Migration and children left behind in numbers
Over the last decade, migration has become a major issue and topic for discussion in the British society due to the large numbers of foreign nationals arriving in the UK after the enlargement of the EU in 2004. There are now around 7.8 million foreign-born people living here, according to the Migration Observatory, some of whom have had to leave their families and children behind to move. So why do people choose to move away abroad?
Below is a comparison of the realities of life in Poland and in the UK designed to show the differences and give reasons for the influx of Polish migrants. Then, as a consequence of migration, the scale of the phenomenon of children left behind in both Poland and Europe is presented with figures and maps.
(Figures: Ministry of Education in Poland)
(Figures: Polish Ombudsman for Children, Children Left Behind, Ministry of Welfare of Latvia)
Above data is the latest official available information on each country. Some countries show percentages, others show figures. This is because there is no one set way of representing the numbers of children left behind. Some figures are also from different periods of time because there are no studies of the social phenomenon of children left behind carried out in the member states on a regular basis. Therefore, it is difficult to draw any meaningful comparisons between the countries at this point, except for the percentage of children left behind last year in Poland, Bulgaria and Moldova. The figures show that most of the children left behind, 26%, were in Bulgaria, followed by Moldova, 21%, and Poland, 20%.
Daria Crimella, the Desk Officer for Eastern Europe at the Children Left Behind network, which works to protect the children involved in migratory events and conducts studies on migration, admits that the figures are too inconsistent and outdated.
“Unfortunately this is all we have at the moment. At the European level, it is difficult to draw conclusions because the data is not gathered in the same period of time and does not consider the same range of time in which children are distant from their parents,” she says, adding that collection of data is an aspect that the Children Left Behind network needs to improve on, so that it can determine the extent of the phenomenon of children left behind and set an appropriate course of action to reduce those numbers.
You can find out more about the Children Left Behind network on its website here.
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