Baltic States in the face of migration, demography and the eastern border of the EU | Multicultural Pomerania. Multicultural Baltic

Admission: free

Facilities: induction loop

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which joined the European Union together with Poland in 2004, have entered a period of mass emigration, negative natural growth and ageing societies. Currently, their migration profiles differ markedly. Lithuania has recorded a positive migration balance since 2019, resulting from labour immigration from Belarus and Central Asia and the return of citizens. Latvia, on the other hand, maintains a negative balance, and a large part of the immigrants in this country are remigrants. In Estonia, on the other hand, after a decade of positive balance, emigration surpassed immigration in 2025. The lecture compares migration trajectories and policies in the Baltic countries, as well as presents different models of minority integration in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Separate attention will be paid to the perspective of Poles living in the countries in question.

The meeting is led by: dr Kamila Kowalska from the Migration Observatory of the University of Gdańsk

dr Kamila Kowalska - Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Gdańsk. A graduate of law and international relations at the University of Wrocław and postgraduate studies in the field of migration and refugees at Sapienza University in Rome. She obtained her PhD in social sciences in the discipline of political science and administration at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Warsaw. Member of the Migration Policy Analysis Team in the Migration Research Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Scientific Council of the journal “Polski Przegląd Migracyjny”. Associate researcher at the Center for Migration Research at the University of Warsaw. Since 2003, she has been scientifically and professionally associated with Rome, where she conducted teaching and research in the field of labour migration of Poles to Italy, collaborating, among others, with the Centre for Migration Studies at Caritas Italiana. In the academic year 2007-2008 she lectured on the sociology of work at Sapienza University of Rome, and gave guest lectures at the Tor Vergata and Lumsa universities in the capital. In the years 2010-2024 she was employed at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Rome, where she dealt with labour law and Polish politics.

Meeting partner: Migration Observatory Centre for Sustainable Development of the University of Gdańsk