‘I don’t miss Poland because I’ve made a home here’

Yorkshire and the Humber has become home to more than 70,000 Polish nationals since 2004, making them the third largest group of people born outside of the UK.

But, twenty years on how have those who swapped their homeland for a new life in England settled in?

“I don’t miss home because I make home here for myself.”

Maciej Bujakowski, 42, has seen much change since he moved to the UK from Poland in 2005.

Twenty years ago Maciej, then aged 23, was working his way up the ranks of the Polish Chefs and Pastry Chefs Association, when the society’s president suggested he might try a stint in England to gain experience and bring back new knowledge.

Young, single and keen for adventure, he agreed to the opportunity despite his limited English.

While some Polish migrants complained of hostility, Maciej said the locals in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, where he first worked at a boutique hotel, were “very welcoming”.

Further north, an 18-year-old Lukasz Garbacik had just taken a warehouse job in Doncaster, where Polish is now the second most common main language.

“Back then there were a lot of posters in Poland regarding work in the UK,” he recalls.

“Lots of agencies were contacting people to come to England for seasonal work,” adds Lukasz’s wife, Wioletta, who found a job in a warehouse in Luton before meeting her husband and moving to South Yorkshire.

She recalls wages in the UK being up to six times higher than in Poland, which attracted a “flood” of migrant workers.

Like Maciej and many others, university students Lukasz and Wioletta only intended to stay in the UK on a short-term basis.

“I came because my colleague said ‘take a break, make some money, and we will have some money for partying’,” says Lukasz, who now runs a joinery business.

Poland was one of 10 countries – and eight from Central and Eastern Europe – to join the European Union during its biggest-ever expansion in 2004, paving the way for a wave of new arrivals and changing the face of migration to the UK.

When Aleksandra Wilińska arrived in Doncaster in 2015, she had no idea about the growing Polish population there, which is now the second largest ethnic group in the city.

She took a typical route of finding warehouse work initially, where the majority of the staff were also born outside of the UK.

Despite both earning minimum wage, she and her now husband, Patrick, managed to save enough money to buy a house after two and a half years in England.

Now 32, Aleksandra runs her own business as a mortgage advisor, while Patrick is employed as a driver.

“Overall the UK has been a country of possibilities,” she says.

“My sister is a teacher here and my brother works in a law firm. As foreigners, I think we are quite successful.

“At this point, I don’t think we will be moving back home.”

Maciej, who now lives in Harrogate with his wife, Kasha, believes Polish migrants brought with them a strong work ethic.

“I don’t know whether we have been brought up in the older culture of work or whether work was more difficult in Poland when I was young straight after Communism,” he says.

Maciej now runs four businesses, including a Polish restaurant in Leeds and a Polish deli, and he and Kasha have a two-year-old daughter together, Petra.

Lukasz and Wioletta also started a family in Doncaster, where the Polish community is getting “stronger and stronger”, and have two children, aged 13 and 10.

Their local church regularly attracts up to 350 worshippers to its Sunday service, delivered in Polish.

A Polish school has recently opened to educate children about their heritage and bring the community together.

“Our kids are fluent in both Polish and English,” says Wioletta.

“They will definitely feel more British than Polish. They naturally switch to English when they are not reprimanded.”

However, Maciej admits life in the UK is not as comfortable as it once was.

“Living became a bit more challenging financially,” he says.

“Before, if you were busy, you always made money. Now, you are not always successful.”

He says he has seen Britain’s middle class “shrink” because of the country’s economic slowdown.

People have also become “a bit more frustrated with life”.

“I was scared that after Brexit it would be like ‘Go home immigrants’,” adds Aleksandra, who says she has noticed a rise in the same anti-immigrant sentiment once directed at Polish people now being aimed at Ukrainian refugees settling in her home country.

“If we are talking about politics, immigration, everyday issues, it made me realise that no matter the country people are the same, they just have different languages.”

Dorota Spilman moved to North Yorkshire after falling in love with a local farmer while picking asparagus and strawberries in 2010.

She told BBC Radio York she had been working on the farm each season since 2007 on her summer breaks from university and met her now-husband when he returned from serving in the army to work on his family’s farm.

“He was my boss,” she says.

“Once he asked me if I wanted to go out with him to the pub and I was so excited…but at that point I couldn’t really speak English.

“I had a dictionary with me. We didn’t have to talk, we just laughed and had a drink and had an amazing time.

“We had a great summer; we had a few dates and then the season ended at the end of August and I had to go back home. He cried.”

The pair, devastated to be separated, stayed in touch and visited each other before Dorota moved permanently to North Yorkshire the following year.

Dorota recalls: “I came back for the season, I came back to work on the farm again and I stayed.

“I never thought I’d have an English husband and live in England.

“I’m really happy and it’s my home now.”

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