economic growth required a huge influx of workers. The Gastarbeiting ( guest worker ) system created in the 1950s was one of the most significant elements that enabled the spectacular economic growth that returned Germany to the circle of the world s most highly developed countries. The economic crisis of the 1970s, as well as social issues connected with the increasingly numerous presence of foreigners (making up more than 10% of the resources of the labour force at that time), led Germany to suspend halt the recruitment action, and soon it announced that it was not a country of immigration, which in turn led to introduction of rigorous controls over entry into the country and hiring of foreigners. Thus, in theory, even down to the present day and despite Poland s membership in the European Union, the opportunities for legal employment in Germany for Poles are very restricted. Administrative barriers to migration opportunities did not change the fact that the German economy suffers from serious labour shortages, and employment of foreigners appears to be an important factor for economic growth, particular in sectors in which native workers do not show much interest. It was in this situation, in the early 1990s, that certain exceptional regulations were introduced which would allow a selective and tightly controlled influx of immigrant workers onto the German labour market. One of the spectacular examples of these practices is the programme for seasonal employment of Poles carried out since

5 Migracje sezonowe Polaków do Niemiec What does it take to migrate seasonally to Germany? Under the programme guidelines, the recruitment procedure is very simple. A German employer interested in hiring workers from Poland notifies the German labour office of the need, and the labour office authorises the hiring and transmits it to Poland. On the Polish side, until recently recruitment was handled by the labour offices; if the need was not addressed to a specifically named worker, the labour offices published the employment offer and checked the candidates (until recently they also handled administrative servicing of the contracts, but now all the formalities are handled by the German labour offices). Where as often happens in practice the German employer files a notice of the need to hire a specific worker (whom the employer already knows or who was recommended by other workers), a contract needs to be signed. The costs of the procedure have always been very low, and moreover up until 2004, because of the brief period of employment, seasonal workers were not subject to mandatory social insurance. This changed when Poland joined the EU and it became necessary to extend Polish social insurance requirements to cover seasonal workers; now both the German employer and the employee are required to pay social insurance premiums. Since the beginning of the programme, seasonal migrations to Germany have enjoyed great popularity among Polish workers. Whereas in 1993 about 144,000 permits for seasonal employment were issued, in 1999 the figure exceeded 200,000, and the 2004 nearly 290,000 people took advantage of this form of employment. This indicates that as of Poland s accession to the EU, this was in all likelihood the most significant migration stream out of Poland, and the number of persons migrating seasonally to Germany may have been greater than all other migrations tracked by Polish statistical sources. By definition, seasonal employment can affect only a few sectors of the German economy. In practice, since the beginning of implementation of The December 1990 treaty between Poland and Germany provided several options for legal employment of Poles in Germany, including contract labour, employment at the border, employment of guest workers and so on. The features of the programme for seasonal employment are as follows: employment of seasonal workers involves short-term work lasting no longer than 3 months (with the exception of work in expositions, where the maximum employment period is 9 months); it is restricted to a few sectors, such as agriculture and forestry, hotels and restaurants; the worker s minimum age is 18; the German employer must issue an offer of employment; there are no numerical limits. the treaty, employment in agriculture and forestry has predominated; currently only 5% of seasonal workers are hired in other sectors of the German economy (chiefly in expositions and hotels). With seasonal labour generally tied to a single sector of the German economy, it may be expected that there would also be a strong geographical concentration. Indeed, more than three-fourths of all of the workers are employed in the states of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Lower Saxony, which are regions with traditions of an agricultural economy and also, significantly, with long traditions of labour migration from Poland. On the Polish side as well, a strong concentration of seasonal workers may be observed in certain regions of the country: in more than 28% of all offers were made in the Lower Silesia and Wielkopolska provinces, followed by seasonal workers originating in the Lubelskie and Świętokrzyskie provinces. The differences in intensity of migrations are clearly visible at the level of the townships (powiaty); in townships with the highest concentration of seasonal migrations, the number of departures per 1,000 residents was more than 60, while in townships where the interest in migration was less, the figure was less than 1 in 1,000 (see map). Moreover, the drastic differences in interest in seasonal work in Germany cannot be explained by the 5

6 BULLETIN No. 3 economic situation in the given region (such as the unemployment level), which means other factors must be sought to explain these differences. These facts will be discussed below. Seasonal migrations and the Polish labour market Seasonal departures for Germany feature many of the characteristics of contemporary emigration from Poland. There is a clear predominance of employment in agriculture and related sectors (more than 90% of all workers), and the work performed by the migrants is typically simple in nature and does not require qualifications most often it involves picking fruit or vegetables, sorting, or working in a warehouse. Firms employing seasonal migrants are chiefly small and medium-sized enterprises, producing on a small scale, chiefly on local and regional markets, and many of them are companies established or run by immigrants. There are many indications that this is employment in a sector on the fringes of the German labour market. Moreover, given the nature of the work, low prestige and wage levels, the jobs offered there are not attractive for native workers. The demographic profile of the migrants is typical: seasonal migrations to Germany are the domain of young or middle-aged people; the dominant age group is 20-39, and the average age at first departure is not quite 32. It should also be pointed out that compared to the Polish population and other migrant groups, there is a clear over-representation here of persons aged 30-49, which indicates that age is not a significant barrier to accessing this type of employment. Despite the guidelines for the seasonal migration programme recruitment of workers was supposed to be quite strictly controlled, with coordination and control vested in the labour offices in Poland and Germany seasonal achodniopomorskie Lubuskie Dolno l skie u awsko-pomorskie Wielkopolskie Pomorskie Opolskie Migrants as a percentage of the total working population dzkie l skie Warmi sko-mazurskie Ma opolskie Mazowieckie wi tokrzyskie Podlaskie Podkarpackie Lubelskie Unemployment rate (September 2001) employment is nonetheless based on informal mechanisms similar to those found in employment off the books : starting from the very early years when the treaty was first in force, there has been a predominance (over 90%) of named contracts, i.e. those addressed to specific people in Poland. Thus in 6

7 Migracje sezonowe Polaków do Niemiec practice access to seasonal labour is determined by whether a given person has friends or acquaintances who are working in Germany or have worked there before (or, to use the jargon of migration researchers, the prospective worker is a member of a migration network ). This mechanism is further reinforced by internal recruitment procedures; for example, the issue of recruitment for subsequent seasons is entrusted to Polish workers functioning as supervisors. On the other hand, the migrations represent, in many respects, a specific form of employment. First and foremost, until Poland joined the European Union and certain West- ern European labour markets were opened, this was one of the few opportunities to work legally beyond the western border. Even now, more than three years post-accession, Poles cannot freely work in Germany, which has maintained restrictions on the access of foreigners to its labour market; in practice, for the majority of Polish migrants, seasonal labour in Germany has been their only experience of working legally abroad. Despite migrants frequent recourse to the network of acquaintances, there is a chance to work in Germany based on the intermediation of the labour offices; thus in theory the seasonal employment program served as a kind of test of the functioning of a common labour market, and for the labour offices it was (or rather could have been) a test of their effectiveness in transferring knowledge about work abroad and allocating seasonal contracts on the Polish labour market. Finally, because of the formal requirements, seasonal employment is of a short-term nature, but also, as the studies show, cyclical; for many people, departures for seasonal work in Germany are repeated year after year, and even though they last only 2 or 3 months (the average duration of a contract is about 8 weeks), they allow income from work abroad to be included as a regular item in the household budget. Seasonal migrations are departures for simple work, not requiring any qualifications, chiefly in agriculture. Nonetheless, persons departing for Germany on the terms discussed above are characterised by a relatively high level of education. It appears from studies conducted among seasonal workers that more than 37% of the migrants had completed at least secondary school, and only 12% held only a primary school education or less. It should be noted that most of the migrants have already achieved a certain stage in their professional career in Poland, and only 10%, mostly young people, did not have permanent employment in Poland before their departure. Moreover, despite the assumption underlying the Polish-German programme that seasonal migrations would provide an opportunity to reduce the problem of unemployment in Poland, seasonal workers are not recruited just from among people who do not have a job in Poland. On the contrary, for a long time most of those going abroad for seasonal work had permanent work in Poland as of the time of their departure (over 50%), and it has only been since the late 1990s that the share of the unemployed or professionally inactive began to rise, including those who had never been employed (e.g. persons running a household). So what could account for the fact that an apparently unattractive form of employment (hard work, not requiring qualifications, and typically limited to 3 months of the year) would enjoy such a great response among the Poles? Out of the dozen or more treaties signed by Poland since the early 1990s, why is it that the arrangement with Germany in particular led to annual departures abroad by more than 200,000 people? The most important reasons: the 1990s represented a deterioration in the situation on many labour mar- kets in Europe, which was accompanied by a stepped-up fight against illegal immigration; thus, at the beginning of the systemic transformations in Poland, seasonal migration, as a legal form of employment, could appear to be a very attractive option for Polish migrants, who were generally deprived of other chances to work abroad legally; 7

8 BULLETIN No. 3 Polish employees met with great interest from the side of German employers; contemporary agriculture in Germany is to a large measure dependent on foreign labour, and the seasonal work programme has allowed the sector to survive despite increasing international competition; A A the procedure for seasonal employment proved to be very simple: no qualifications or certifications are required, it is possible to work abroad even without knowing German, travel costs are generally low, and living costs (room and board) are often covered by the employer; despite the fact that the wages paid to seasonal workers are relatively low by German standards, they still represent considerable purchasing power in Poland suffice it to say that the average savings set aside by workers departing in were about PLN 6,000 for an average of 8 weeks; seasonal migrants thus have an opportunity to contribute an amount to the household budget that is comparable to several months wages earned in Poland, for a stay abroad that typically lasts less than 2 full months; seasonal migrations are free of many of the negative features typical for most types of labour mobility: because of the relatively brief period abroad, the psychological and social costs associated with separation from family and friends are low, and many people are able to combine seasonal employment abroad with permanent employment in Poland this strategy was in fact adopted by a significant portion of the migrants. Seasonal migrations what next? A basic problem for persons departing for seasonal work abroad is that most often the decision is dictated by the lack of an alternative in Poland, or by a deeply rooted cultural pattern in a given family or local community. Thus, as a result of the inability to achieve sufficiently high earnings in Poland, people decide to take up temporary, unskilled but well-paying work abroad. In the view of the migrants themselves, migration functions as Plan B, a solution they would not have chosen if there were other options to earn money available. Although this obviously may be an optimal solution for some seasonal migrants, particularly when there is a serious downturn on the labour market in Poland, it is not a model which encourages the development of opportunities for growth for the local community, for at least two reasons. First, if departures for seasonal work abroad were to become a standard method for earning a living within a given household, it would lead to the full range of negative psychological and social effects of migration: living a kind of double life, professional passivity, and the breakdown of local communities. Second, it is a scenario in which the only available alternative for further generations is to repeat the model of seasonal departures or to leave the community for good and create a path for one s life development somewhere else. Given that diagnosis of the situation, it is clear that in order to prevent these problems from growing, it is necessary to take actions to encourage development of alternatives to seasonal migration. First, it is necessary to improve the quality of labour intermediation and professional and regional mobility within Poland, but it does not appear that labour market NGOs offer enough potential to take steps that would meet the need in this respect. The second line of action is to support entrepreneurial attitudes, including also popularising solutions involving social entrepreneurship. It is fundamental in this respect to create networks of existing (or newly established) loan funds with programmes directed to migrants and their families. The fact that support for development of such funds is found in most of the regional operational programmes also encourages fuller use of this solution. Components of the regional Operational Programme Human Capital provide many opportunities for creating programmes directed toward communities feeling the effects of migration. More importantly, their function should be modified to include the following elements: 8

9 Migracje sezonowe Polaków do Niemiec z active recruitment of undertakings and persons involved or participating in them (including, for example, supporting parishes and other local institutions such as rural home-makers clubs, rifle clubs, sports clubs and the like); the point is to show people already trapped in the scheme of regular departures for seasonal work that they really do have alternatives, and to provide substantive support in creating jobs for themselves and others; z substantive support must function for the entire period of development of newly established enterprises (it appears unlikely in this respect that one person would be able to support the development of a specific enterprise at all stages; some form of back-office is needed, a network of experts and advisors accessible by telephone or on-line, where the entrepreneur could make contact with specialists in specific fields); z promoting co-operativeness (among other things, enabling greater leveraging of one s own investment by reducing the individual contribution requirements depending on the number of people involved, with a possible bonus for undertakings creating by people from different households); z gradual release of further loan tranches, thus reinforcing ongoing commitment by migrants to creating such enterprises. A key challenge for loan funds in the context of encouraging returns is the issue of consultancy. Experiences working abroad, even below one s aspirations, can often be used to create firms providing services in Poland. This type of action is still not very popular or well-known, but over time has become more and more well-suited to the needs of the Polish consumer and the capabilities of local markets (e.g. elder care, catering services, fruit and vegetable processing, and so on). It is more important in this respect that specialized loan funds function in mutually committed networks, exchanging know-how involving best practices (which will provide support for individual advisors), while also establishing an experience bank for stakeholders in newly created enterprises. Conclusion Seasonal migrations are a phenomenon with a very specific nature. Departures chiefly affect small local communities, and are also highly concentrated. The work undertaken abroad rarely brings prestige, and in most instances it is simple, unskilled, hard physical labour (chiefly in agriculture and processing). Studies conducted among the migrants show that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the workers would not want to do the same work in Poland. The migrants decide to make this effort in order to improve the situation of their families, most often because there is a lack of available alternatives in the form of stable sources of income in Poland. At the same time, however, the income earned in this way, according to the studies, is more likely to lead to professional passivity of the families and the migrants themselves when they are in Poland than to provide an impetus to invest in undertakings which could create new jobs. If we do not begin to create alternative solutions in their own local communities making use of the potential of seasonal migrants, both they and their families will be condemned to continue the migrations. About the authors Paweł Kaczmarczyk Dr Paweł Kaczmarczyk is an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw in the Department of Demography, Faculty of Economics, and director of the Central European Centre for Economic Research. Since 1997 he has been a member of the Centre for Migration Research at the University of Warsaw. He is the author of numerous publications on labour migration and other issues related to the labour market. 9

10 BULLETIN No. 3 Joanna Tyrowicz Dr Joanna Tyrowicz is an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw in the Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics, and a research associate at the Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn. She has authored publications about the Polish labour market and the activities of NGOs in this area. She coauthored the analysis of EU programme documents for , including the ex-ante evaluation of Operational Programme Human Capital. She has cooperated with FISE since

11 Migracje sezonowe Polaków do Niemiec Seasonal migration balance sheet When making a migration decision, it is important to be aware of the costs and benefits involved in going abroad for work. Presented below are hypothetical (but highly likely) effects of seasonal migration, but alongside the consequences for the migrants and their families, the potential effects for the communities and regions from which the migrants hail are also presented. Consequences + Consequences FOR MIGRANTS AND THEIR FAMILIES The work is typically legal. There is work for everyone (no skills required). Low travel costs, simple procedures. Possibility to participate also in the Polish labour market. Low separation costs (departures for brief periods). Transfer of funds from abroad: supplementing the household budget or, potentially, financing investment activity. Work most often below the worker s qualifications. Lack of opportunities for professional advancement. Little chance to improve language abilities. Reduction of interest in a professional career in Poland. Growing depending by the household on periodic earnings from abroad. FOR THE LOCAL COMMUNITY Reduction of the scale of poverty. Influx of funds from abroad: potential investment activity, creation of new jobs. Temporary shortages of workers in the local community. Dependence on money coming in from abroad lack of stimuli to be active and unleash potential growth of business in Poland. Withdrawal (temporary or permanent) by seasonal workers from the Polish labour market pattern: work abroad and passivity on the Polish labour market.

12 This bulletin is one of a series published by the Foundation for Social and Economic Initiatives devoted to the issue of the labour market in Poland. Electronic editions of the bulletins may be found at the website Foundation for Social and Economic Initiatives (FISE) ul. Polna 24 lok. 7, Warsaw T: , -69, F: fise@fise.org.pl, http: Bulletin created under the Work in Poland programme A programme of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation Programme implemented by the Foundation for Social and Economic Initiatives