Why is there such interest in Poland from the Asian population? A new wave of migrants possibly?

Hi All!

Simply from browsing various websites I have noticed this shift in interest recently. Not only this but I've heard that many Asian men are using apps such as "Hot or Not" or "Tinder" to meet Polish women. Is this out of genuine interest in Polish women or an easy way into the country? What has made Poland/Polish people suddenly so interesting to them? I would like to know what everyone thinks on this subject!

(Before anyone starts calling me racist or something similar, I'm simply interested in the subject, no bad intentions)

Many thanks! Claudia

Hi,
I am an Asian and I have been living in Krakow with my spouse ( she is also from my country). I have also seen this trend ( having Polish girl friend or wife) here in my community . In some cases, there exist love certainly. Might be Polish girl finds Asian male more caring and more of a family guy. On the other hand, Asian male finds it easier to have a Polish girl friend rather than English or German. However, there is other side of the coin also. Sometimes, they really use it as a easy way to get into the EU countries. This is just my opinion and observation and I just presented pros and cons of this subject ( no intention to hurt anybody's feelings).

Maybe curiosity of otherness is the major force in this case.

Asia is big: Japan, China, India, so even if only very small percentage get interest of Poland, it will be big number.

Sorry, i should of specified! I meant people from India, Pakistan etc (although there may well be interest from Japan Etc). Yes I understand this but I was wondering what caught their attention and why.

Hi Shawon,

Thanks for that! I have no doubt that in at least some cases it is true love, over here in England I've seen many Polish girls married/having kids with Asian men (and other races obviously). I think due to the low percentage of other races in Poland, polish women (and men) may be really attracted to the difference. I was just wondering, what was it about Poland that made you want to live there?

HI Laoche,
Actually I am pursuing my PhD under Erasmus Mundus at AGH (funded by European Union) as well as working as a Scientific Specialist at the University. Actually I had no choice, since my mobility falls into Poland; I have to live here. Anyway, I like Poland pretty much...:)

Polish girls are beautiful and family oriented even though Poland is a p i s s poor country .

Pakistani men are very romantic in nature

They are also good on bed

having 6-8 kids is a norm for Pakistani men.

If judging by polishforums.com it seems that most of them are IT people trying to move from world biggest IT outsourcing center - India to Europe's biggest outsourcing center - Poland.

That's actually really interesting regarding the outsourcing centres! Thanks!

And a lot of them are high level techs like SAP consultants or other well paid, hard to find specialists. I suspect that the wages being offered for those jobs in Poland aren't attractive to Poles anymore, who've moved west for much better wages, leaving holes in the existing structure. The outsourcing centers would apparently rather bring in less demanding techs from India and other developing countries than raise wages for the Poles who formerly held those jobs. After all, the infrastructure is already there, so it doesn't mean they have to build anything to employ the Indians. It might actually work out cheaper than building new centers in India.

Men who grow up in male dominated countris tend to possess the kind of masculinity which most young ladies naturally look for. So Pakistani and Indian guys still have what Europen repressed, and shy guys no longer have. Another thing is the pride of an equal is more easily hurt than that of someone who is already feeling to be down the scale. If I feel on the margins anyway. I am not scared to be myself to a nice girl, simply because if she may reject me. If she does I can always soothe my ego by saying to myself: all must think there is only one obvious reason why it happened.That which is outside of my control. So, I can try as many times as I like, feeling maybe just a little amused.

Hey Claudia

While I agree with the observation that you have made about sudden influx of Asians into Poland, I am not sure if they are using Polish women as their work-permits :). Poland(Wroclaw particularly) is destined to be the next silicon valley of europe and that can only happen if the local skill-set rises up to the same level as what is currently the basic level in the western world. The current labour laws in Poland(8 hrs work, 30 day vacation etc) mean that there is a lot of demand for productivity(maximum work done in minimum time), this is where companies are sending people over specialists from Asia to setup teams and build on the local talent so that a self-sustaining model can be prepared for the future. There are lot of good courses in the universities in Poland but there is a lack of industry specific specializations which can get you a decent job on the certification alone. As for the Asians well, they come here for the whole european experience, the food is decent, cost of living is similar and people are not as aggressive and xenophobic as some of the other parts of Europe.

I do agree Love can drive you crazy but I would be highly surprised to know of an Asian man who would cross the seven seas hoping to meet a Polish woman he found on Tinder :)

Cheers!

Dream on. That isn't going to happen unless compensation is high enough to attract the best talent. Unfortunately, there's still a long way to got there. Outsourcing centers are not centers of innovation and enterprise. They do the dull, routine grunt work that the creative types couldn't be bothered with. They hire the cheapest, not the best.

Exactly.

Worth mentioning that the combination of a large, educated (and growing) population in India and the various opportunities for doing business in Poland mean that the influx will continue for some time.

I'm not so sure. At some point, it's going to be more economically feasible to open new outsourcing centers in developing countries than to keep outsourcing centers in Poland operating with imported labor. Also, as long as Western Europe and the English-speaking countries offer engineers a lot more in terms of quality of life, opportunities for advancement, opportunities for self-improvement, life-time earnings potential, and, most importantly, life-time savings potential in absolute dollars, the best engineers from developing countries now working in Poland will be siphoned off as fast as they can be replaced, and eventually even faster.

Overall, wages for engineers in Poland are not all that more attractive than wages in India in terms of quality of life and savings potential, and, if anything, they will become relatively less attractive in the coming years. Furthermore, wages that might seem competitive to an Indian before he comes to Poland will seem paltry once they get a taste of the Polish winter, and also when they realize that they are cut off from the mainstream corporate culture and have little opportunity for advancement. Add to that that there is little opportunity for employment for spouses and children, and few of those who make the move to Poland will last more than a couple of years, especially if they have salable skills.

If anything, the role Poland now plays as an outsourcing country will soon peak and start to decline, and I expect that to occur soon rather than later. The fact that outsourcing centers in Poland have to resort to importing foreign labor is a sign of impending decline, not future growth.

That will only happen if differences between salaries in Poland and in western Europe decline. It hasn't happened in last 5 years:

The latest Eurostat data refer to hourly labor costs in the national economy , excluding agriculture and public administration. Naturally, the highest labor costs in countries where there has been the highest earning residents , among others, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and Germany - the average hourly labor costs exceed 30 euros here .

The lowest labor costs were recorded in Bulgaria, where they were suddenly 3,71 euro per hour. In second place is Romania - 4.6 euro per hour. In Lithuania and Latvia hourly costs amount to little more than 6 euros . In Hungary 7.4 euros, and in Poland - 7.6 euros.

- according to that article quoting Eurostat salaries in Poland measured in EUR raised by 0.1% in last 5 years, while in Germany 12,2%, France 9,9%, UK -0,3%. The need to import few IT guys from India means only that speed of IT services outsorcing expansion to Poland may slow down. Not decline.

I wonder how salaries changed in last 5 years in India and China.

Au contraire. It will happen if it becomes more economically feasible to more outsourcing centers in developing countries that are able to do the job cheaper than existing outsourcing centers in Poland. Why hire an engineer in Poland for $36,000 a year when you can hire one in a developing country for a lot less?

$36,000 may seem like peanuts by Western standards, that's true. But don't forget that even half that is a fortune to many engineers in a lot of the developing world. Yes, many jobs will still be outsourced to Poland, but the heyday is near, or perhaps already gone, and the slow decline will then start. Outsourcing is not a sustainable industry, but a transitional economic quick fix. It's unstable by it very nature, with a tendency to boom and bust built in.

I would not surprise me if Wroclaw (among other Polish cities) did evolve into Silicone Valley's. Poland has some of the best high tech innovators in the world. I do not have the official links but just

20 seconds on google has thrown up examples.

Google -
Polish students among the best mission to Mars designers
Jagiellonian University of Poland wins International Mediation Competition 2013
Polish programmers among world's elite
Two Polish teams in the world championship in team programming

Remember it was the Poles that cracked the Enigma code and gave the calculations to the UK.

India also has very intelligent people but are also poor and patronised by the west - only being 'valuable' because they are cheap. India and Poland being in the same boat recognise each others potential

and understand that working together can only be positive and creative.


..now you have lost me...

Press releases give a very highly distorted vision of reality. Stick to real investigative reporting, not self-generated hype. As far as engineering and science education in Poland goes, the two things students unanimously gripe about are poorly funded practical courses of little didactic value, and poor partnership between engineering schools and the business/industrial community, both of which limit employability.

Also, most of the best Polish engineers go West. They can't afford not to. For example, given the same qualifications, experience and position, a single engineer can easily save up $50,000 a year in the States. They wouldn't even make that much in total in Poland, and wouldn't be able to save up that much in five, or even ten years. You're not going to make a Silicon Valley out of someplace that suffers from massive brain drain.


Winter in northern Europe is quite a shock for people from warmer climes. Every year, I see the despair and horror on the faces of the foreign students in mid-October when the first cold snap arrives and they are told that they ain't seen nothin' yet. I usually take at least a couple of them shopping for proper winter clothes. One student I knew from Kenya seriously thought the world was coming to an end. And by the time April rolls around, they are totally sick and tired of the cold, and not at all eager to repeat the experience. Many foreign workers from warmer countries won't stay through a second winter unless the pay is very, very tempting. Especially if they have family. Students might put up with it for a few years, but working stiffs won't, unless, again they are amply compensated.

Also, working in an outsourcing center ("murzyn polowy") or an "internally outsourced" center ("murzyn domowy") means that your essentially outside of the corporate mainstream; there's little chance for advancement in the outsourcing center, and little chance that the corporations who contract with the outsourcing center will notice you. Even if you work at a corporate location in Poland, you're often not fully integrated into the global corporate structure, and advancement is difficult unless you get a transfer. Until then, you're just boxed and labeled as cheap labor for boring grunt work. A common and major complaint among Polish engineers working for western companies in Poland, many who took the jobs specifically because they thought the corporate ladder would be open to them. They feel cheated when they find out it's not.

DominicB i right, that you should not take press too seriously. First of all what stood behind creation of Silicon Valley was a lot of government money (hundreds of billions invested into military research), top scientists in their fields, entrepreneurship and size of American market.

Wrocław is too small, doesn't have top scientist, doesn't have top technologies, doesn't have big capital. Perhaps it has relatively well educated graduates, (like hundreds of cities in the world). Perhaps it has good entrepreneur spirit and perhaps EU market is big enough (if language differences can be overcome).

But that's too little. It's nothing unique or special about the city. That's also why nobody else created something close to Silicon Valley.

What Poland could try to copy is Israeli model with government supported Venture capitals investing in promising start ups. But it's not what Wrocław is concentrating on right now. Outsourcing job is not innovative and will not give golden eggs IT companies like Twitter, Facebook or even Estonian Skype. Moreover competition is big and bigger European cities like London or Berlin have much more advantages over Wrocław to become next Silicon Wadi.

I did not say that outsource centres are innovative. I just said that Polish cities have the 'Potential' to become centres of hi-tech excellence. I also did not specify - on what scale. Poland's Silicon Valley will be smaller because Poland is - 'smaller'.

Just because a country can/will not pay high salaries - does not mean that it can't develop. The very fact that they operate under 'less desirable' conditions - makes them innovative. Innovation comes from hardship. If you want to rock 'n' roll - you first have to play the blues.


So what have you found to discredit those reports?


...so these students did not win that competition etc etc - it's all made up?


...I was being facetious. You don't say. I know a trader from Ghana who has lived in the Polish snow covered mountains for 7 years. He wears a warm coat and hat during winter. Before he came out - he googled the weather in Poland - and do you know what it said? In winter - it's cold. Anyone going to a country - who is surprised by it's weather - is stupid.

I used to have a workmate from Poland and I like her accent so much that I decided that I should know more Polish people and also learn Polsih song as well because I liked their accent so much that I went to an extent that I listened to one Polish song for more that 1,000 time so that I could cover it. Unfortunately, I am no longer in contact with the girl who inspired me but I am still someone who inspires me to cover more Polish songs..I like Polish accent. I was born in Nepal but grew up Singapore and I love my Polish friends a lot. I have spent so much time pkaying guitars and singing Polish songs but...I also like Japanese, Thai, Korean, Indian, Nepali, Hindi, English, Thai.etc music..these days I listened to lots of Polish songs though. Someone who says Polish girls are the most beautiful needs their head checked because love is in the eye of the beholder !! I have seen beauty from every nation but I love Polish accent when they speak English :-). I am lucky I have so many Polish friends who are very very close to me in London...it is a pity I have not been to Poland yet. I hope when I m there I will make fool of myself by singing and speaking Polish.

Quite the opposite: innovation comes from wealth and leisure: abundant amounts of cash and luxurious amounts of time to obscenely squander on failed attempt after failed attempt. I know. I'm a research scientist. It's only when you feel safe and secure that you venture bravely forth into uncharted territory. The desperate huddle in their caves while they can, and only when that is no longer possible do they slink outside, concerned only about filling their bellies for a while, with innovation being the very last thing on their minds. Financial insecurity breeds conservative thinking, not innovation. Necessity ain't the mother of invention, regardless of how the saying goes. Poland is still very much a conservative country, and Poles feel financial insecure. Furthermore, brain drain is a major problem.

Map the number of patents per capita on a world map, and it will look almost exactly like the map of per capital purchasing power, and the proportion of liberal voters.


You do have to learn the difference between press releases and actual investigative reporting. The things you linked to were all press releases, which are always chock-full of masturbatory hype.


It's quite a different thing reading about something in a book, and actually experiencing it. There's nothing that a Nigerian, for example, has ever experienced that could possibly prepare him for the experience. Nothing at all stupid in being surprised. Actually, they're not surprised so much that it's cold, but that it's REALLY, REALLY cold ALL THE TIME and EVERYWHERE, for months on end and as far as the eye can see. And the darkness is a bit of a shock, too. They go to school in the morning in the dark, and walk back home in the afternoon in the dark.