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The European Union includes 11 post-communist countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia). The population of this group of countries has fallen by 7% since 1989, whereas that of the rest of the EU has risen by 13%. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, these countries had younger populations than the rest of the EU, but they are now ageing due to low fertility and mass emigration of young people.

In recent ten years or so, in some regions and sectors of the Polish economy the share of foreign workers in the labour market became significant, especially in certain months of each year. This phenomenon has been increasingly bearing on labour force balances at local and regional levels, and on the employment strategies of individual companies. Workers employed within the framework of so-called simplified procedure played particularly important role in this process. The analysis that follows has been devoted to the situation of those workers and it compares their situation with that of natives. It has been based on national sample survey of companies which in 2016 registered a declaration of intention to employ a foreign worker. The author argues that, recently observed, relatively high incidence of foreign workers in the Poland's labour market contributes to the strengthening of that market segmentation. His analysis strongly supports a hypothesis implying the deterioration of terms 4 of employment (including wages) of the employees in the inferior (lower) segment of labour market and the intensification of discriminatory practices by employers as a result of the strengthened segmentation.

Despite the abundance of studies of Polish migration to the UK immediately before and in the aftermath of accession to the EU in 2004, one fundamental question has never been clearly answered: why did so many Poles move to the UK? We sought general explanations rather than inquiring into the range of observed diversity. We begin by putting together statistical and other data from both ends of the flow in order to assess the scale of movement to and from the UK and to help tease out the reasons for what may well have been the largest voluntary migration between two countries. We have used data from both countries and especially the recently published statistics from the 2011 UK Census to present a detailed picture of the characteristics of those involved. Polish statistics suggest a more 'elite' flow to the UK than to other countries. The UK census pictures a maturing settled population, still tending to occupy relatively lower skilled jobs but showing evidence of upward social mobility. The movements are particularly a response to demographic and economic factors in Poland and to a widespread but to some extent hidden shortage of labour in some sectors in the UK. These factors combine with a set of political circumstances in both countries to produce an explanatory framework that may be summarised as "right people, right place, right circumstances".