to stay or to go?

An extract from an article in The Guardian on May 6th 2007, outlined that half a million Polish people have left Poland to find jobs in the UK, since Poland joined the EU. The Guardian states that Poland has the highest unemployment of all 25 EU nations at 18%

However the Mayor of Wroclaw, Rafal Dutkiewicz is atempting to turn this trend around by attracting foriegn firms to the city, in order to reverse the "brain drain". Dutkiewicz wants his people back.'We are launching a poster campaign in clubs, pubs and other places popular with Polish people in London, telling them that Wroclaw needs them back,' says one of the mayor's deputies, Pawel Romaszkan.

Wroclaw is one of the biggest cities in Poland's so-called 'rust belt' and is home to the coal mines and steelworks that fuelled the economy in communist days. The free-market years have brought little joy to an area blighted by pollution and unemployment.

Locals blame decades of environmental neglect for high rates of cancer and respiratory diseases in the region and deride the government for failing the 200,000 miners who lost their jobs during pit closures in the 1990s.

Poles are stoic about the need to travel to find work and, unlike millions of other migrant workers, in Britain they are just a two-hour budget flight from home. They scorn France's demonisation of the 'Polish plumber', who came to embody the country's fears that EU expansion would create cheap labour to erode the security of French jobs. But the flow of migrant labour is inexorable. As Wroclaw calls its people home, Ukrainians are already filling the city's 'grey economy' jobs in building and cleaning.

But Gondek, Romaszkan and the rest of Mayor Dutkiewicz's team face some angry reaction from emigrants to the 'come home' campaign. 'They're being very sarcastic about it and some are furious,' says Ania Heasley, the 39-year-old behind the aniaspoland.com website for Poles in Britain. They're bitter because they've been looking really hard for work abroad for two years and now Poland suddenly wants them back. They wonder where Poland was when they needed a job at home, and why Poland couldn't stop them leaving in the first place.'

As Tomek watches his girlfriend's plane take off, he is already planning his next trip. 'I'll find a nice place for the two of us and we'll make some money. There's no point staying here. Of course, it's hard to leave home and it's tough for the ones you leave behind,' he says, looking out at the runway. 'Family is family - but money is money.'