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The above two epigraphs pinpoint just how fundamentally Germany’s official discourse about (not) being a country of immigration has changed in the matter of only a decade. Then-Minister of Interior Wolfgang Schauble repeated the long-lived, common official understanding of German nationhood as not a country of immigration, as many other politicians have done. Despite Germany’s historical experience of receiving a large number of migrants in both the distant and more recent past (Bade 2000; Hoerder 2002), his statement reaffirmed the widespread discourse that Germany has formally maintained its stance of no new labour recruitment, the principle that has been in place since the ending of its guest-worker programme in the mid-1970s (Brubaker 1992; Pries 2012; Thranhardt 1992).

The migration journey of Rifka, who moved with her family from Russia to the US in 1919, reminds us that children have been migrating since the beginning of the twentieth century, and probably even earlier. Although children participate in the success of their family’s migration project, their voices are unheard in many studies of migratory phenomena. In recent years, the emerging approach in the social sciences that considers the agency of children in the analysis has started to influence migration scholars and to shift their focus towards the perspectives of young family members (Coe, Reynolds, Boehm, Hess, & Rae-Espinoza, 2011; De Block & Buckingham, 2007; Dreby, 2007; Orellana, 2009; Parrenas, 2005). Given the central role of children and youth in many migratory flows, notably in the phenomenon of parental migration, there is an increasing need to conceptualize their childhoods within transnational families and in two or more societies.

Globalisation leads not only to denser networks of value chains and information flows, but also to increasing flows of people. The spatial mobility of people is increasing in volume and becoming differentiated in terms of patterns and functions. This trend affects almost all levels of society — from the lower classes, who migrate as undocumented workers, to the jet set, which includes top managers, politicians and cosmopolitan artists. At an intermediate level, organisations are increasingly fostering the cross-border mobility of a variety of experts and specialists as expatriates and business travellers (Collings et al., 2007; Reiche and Harzing, 2011).

The object of this chapter is to identify the role played by Poland in the process of east-west migration, with especial regard to movement from the former Soviet Union. The geopolitical situation of Poland, located on the main European migratory channel between a disintegrating East and an integrating West, determines its important position in east-west migration. In this paper I will be seeking answers to the following questions: Which forms of migration are we faced with — in examining population flows from the former Soviet Union and which categories of migrant? What are the volume, structure and dynamics of this movement? What is the geography of migrational behaviours of citizens of the former Soviet Union — both when they enter Poland and when they are already in the country? What are the causes of the transformation that is currently taking place and what is the impact of state policy in regulating the changes that are taking place?

We have seen in previous chapters, that the increase in the number of foreigners entering Poland in recent years is largely the result of a sudden growth in inflows from Germany and the former USSR. Visitors from Germany have traditionally formed the single largest element in the total number of foreigners coming to Poland. The mass inflow on the part of citizens of the former USSR is a new phenomenon, which has tended to increase since 1989.1

Japan consists of four main islands, i.e., Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. The geographical features have interrupted the spatial mobility of people and commodities and eventually caused economic disparity among regions.1