Ukrainians working abroad

For most of the period I have lived here, a large number of Ukrainians have worked abroad. Poland above all, then Czechia, Italy, Portugal, Germany and further. Construction, agriculture, care work, logistics, and increasingly skilled trades and professions.

Why the numbers are unreliable

Because a great deal of it was circular. A person worked a season in Poland, came home, went back. Some held permits, some did not, some commuted monthly. Any single figure describes a snapshot of something that was constantly moving, and I would not trust a precise number from any source.

The case that it is a loss

It is the strongest argument and it should be made properly. The people who leave are disproportionately working age, healthy, willing to take risk and often skilled. An economy that exports those people is exporting the input it most needs. Employers here compete against Polish wages for the same welder. Villages lose the generation that would have run them.

The case that it is not only a loss

Remittances are large and go directly to households rather than through any institution. They pay for housing, education and small business formation, and they reach places no development programme reaches. A returning worker brings skills, standards and an expectation of how a workplace should function that changes the firms they join.

And the alternative to emigration was not employment at home. For much of this period it was unemployment or subsistence.

What determines the balance

Whether they come back, which depends on the wage gap narrowing and on ordinary things: housing, schools, healthcare, safety. Migration becomes a permanent loss only when return stops being attractive, and that is a policy outcome rather than a fact of nature.

Arguing over whether this is a loss puts the question wrongly, to my mind: the person who left is not lost, they are simply not here. What decides it is whether returning is possible. I know many people who work abroad and buy a home, start a business and educate a child here — it becomes a loss when the link breaks, not before.