Migration and the Polish Care Workforce: When a Country Both Exports and Recruits Care Workers

A Polish care worker employed in Germany may be supporting an older person whose family cannot provide enough care at home. At the same time, an older person in Poland may depend heavily on relatives because the local formal care workforce remains small. A Ukrainian nurse or other migrant professional may then become part of the Polish response to shortages created by ageing, workforce pressures and years of outward labour mobility.

This circular relationship makes migration one of the most important workforce issues within Poland’s long-term care system. The wider Poland Ageing, Long-Term Care & Community Support Knowledge Hub examines a system in which formal long-term care remains comparatively limited and families continue to provide much everyday support. Expanding formal provision will therefore require more workers at precisely the point when Poland is competing for labour within an increasingly ageing Europe.

The central challenge is more complex than replacing Polish workers who have moved abroad with workers arriving from elsewhere. Long-term care depends on language, trust, continuity, competence and employment quality. Migration can increase capacity, but only if workers can enter safely, develop appropriate skills, integrate into teams and build viable careers. Poland consequently faces a dual workforce task: retain and professionalise more of its domestic care workforce while creating responsible routes through which international workers can contribute without becoming a permanently lower-status labour tier.

Poland sits inside a European care labour market

Long-term care is often discussed as though workforce supply were primarily domestic. In reality, European care labour markets are interconnected. Differences in wages, employment conditions, living costs and demand encourage workers to move between countries, while freedom of movement within the European Union has made cross-border employment particularly significant.

Poland has been an important source of workers for higher-income European economies. Germany has been especially significant because of its proximity, labour demand and substantially higher earnings. Polish workers also migrate to other European countries, and care work forms part of these broader mobility patterns.

This has consequences beyond the individual worker. Migration can increase household income through earnings and remittances, expand professional experience and allow workers to make choices that improve their economic position. It should not therefore be framed simply as a loss to Poland. Mobility is also a right and an economic opportunity.

But from a care-system perspective, sustained outward migration changes the labour pool available domestically. Poland must compete not only with other Polish sectors for workers but with care employers elsewhere in Europe able to offer substantially higher pay.

The issue is becoming more significant because Poland itself is ageing. Demand for formal home support, residential care, nursing and rehabilitation is likely to increase while the working-age population contracts. A country that historically supplied care labour to other ageing societies increasingly needs additional workers for its own ageing population.

This is the central migration paradox: Poland remains part of Europe’s labour supply while becoming a stronger source of labour demand.

Long-term care starts from an unusually small formal workforce base

Migration matters particularly because Poland does not begin from a position of abundant formal care staffing. International comparisons continue to show a very low number of long-term care workers relative to the older population. Formal care therefore sits alongside extensive unpaid family provision rather than replacing it.

The workforce itself is also distributed across different parts of the system. Nurses working in long-term healthcare services operate within a different structure from workers delivering municipal care services, staff in domy pomocy społecznej, or DPS social assistance homes, and people providing privately purchased support in someone’s home. Occupational expectations, qualifications, employment arrangements and funding consequently vary.

This fragmentation complicates workforce planning. Increasing the number of nurses does not automatically increase the supply of non-clinical home support. Recruiting additional personal carers does not resolve shortages in nursing-intensive services. A national headline about “care workers” can therefore conceal several separate labour markets.

For planning purposes, Poland needs to distinguish at least:

• registered nurses and other regulated health professionals involved in long-term care;
• care and support workers employed within social assistance and residential settings;
• workers providing municipal or contracted home-care services;
• privately employed or agency-based carers supporting people in their own homes;
• migrant workers whose qualifications or experience may not map neatly onto Polish occupational categories; and
• family carers whose unpaid work continues to absorb a large share of total demand.

The distinction is operationally important. Each group requires different recruitment routes, skills, supervision and workforce policies.

Organisations examining future staffing exposure can use the Predictive Workforce Risk Module to structure analysis of vacancies, turnover, continuity and workforce vulnerability. It is not a Polish workforce-planning instrument, but its underlying approach is relevant: workforce capacity needs to be understood as a set of interacting risks rather than a single vacancy figure.

Why Polish care workers leave cannot be reduced to wages

Pay differences are powerful drivers of migration. A care worker who can earn substantially more in Germany or another higher-wage economy has an understandable economic incentive to move, commute or work rotationally abroad.

Yet retention is broader than salary. Long hours, workload, occupational status, predictable scheduling, supervision, physical demands and opportunities for progression all influence whether someone remains in care.

This matters because simply increasing recruitment without improving retention can create a revolving workforce. New entrants arrive while experienced workers continue to leave. The system then bears repeated recruitment and induction costs without building stable capacity.

Care work also competes with occupations that may offer similar entry requirements but less emotional and physical responsibility. As Poland’s overall labour supply tightens, long-term care employers cannot assume that workers who leave the sector will be easily replaced.

A stronger Polish long-term care workforce strategy therefore has to ask why people choose care, why they remain and why they leave. Migration is one part of that decision environment, not a separate phenomenon.

Improving the status of care occupations becomes especially important. Where personal care work is treated as low-skilled despite requiring judgement, communication, safeguarding awareness and considerable emotional competence, recruitment becomes harder and professional development remains weak.

Scenario: a municipal provider loses experienced workers to Germany

A care organisation delivering home support under arrangements with a western Polish gmina has difficulty filling vacancies. Two experienced workers leave within several months after finding better-paid care roles in Germany. Another begins working rotationally abroad while remaining formally resident in Poland.

The immediate operational response is to redistribute visits among remaining workers. On paper, all essential visits continue. In practice, travel increases, schedules become less stable and older people see more unfamiliar staff. Supervisors begin covering operational gaps themselves.

The organisation initially treats the problem as recruitment. Advertising produces applicants, but several withdraw after learning about the hours, travel requirements and pay. The workforce issue is therefore escalated from vacancy management to service sustainability.

A more useful analysis compares turnover reasons, local labour-market conditions, travel time, sickness, overtime and continuity. The gmina also considers whether the way the service is funded and organised leaves enough room for sustainable employment conditions rather than focusing solely on the hourly cost of care.

The response cannot equal German wages. Instead, the organisation strengthens predictable scheduling, reduces unnecessary travel through geographic rota design, improves supervision and creates clearer development opportunities. Recruitment continues, including appropriately eligible migrant workers, but it is no longer treated as the sole solution.

The scenario illustrates a wider principle. International wage competition may be impossible to neutralise, but employers and public authorities still influence whether domestic care jobs are sufficiently attractive to retain a viable core workforce.

Outward migration can create both shortages and skills circulation

Migration is not always permanent. Polish workers may spend several years abroad and later return, work across borders or alternate periods of employment between countries. This creates the possibility of skills circulation rather than simple one-way loss.

Returning workers may bring experience of different approaches to dementia, home support, documentation, assistive technology or multidisciplinary working. They may also return with stronger expectations about employment standards and professional recognition.

The opportunity is to make that experience visible. A care system that treats returning workers simply as new applicants may lose valuable knowledge. Recognition of relevant experience, structured induction into Polish requirements and opportunities to contribute to practice development could convert migration into organisational learning.

There are limits. Practice developed in Germany, the Netherlands or another country cannot automatically be transferred into Poland because funding, legislation, professional boundaries and service structures differ. But operational knowledge can still be useful when adapted intelligently.

The transferable element may be a technique for supporting independence, a different approach to scheduling or an understanding of how technology changes home-care practice rather than the wholesale importation of another country’s service model.

Inward migration is becoming part of Poland’s workforce response

Poland has simultaneously become a destination for substantial international migration. Ukraine has been particularly important, alongside workers from Belarus and a growing range of other countries. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified population movement, but Poland’s transformation into a destination labour market predates the full-scale war.

Healthcare provides a clear example of the potential workforce contribution. Poland has introduced simplified routes enabling some healthcare professionals qualified outside the European Union to obtain permission to practise under specified conditions. Ukrainian healthcare professionals have been especially significant within these arrangements.

The distinction between regulated health professionals and other care workers is essential. A nurse cannot simply be treated as a generic carer. Professional recognition, scope of practice and clinical responsibility require appropriate controls. Conversely, a migrant with substantial caring experience but no recognised nursing qualification should not be expected to undertake regulated clinical work merely because staffing is difficult.

Migration policy therefore intersects directly with workforce assurance. Increasing numbers matters, but safe deployment depends on knowing who is qualified to do what, whether language competence is sufficient for the role and what additional training or supervision is needed.

Language is a safety issue as well as an integration issue

Care depends heavily on communication. A worker may need to understand an older person describing pain, recognise subtle confusion, explain medication-related information, record an incident or communicate with relatives and professionals. In dementia care, meaning may depend on familiar expressions, tone and cultural references rather than straightforward instructions.

Language requirements therefore need to be proportionate to role and risk. Excessive barriers can unnecessarily exclude capable workers, while insufficient language support can expose both workers and people receiving care to avoidable risk.

The stronger approach combines realistic competence requirements with practical language development. General Polish-language ability may not be enough for a worker who needs vocabulary relating to mobility, continence, safeguarding, medication or emergency response. Workplace language training should therefore connect communication with actual care tasks.

This also protects migrant workers. Someone who cannot confidently understand policies, contracts, supervision or incident procedures may be more vulnerable to poor employment practice and less able to challenge unsafe instructions.

Supervision is particularly important during transition into a new system. Managers need to know whether communication difficulties are affecting practice rather than assuming that passing an initial recruitment process resolves the issue.

Good communication and accessible information consequently matter to workforce integration as much as to the person receiving support.

Scenario: a Ukrainian nurse enters Polish long-term care

A nurse who qualified in Ukraine relocates to Poland and seeks employment after gaining the relevant permission to practise under the applicable route. She has substantial clinical experience but has not previously worked within Poland’s divided health and social-care structures.

The employer has an urgent vacancy in a long-term care service. The operational temptation is to treat professional qualification as evidence that the worker can immediately function independently.

A safer approach separates clinical competence from system familiarity. Her professional status and permitted scope are verified. Induction then focuses on Polish documentation, escalation procedures, medication arrangements, communication expectations and the organisational interfaces through which residents move between primary care, hospital services and long-term care.

Language is assessed in relation to the actual work rather than through informal assumptions. Where additional development is needed, it is supported alongside supervised practice.

The result is not a lowering of standards to accelerate recruitment. It is a structured route that recognises existing professional competence while addressing the areas genuinely affected by movement between countries.

At governance level, the organisation monitors whether internationally recruited staff experience different rates of early turnover, training difficulty or progression. If the same integration problems recur, they become a workforce-design issue rather than being attributed to individual workers.

This distinction is critical. Responsible migration policy should make it easier for competent people to contribute without making safe practice dependent on improvisation.

Personal care needs a clearer professional identity

The migration debate also exposes a structural weakness beyond regulated healthcare: the professional status of personal care work itself.

Older people increasingly need workers who can support mobility, nutrition, personal care, communication, daily routines and community participation while recognising deterioration and knowing when to seek professional help. These are not merely domestic tasks.

Yet requirements for personal carers can be less standardised than those for regulated professionals. This creates variation in training and makes occupational identity less clear.

Poland’s future workforce strategy could usefully strengthen minimum competence expectations without making entry unnecessarily bureaucratic. Core preparation might address safe personal care, dignity, communication, dementia awareness, first response to deterioration, safeguarding, boundaries and the limits of the worker’s role.

Career progression then becomes possible. A worker should be able to move from entry-level care into more advanced roles through recognised learning and experience rather than facing a flat occupational structure.

This matters for migration because a weakly defined occupation is easier to segment. Migrants can become concentrated in the least secure roles with few progression opportunities. Professionalisation can instead establish common expectations that apply regardless of nationality.

Investment in continuous professional development should therefore be seen as both a quality intervention and a retention strategy.

Ethical recruitment matters when every ageing country needs workers

International recruitment does not create care workers globally. It redistributes them.

This becomes ethically significant when wealthier systems recruit from countries that themselves face shortages. Poland has experienced this from the sending-country perspective when workers move west. As Poland increasingly considers international recruitment, it encounters the same question from the receiving-country side.

The appropriate conclusion is not that migration should stop. Workers have legitimate rights to mobility and economic advancement. Instead, recruitment policy should avoid building workforce sustainability on practices that transfer shortages indiscriminately to countries with even weaker capacity.

For regulated health professionals, internationally recognised principles on ethical recruitment provide an important frame. Bilateral approaches, training partnerships and recruitment from countries where workforce supply can support mobility may offer more sustainable routes than unmanaged competition.

For personal care, ethical questions extend to employment conditions. Migrant workers may be particularly vulnerable where work is informal, tied to accommodation or mediated through complex agency arrangements. Dependency on an employer for legal status, income and housing can weaken a worker’s ability to challenge poor practice.

Workforce governance therefore needs to examine not simply whether a vacancy has been filled but the conditions under which labour has been obtained.

Fair treatment supports quality. Workers who understand their rights, receive appropriate training and can raise concerns safely are better positioned to provide consistent care.

Live-in and household care create particular governance challenges

Some of Europe’s cross-border care economy operates through live-in or rotational arrangements in private households. Polish workers have participated substantially in these models abroad, particularly in German-speaking countries.

Such arrangements illustrate both the flexibility and vulnerability of migrant care. Living with the person receiving support can provide continuity and enable ageing at home, but the boundary between working time and personal time can become unclear. The worker may be expected to remain available far beyond formally agreed hours.

If similar models expand within Poland through inward migration or private purchasing, the same issues require attention. A household is not exempt from the need for safe employment simply because care occurs outside an institution.

Key questions include working hours, rest, accommodation, contractual status, emergency expectations, training and what happens if the relationship between worker and household breaks down.

The older person also requires protection. A privately arranged worker may spend more time with the individual than any formal professional. If the worker is isolated from supervision and wider services, concerns about deterioration, neglect or financial exploitation may be harder to identify.

This creates a dual safeguarding requirement: protect the person receiving care and protect the worker from exploitative conditions.

Strong risk management and compliance in this context therefore requires visibility beyond traditional institutional boundaries.

Regional labour markets will shape access to care

National workforce totals can conceal substantial geographic variation. Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and other major urban centres operate within different labour markets from small towns and rural gminy. Border regions may also experience stronger direct competition from employers in neighbouring countries.

A worker’s decision is influenced by local wages, housing costs, transport and alternative employment. Recruiting a care worker into a rural area may therefore require a different response from filling a vacancy in a large city.

Migration can also reinforce geographic concentration. International workers often settle where communities, transport connections and employment networks already exist. This can increase workforce supply nationally without resolving shortages in places where older populations are most dispersed.

Local workforce planning consequently needs more than population projections. It should connect demographic need with realistic labour availability.

For a gmina, that means understanding whether services can recruit locally, how far workers travel, whether transport affects rota viability and which roles are persistently difficult to fill. For voivodeship and national policy, recurring patterns can reveal where local markets are unlikely to resolve shortages without broader intervention.

The Digital Twin Scenario Modeller offers organisations a generic way to explore how changes in workforce capacity, demand and service stability interact. It is not calibrated to Polish public planning, but scenario modelling is particularly useful where demographic growth in need and labour availability move in opposite directions.

Scenario: rural ageing meets an increasingly mobile workforce

A rural gmina has an ageing population and a growing number of residents requiring help at home. Adult children frequently live in regional cities or abroad. The municipality wants to expand home support because relying solely on family care is becoming less realistic.

The difficulty is labour. Recruitment campaigns attract few local applicants. Travel between villages consumes a substantial proportion of working time, and some potential workers prefer jobs in the nearest town. An internationally recruited worker expresses interest but does not drive, making the existing service model impractical.

The problem cannot be solved simply by increasing the vacancy advertisement.

The gmina reviews service geography, transport, visit clustering and the possibility of creating more substantial employment packages rather than fragmented hours. Community resources are mapped alongside professional needs. Recruitment remains part of the response, but service design changes too.

Regional evidence shows that neighbouring municipalities face similar problems. This creates a case for coordination beyond individual gmina boundaries, particularly around training and workforce development.

The scenario demonstrates why migration is not a universal answer to shortages. Workers need viable jobs in viable locations. Where the operating model itself creates unattractive employment, importing labour may postpone rather than resolve the underlying problem.

Retention begins after recruitment

International recruitment attracts attention because arrival numbers are measurable. Retention is less visible but strategically more important.

A migrant worker who leaves after six months has not created durable capacity. Neither has a newly trained Polish worker who exits care after experiencing excessive workload or poor supervision.

Retention requires employment conditions that make care a viable career. Predictable hours, competent management, safe staffing, learning opportunities, respect and manageable workloads all matter alongside pay.

For migrant workers, additional factors include settlement, language development, recognition of qualifications and whether progression is realistically available. An experienced worker who remains indefinitely in an entry-level role because overseas experience is undervalued may eventually move to another employer or country.

This is why staff retention should be measured by workforce segment as well as in aggregate. If international workers leave disproportionately early, the organisation needs to understand why rather than continually increasing recruitment.

Technology can increase workforce reach, but cannot manufacture care capacity

Technology will form part of Poland’s response to workforce scarcity. Digital scheduling can reduce unnecessary travel. Electronic information sharing can reduce duplication. Remote consultation can extend specialist input to areas where expertise is scarce. Sensors and telecare can help some older people remain independent between visits.

These are genuine productivity opportunities, particularly where workers spend excessive time on administration or travel rather than direct support.

But technology changes labour requirements rather than eliminating them. An alert still needs a response. A remote consultation may reduce travel for a specialist while increasing the coordination role of the worker physically present. Digital records require workers who can use them confidently and organisations capable of maintaining data quality.

Migrant workforce integration adds another dimension. Digital training platforms can support language and induction, while electronic credential processes may make professional recognition more efficient. At the same time, workers with limited digital confidence can be disadvantaged if systems are introduced without support.

Technology should therefore be evaluated according to the work it removes, the work it creates and the competence required to use it safely.

Organisations considering these changes can use the Digital Transformation Readiness Assessment to examine whether workforce, governance and infrastructure are sufficiently mature to support digital change. The relevant lesson for Poland is that technological productivity depends on implementation capacity, not simply procurement.

Better workforce data is a prerequisite for better migration policy

Poland cannot manage the relationship between ageing, care demand and migration effectively without a clearer view of its workforce.

Regulated professions generate more structured information than loosely defined personal care occupations, while informal and privately arranged care can remain particularly difficult to quantify. Workers may also hold multiple jobs or combine domestic employment with periods abroad.

This creates uncertainty about the real amount of labour available.

A headcount is not enough. Workforce intelligence needs to distinguish full-time equivalent capacity, hours worked, geographic distribution, age, occupation, vacancies, turnover and expected retirement. Migration information should show both inflows and outflows where possible.

Better data would also allow policymakers to distinguish different problems. A shortage caused by insufficient training places requires one response. A shortage caused by poor retention requires another. A shortage concentrated in rural communities requires a geographic response. A shortage created because workers can earn substantially more abroad cannot be understood without considering international labour markets.

Workforce planning should therefore connect several evidence streams:

• projected numbers of older people requiring different levels of support;
• current formal workforce capacity by occupation and region;
• retirement and turnover risk;
• domestic training and recruitment pipelines;
• outward and inward migration patterns; and
• the amount of demand currently absorbed by unpaid family care.

Only then can Poland estimate the workforce gap that policy needs to address.

Scenario: recruitment numbers look positive while continuity deteriorates

A residential care organisation reports that it has recruited 40 workers during the year, including a growing number born outside Poland. Senior managers initially interpret the figure as evidence that the recruitment strategy is succeeding.

Resident feedback suggests a different picture. People are seeing frequent new staff, relatives report having to repeat preferences and experienced workers say they spend increasing amounts of time inducting colleagues.

When the organisation examines the data differently, it finds that 34 workers have also left. Several internationally recruited employees departed within their first year, while some experienced Polish workers moved to better-paid jobs elsewhere.

The workforce problem was hidden because recruitment was measured without retention.

Management begins examining first-year turnover, reasons for leaving, supervision, training completion, agency use, sickness and continuity at service level. Migrant workers are invited to describe barriers to staying, including language support and progression.

The evidence leads to changes in induction and mentoring rather than another recruitment campaign alone. Managers are also held accountable for local retention patterns.

For organisations wanting to make this information visible, the Quality Dashboard Builder can help connect workforce indicators with continuity and quality measures. The principle is broadly transferable: recruitment activity is an input, while stable and competent staffing is the outcome that matters to people receiving care.

Migration strategy and care strategy need to connect

Poland’s wider migration policy is evolving. The national Migration Strategy for 2025–2030 places greater emphasis on controlled migration, labour-market need, security and integration, while employment procedures for foreign nationals have also been reformed.

Long-term care cannot sit outside that conversation. If ageing creates a persistent shortage occupation, migration routes need to reflect actual workforce demand while maintaining employment and quality safeguards.

Yet migration policy alone cannot determine how many care workers Poland needs. That requires a long-term care strategy capable of specifying the desired balance between family care, formal home support, residential services and healthcare-funded provision.

If Poland expands formal home care significantly, workforce requirements will increase. If more support remains with families, formal workforce growth may be slower but household pressures will remain greater. If residential capacity expands, a different mix of staff will be required.

Migration requirements are therefore downstream of care-model decisions.

This creates a governance need across policy areas that are often treated separately: health, social policy, labour, migration, education and regional development. Decisions in one area alter workforce feasibility in another.

A migration route that recruits workers without adequate training capacity creates quality risk. A care expansion strategy without labour planning creates services that cannot be staffed. An education strategy that trains workers who subsequently leave because jobs remain unattractive does not secure domestic capacity.

Professionalisation can make migration a strength rather than a dependency

The strongest long-term response is not to choose between Polish and international workers. It is to build a professional care sector in which both can develop sustainable careers.

That requires clearer competence expectations, recognised training, better supervision and credible progression. It also requires employment models capable of retaining experienced people.

International workers should enter that structure rather than forming a parallel labour market with lower expectations or weaker rights. Qualifications and experience should be recognised appropriately, but recognition should remain linked to safe scope of practice. Where gaps exist, bridging education can address them.

Professionalisation also makes workforce mobility more manageable. Clear occupational standards help employers understand what a worker can do, make training more portable and provide individuals with a pathway to advancement.

At the same time, Poland needs to avoid making personal care so heavily regulated that recruitment becomes unnecessarily difficult. The objective is proportionate professionalisation: enough structure to protect quality and create careers without imposing barriers unrelated to actual risk.

This is closely connected to workforce competence in services for older people. As needs become more complex, the distinction between having enough workers and having workers with the right capabilities becomes increasingly important.

Workforce governance should measure stability, competence and fairness

Migration makes workforce governance more complex because headline staffing numbers can conceal instability.

A service may technically have enough workers while relying heavily on overtime. Another may fill vacancies through international recruitment but experience rapid turnover. A third may retain staff but lack the competence required for increasing dementia or clinical complexity.

Governance therefore needs to connect workforce information with service outcomes.

Useful questions include whether people receive support from familiar workers, whether vacancies cause missed or shortened visits, whether internationally recruited workers complete induction successfully, whether supervision identifies recurring competence gaps and whether particular workforce groups experience disproportionate turnover.

Fairness should also be visible. Migrant status should not become a proxy for lower pay, undesirable shifts or reduced progression. Employment quality is both an ethical issue and a practical retention control.

Organisations examining these relationships can use the Governance Maturity Assessment to structure questions about accountability, escalation and assurance. It does not substitute for Polish employment or care regulation, but it can help test whether workforce risks are reaching the level at which strategic decisions are made.

Poland’s opportunity is to move from workforce replacement to workforce strategy

Migration becomes problematic when it is treated as replacement arithmetic: a worker leaves, another worker arrives, and the staffing problem is considered resolved.

Care systems do not operate through interchangeable units of labour. Experience, relationships and local knowledge matter. Constant replacement can preserve nominal staffing while eroding continuity.

Poland therefore needs a broader workforce proposition built around domestic recruitment, retention, training, international mobility, technological productivity and support for family carers.

Migration should sit within that mix. Responsible inward recruitment can provide valuable additional capacity, particularly where demographic pressures outpace domestic supply. Returning Polish workers can bring useful experience. International professionals can strengthen clinical services. Migrant personal carers can become an important part of home and residential support.

But each route works better when the underlying sector is attractive enough to retain people after they arrive.

The strategic test is therefore not how many workers Poland can recruit from abroad. It is whether Poland can create long-term care employment that competent people, wherever they were born or trained, choose to build a career within.

International learning from Poland’s position in the care economy

Poland offers an important perspective because it has experienced migration from both sides of the care workforce equation.

As a source country, it demonstrates how higher wages elsewhere can draw skilled and experienced workers from a domestic system. As a destination country, it now faces the responsibility of integrating migrant workers fairly and safely while avoiding excessive dependence on other countries’ labour supply.

The transferable lesson lies less in Poland’s specific migration routes and more in recognising care labour as internationally connected. National workforce strategies that ignore neighbouring labour markets may produce unrealistic assumptions about recruitment and retention.

Countries also need to distinguish workforce mobility from workforce development. Migration can redistribute capacity relatively quickly, but it does not remove the need to improve pay, job quality, training and productivity.

Ethical recruitment is equally important. A sustainable international care economy cannot consist simply of progressively wealthier countries drawing workers from progressively poorer ones while every country’s population ages.

Greater skills portability, responsible bilateral cooperation, investment in training and better working conditions can make mobility more mutually beneficial. No single mechanism eliminates the distributional effects, but governance can make them more visible and manageable.

Conclusion

Migration is already embedded in Poland’s long-term care workforce story. Polish workers have supported care systems across Europe, particularly in countries where higher wages create strong incentives for mobility. Poland now faces increasing care demand of its own and is simultaneously becoming more reliant on international workers, including professionals and other workers arriving from Ukraine and elsewhere.

The answer cannot be to close labour mobility, nor can it be to treat inward migration as an unlimited replacement supply. Poland’s deeper challenge is to make long-term care employment sustainable enough to retain domestic workers, returning workers and international recruits alike. That means clearer career structures, appropriate training, better workforce data, safe recognition of overseas qualifications, language and integration support, stronger employment conditions and service models that use scarce labour intelligently.

Migration can increase capacity, diversify the workforce and bring valuable experience into Polish services. But its contribution will depend on the quality of the system into which workers arrive. Recruitment without retention creates churn; migration without professionalisation can create a segmented workforce; expansion without regional planning can leave the areas with the greatest need still unable to recruit.

Poland’s strategic opportunity is therefore to move beyond replacing departing workers and build a coherent care workforce capable of operating within an increasingly international labour market. As population ageing accelerates across Europe, that distinction will determine whether migration merely moves shortages between countries or becomes one component of a more resilient long-term care system.