Both qualitative and quantitative research articles would be of my interest. If not for Polish, other eastern European migrant groups as Lithuanian, Hungarian, Slovakian and so forth would be welcome. Preferably in Irish and UK context (Western Europe as well).
Our immigration waves in the US are still being updated by author Joseph Healey, who does not seem to do comparative with other countries. I also have never seen yet the emigration patterns from Poland at World War II over through Europe (e.g., southeastern Italy) and then to the US.
Our primary concerns have been ethnic minorities in disability groups who may be ignored (e.g., King's Fund in the UK). For myself, the constant racial category lumping of "white or caucasian" (both East and Western Europeans, Canadians, etc..) compared to Asian, Hispanic or Latino, Native Americans and Aleutians, and Black or "African" Americans is usually derogatory.
Try to get in contact with Bryan Fanning at University College Dublin ([email protected]). He is the expert on migration to Ireland and has close contacts with the Polish community. Best wishes. AH
I studied migration theoretically, but I have never addressed the question of migration to Ireland. Statistics is easy for cumulative migration to Ireland from EU. There is changing pattern of overall migration to Ireland, in 2010-2012 net migration became negative; see
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/nirsa/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/WP69_The_changing_face_of_Irish_migration_2000_2012.pdf
The exact data from Poland and Lithuania I found just at forum: http://www.politics.ie/forum/current-affairs/6886-immigration-eastern-europe-ireland.html . It looks like a stylized fact but few academics stress such facts in research. Here one may find that (it was 2006)
" The Republic of Ireland, with a population of 4 million, has had about 200,000 people apply to work here from the 10 new EU states as follows:
Poland: 116,206
Lithuania: 35,497
Latvia: 17,988
Slovakia: 16,951
Czech Republic: 8,885
Hungary: 6,061
Estonia: 4,045
Slovenia: 165
Malta: 295
Cyprus: 52'
I would ask myself a question: why from Poland and Lithuania to Ireland and not elsewhere? Probably part of the answer would be in easiness of law. But then, why not from other similar countries? I also suspect some chain effect, when people create network of friends and relatives who advice where to go and pull more to the country with diaspora. I have theoretical paper with C. Helmenstein in JEDC (2000) about that (also on RG), look at p.4 for
"The dynamics of migration in the presence of chains".
Now, after crisis in Ireland, some people are moving back. Where would Polish go, probably depends also on dynamics of laws and chain effect.