Poland, a country of 38 million (counting citizens without guest workers), is already home to over one million Ukrainians. Most of them decided to emigrate after military conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when the currency value of the Ukrainian hryvnia plummeted and prices rose. [...]
In Poland, Anna earns around $400 and has also room and board. Thanks to this she is able to transfer most of her earnings to Lviv, where she left her husband and two daughters. According to estimates of the National Bank of Poland, only nine percent of Ukrainian migrants in Poland have no secondary or higher education, but as many as 70.7% perform physical labour.
“They say a Polish woman earns twice as much in my position,” estimates Anna. “But it’s difficult to negotiate if in half of the job offers you read ‘No Ukrainians’. Though I don't complain about my employers. They themselves have family abroad whom they are trying to help.” [...]
Ukrainians themselves are not eager to comment on the political changes in Poland. They try to be good sports, talking about cultural similarities and mutual understanding. Yulia, the woman who escaped from the gas station, underlines at the beginning of our conversation that she will talk with me only because I am writing for an English-language publication. She would prefer not to complain in Polish media — she doesn’t want Poles complaining about ungrateful and hostile Ukrainians. “And it needs no explaining,” Yulia says “who benefits from conflict between our nations.” She means, of course, Russian propaganda. [...]
In this sense, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość does not inflame anti-Ukrainian sentiments itself, but turns a blind eye. As xenophobic attacks are not condemned by the members of the ruling party, it creates conditions under which such hatred can thrive. And such incidents, as the Polish Ombudsman alarms, occur growingly often, even though Poles' attitude towards Ukrainians is, on the whole, much better than their sentiments towards Arabs or Roma people.
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