Polish diaspora
The Polish diaspora comprises Poles and people of Polish heritage or origin who live outside Poland. The Polish diaspora is also known in modern Polish as Polonia, the name for Poland in Latin and many Romance languages.
There are roughly 20,000,000 people of Polish ancestry living outside Poland, making the Polish diaspora one of the largest in the world and one of the most widely dispersed. Reasons for displacement include border shifts, forced expulsions, resettlement by voluntary and forced exile, and political or economic emigration.
Substantial populations of Polish ancestry can be found in their native region of Central and Eastern Europe and many other European countries as well as in the Americas and Australia.
The Polonia in English-speaking countries often uses a dialect of Polish called Ponglish. It is made up of a Polish core with many English words inside it.
There are also smaller Polish communities in Asia and Africa, most notably Kazakhstan and South Africa.
History
Poles participated in the creation of the first European settlements in the Americas. In the 17th century, Polish missionaries arrived for the first time in Japan. Vast numbers of Poles left the country during the Partitions of Poland for economic and political reasons as well as the ethnic persecution practised by Russia, Prussia and Austria.Many of the Poles who emigrated were Jews, who make up part of the Jewish diaspora. The Second Polish Republic was home to the world's largest Jewish population. It was followed by invasions of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union. Around 6 million Polish citizens perished during World War II: about one fifth of the pre-war population. Around 3 million of which were Polish Jews murdered in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II. Most survivors subsequently migrated to Mandate Palestine since Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah without visas or exit permits at the end of the war. Many remaining Jews, including Stalinist hardliners and members of security apparatus, left Poland during the 1968 Polish political crisis, when the Polish United Workers' Party, pressured by Leonid Brezhnev, joined the Soviet "anti-Zionist" campaign that was triggered by the Six-Day War. In 1998, Poland's Jewish population was estimated at 10,000 to 30,000.
A recent, large emigration of Poles took place after Poland acceded to the European Union and opening of the EU's labour market. About 2 million primarily young Poles took up jobs abroad.
Most Poles live in Europe, the Americas, and Australia, but a few Poles have settled in smaller numbers in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, as economic migrants or as part of Catholic missions.
Europe
''All countries and areas of residence thereafter are listed in alphabetical order.''Austria
Belarus
According to the census, there are 396,000 Poles living in Belarus. They form the second-largest ethnic minority in the country, after Russians. Most Poles live in western Belarus.During the Second World War, the Soviet Union forcibly resettled large numbers of Belarusian Poles to Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Few Belarusian Poles now live in Siberia and the Russian Far East, and some of those who managed to survive resettlement returned to Poland after 1956.
The census of 1959 had 538,881 ethnic Poles in Belarus.
Benelux
There were some migrations from Poland to the Netherlands in the early modern period, with notable emigrants including painters Krzysztof Lubieniecki and Teodor Lubieniecki, and Admiral Krzysztof Arciszewski who served in the Dutch West India Company.File:Bruxelles à travers les âges .jpg|thumb|left|Polish refugees received in Brussels after the November Uprising
Some 200 Poles, mostly intelligentsia and military officers, fled to Belgium after the unsuccessful Polish November Uprising in the 1830s, with some 60 officers employed the Belgian army, including Polish General Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki, who was in charge of organizing the newly formed Belgian army, and others serving as instructors. The Great Emigration marked the first notable wave of Polish migration to Belgium. Some 200 Poles fled to Belgium, mostly to Brussels, Ghent and Liège, after the fall of the Polish January Uprising.
Polish immigration to the Netherlands has steadily increased since Poland joined the EU, and now 173,231 Polish people live in the country. Present Queen of the Belgians, Mathilde, is daughter to a Pole, Countess Anna Maria d'Udekem d'Acoz, née Komorowska.
Luxembourg has 4,844.
Bulgaria
According to 2023 estimates of the Polish Embassy in Sofia, some 5,500 Poles and people of Polish descent live in Bulgaria. Polish presence in Bulgaria dates back to the 19th century, with Poles contributing to the development of the country, after it regained independence.Czech Republic
The Polish community in the Czech Republic is concentrated in Cieszyn Silesia, in the northeast of the country. It traces its origins to border changes after the First World War that partitioned the area between Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia, leaving many Poles on what is now the Czech side of the border. The Polish population was 38,218 at the 2021 census.Denmark
By 1904, there was a Polish community consisting of several thousand workers scattered throughout Denmark. Polak w Danii, the oldest Polish newspaper in Denmark, was first published in July 1918, several months before Poland regained independence.According to the Danish government's statistics, almost 51,000 Polish citizen live in Denmark. Up to 70,000 might have Polish ancestry. Most live in the capital, Copenhagen.
Finland
The history of the Polish community in Finland dates from the early 19th century when many Poles from the Russian-controlled part of the country settled there. In 1917, there were around 4,000 Poles in Finland, mostly soldiers of the Russian Imperial Army. In 1917, the Polish Legion in Finland was formed to fight for Finnish independence and then stationed in Viipuri, and after the Finnish victory some 2,500 Polish soldiers were evacuated to Poland. Some 200 Poles lived in Finland in the 1920s.Finland has never been a major destination for Polish immigrants, and only around 5,400 Poles live there. Most are well-educated: musicians, medical doctors, engineers and architects with families. Around half lives in Helsinki, and the biggest Polish organization there is the Polish Association, founded on April 3, 1917.
France
Between 500,000 and one million people of Polish descent live in France. They are concentrated in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, the metropolitan areas of Lille and Paris and the coal-mining basin around Lens and Valenciennes. Prominent members have included Frédéric Chopin, Adam Mickiewicz, René Goscinny, Marie Curie, Michel Poniatowski, Raymond Kopa, Ludovic Obraniak and Edward Gierek. For centuries, there was an alliance between the France and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: the longest-reigning queen consort of France has been a Pole, Marie Leszczyńska. Many Poles settled in France after the rule of Napoleon and the collapse of the Duchy of Warsaw, when 100,000 Poles, largely political refugees, fled the Russians and Prussians, who took over Poland. The Great Emigration, from the first half of the 19th century onwards, caused many Poles to be enlisted to fight in the French army. Another wave of Polish migration took place between the two World Wars when many were hired as contract workers to work temporarily in France. Polish refugees also fled the Nazi and Soviet occupations in the 1940s. From 100,000 to 200,000 Poles have been estimated to live in Paris. Many EU immigrants are in southern France, including the cities of Arles, Marseille and Perpignan.Germany
The second-largest Polonia in the world and the largest in Europe is the Polish minority in Germany. Estimates of the number of Poles living in Germany vary from 2 million to about 3 million.The main Polonia organization is Kongres Polonii Niemieckiej / Polnischer Kongress in Deutschland.