Selective restrictions and liberalisations: unpacking Poland's response to forced migration in the post-2022 context

This article examines new patterns in asylum and integration policies that emerged in Poland in response to the arrival of nearly 1.6 million people displaced from Ukraine in 2022 by Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. Using a novel ReLiSU analytical framework (Hernes and Łukasiewicz 2025) and mixed data, we identify twofold policy patterns. While the central government restricted and defunded the asylum system for protection seekers deemed ‘undeserving’, it liberalised the system for those ‘deserving’ by introducing temporary protection with full welfare system access. In the context of the 2022 forced displacement from Ukraine, the administration of essential reception services was largely left to the local level without sufficient administrative and financial support. As a result, reception and integration services were sustained by a patchwork structure of localised, often ad hoc collaborations between public and private actors, and funded largely by supranational organisations. We argue that these developments, on the one hand, exacerbated enduring features of Poland’s migration governance: the temporal logic, the neoliberal restructuring of the welfare system, and racialised and gendered selectivity in determining the protection claims. On the other hand, the 2022 crisis created a window of opportunity that enabled the advancement of immigrant mainstreaming.