Transit Migration, Swedish Returns and the Making of Refugee Governance in Poland, 1984–1991

This article examines the emergence of refugee governance in Poland between 1984 and 1991 by tracing how the late socialist state responded to the growing phenomenon of transit migration. It argues that the origins of Poland’s refugee policy cannot be understood solely through democratic transition or European integration. Instead, they lie in the administrative responses developed during the final years of state socialism, when increasing numbers of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia used Poland as a transit corridor to Western Europe. Drawing on previously underutilised archival materials from the Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance, the article reconstructs how Polish authorities first identified transit migration as an administrative problem, relied initially on the Polish Red Cross and other improvised solutions and later developed new institutional mechanisms to manage refugee movements. The rapid growth of transit migration on the Polish–Swedish route in 1989–90 exposed the limitations of existing arrangements and accelerated tighter visa controls, closer cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, inter-ministerial coordination and the development of Poland’s first refugee reception infrastructure. The article demonstrates that many of the administrative practices later incorporated into the post-communist refugee system had begun to develop before Poland’s accession to the 1951 Geneva Convention in 1991. It therefore argues that refugee governance in Poland emerged through administrative adaptation that began under late socialism and was later formalised during the democratic transition.