Do Legal Barriers Really Protect the Labor Markets? Empirical Evidence of Polish Migrants after 2004

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the role of intervening obstacles, understood as legal and policy barriers blocking immigrant access to foreign labor markets, in the international migration process. To do so, we use Polish international temporary emigrants in the years 2000-2012, which spans both the pre-accession period, when Polish citizens were not entitled to access other EU labor markets, as well as the post - accession period, when certain countries gradually removed intervening obstacles according to the transnational agreements.

The findings of this paper undermine the significance of intervening obstacles on Polish migration to EU countries. Instead, the primary driver of Polish migrants was the EU-15 business cycle - and not the opening of EU labor markets.