“Bakeries are springing up everywhere”: Georgian migration to Poland booms

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

By Siôn Pennar

Like a gymnast on a pommel horse, Vaja Japaridze swings his hips and lifts himself onto the edge of a barrel-shaped bread oven. He leans into it, and with the heat rising, slaps the dough he’s just been caressing onto the brick surface.

Japaridze, a 54-year-old baker from Telavi in eastern Georgia, has built many ovens like this one at Piekarnia Gruzińska Tbilisi – one of a handful of Georgian bakeries in the Jeżyce district of Poznań.

In 2016, a friend suggested that Japaridze move to Poland to share his knowledge of shoti – a long, curved and distinctively Georgian type of bread. In the years since, Georgian bakeries and restaurants have become common in many Polish towns and cities, with Poles developing a taste for Georgia’s wine and delicacies such as khachapuri cheese-filled bread, kubdari meat-filled bread and khinkali dumplings.

“Poles really enjoy Georgian baking, they’re very happy with it,” says Japaridze, who ran his own business in Warsaw before moving to Poznań to work for his friends Anna and Aleksy Szosziaszwili. Anna, a Pole who met her Georgian husband in the 1990s, opened her bakery six years ago, where she employs a team of Georgian staff.

“I think you need a real Georgian to create the Georgian taste,” she says. “There is a lot of competition, but look around you…The man who knows about bread makes the bread. The man who knows how to make khachapuri dough makes the khachapuri dough. The woman who knows how to speak to customers speaks to customers.”

The number of Georgian citizens living in Poland has increased rapidly since Japaridze first moved over. The European Union loosened travel restrictions in 2017, meaning that Georgians can stay in the Schengen area for 90 days without a visa, but many opt to stay for longer.

Among EU member states, Greece has an established Georgian diaspora, and there are long-standing patterns of migration to destinations such as Germany, but in recent years Poland has become a top choice for Georgians seeking employment.

Figures from Eurostat show that, in every calendar year since 2018, more Georgians have been granted first residence permit in Poland than in any other EU country. This has been part of a broader wave of migration to Poland, which has for the last seven years running issued more first residence permits to immigrants from outside the EU than any other member state.

Data from Poland’s Social Security Institution (ZUS) show that Georgians made up 2.3% of the foreign citizens registered for health and social insurance at the end of 2023. That makes them the third largest national group, behind Ukrainians (67.3%) and Belarusians (11.5%) and ahead of Indians (1.8%) and Moldovans (1.3%).

Unsurprisingly, economic factors are driving these migration flows. Although unemployment in Georgia is falling according to official figures, over 16% were classified as jobless in 2023. A 2022 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) described Georgia as being “highly dependent on remittances” from its diaspora.

Dr Grigol Julukhidze, a professor at the Caucasus University in Tbilisi, says that the Georgian economy keeps “worsening” and that Poland, where wages are higher, offers plenty of opportunities to earn some money, some of which can be sent to relatives back home.

“A growing economy and growing foreign investment transform Poland into a very attractive destination if you want to find a job,” he says. “It is very easy to get the residence permit. And these economic tendencies in Poland allow foreigners…to find a shortcut to small success. For an ordinary Georgian, it is much easier to achieve some kind of success in Poland than in western Europe.”

According to the OECD, most Georgian emigrants to Poland are looking to stay temporarily for work purposes, facilitated by a “simplified procedure of access to the Polish labour market”. The majority of those entering the Polish workforce are “less skilled”, says Julukhidze, adding that they are likely to be employed in industries such as transport and agriculture, or in factories.

Data show that 19.5% of ZUS-registered Georgians in Poland work in manufacturing, 15.9% in the building industry, 13.2% in transport, with 31.7% involved in administration or support activities, a category that includes working for employment agencies.

The same source reveals that 61.5% of Georgians registered with ZUS are employed on the basis of agency or task-specific contracts rather than permanent employment contracts, and that the vast majority – over 81% – are men.

Julukhidze, who previously worked in Kraków’s Jagiellonian University, says that many Georgians would prefer to earn in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or the UK, but that Poland is a “comfortable” alternative where the mentality and culture is better understood.

“Poles have a very positive general attitude towards Georgians, because of the existence of a common enemy, which is Russia,” he says, in reference to current political tension and historical periods of Russian dominance over both Poland and Georgia.

The late Polish president Lech Kaczyński has been commemorated as a hero in Georgia, after he expressed his solidarity with the country during a famous speech in Tbilisi during the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.

“Poles understand that in the past they also had to emigrate and leave the country in order to get more income,” says Julukhidze. “This understanding of the problem allows Georgians to feel, I would not say at home, but their daily life is much easier in Poland than, for example, in Germany or Scandinavian countries.”

Maria Akopiani, 29, is part of the wave of Georgian citizens making the move to Poland after the visa rules were slackened. An ethnic Armenian from Tbilisi, she migrated to Poznań in January 2021 and works at the till on Anna’s team at Piekarnia Gruzińska Tbilisi.

Before emigrating, she had endured a five-month period of unemployment, having been laid off at the height of the Covid pandemic. “If it wasn’t for Covid and what happened, I wouldn’t have come here, because I had a good job,” she explains.

Akopiani felt that the economic circumstances were “much better” in Poland than Georgia at the time, and although rising prices since 2022 has made life tougher for her, she wants to stay in Poznań, especially because of her partner and young son. “I thought that Georgia was home. But two years ago I went to Georgia, and I was like…this [Poland] is home. My father and mother are over there, but here I’m fulfilled.”

While Polish attitudes to Georgians appear to be positive in the most part, there are some tensions. In March, the Rzeczpospolita daily reported that the crime rate among Georgian citizens legally resident in Poland is higher than any other group of foreigners.

Wojciech Wojtasiewicz, from the Polish Institute of International Affairs, told the newspaper that criminal activity abroad can be seen as a lucrative source of income for migrants looking to earn money. He added that there is a market for items such as falsified documents, because of Poland’s complicated bureaucracy.

Stanisław Raźniewski, president of the Polish-Georgian Chamber of Commerce, also points to “challenges” around trafficking which crop up from time to time. “There are companies which offer Georgian citizens golden mountains, but when they get to Poland, the situation is totally different,” he says.

Institutions such as his, along with state bodies, have intervened to help people out, and although “thousands” of people may be affected, he emphasises that it is “not a huge problem”.

Many Poles are, in fact, charmed by Georgia, its cuisine and culture. Poles are its tenth biggest cohort of tourists, with nearly 90,000 Polish visitors to the country in 2023 – more than any other EU state. This dynamic – along with the presence of Georgian migrants – has opened a market for Georgian produce in Poland, says Raźniewski.

Pastries at Piekarnia Gruzińska Tbilisi in Poznań (photo credit: Siôn Pennar)

“The people who travel to Georgia, when they see the culture, the emotions…Georgia can impress very quickly,” he explains. “That’s why these bakeries are springing up everywhere. And last year, one of the biggest international supermarket chains [in Poland] was even interested in buying frozen pastry from Georgia.”

For those Georgians who settled in Poland well before the recent wave of migration, the omnipresence of their national cuisine on Polish high streets marks a real change. “I was among the first people in Poland to explain what Georgia is, that it’s another country, which has its own language, cuisine and traditions,” explains Giorgi Beżuaszwili, a musician, poet and chef who came to Poland in the late 1990s.

The 48-year-old, who has made a living playing music and running restaurants in different parts of Poland, now manages Dom Tramwajarza, an informal cultural centre and Georgian eatery in Poznań. It’s hard to hear him speak over a cacophony of sound – in one room, a choir is harmonising a version of sto lat (the Polish “happy birthday” song) while dance beats are blaring from speakers in the bar.

“This type of place is for sitting, drinking Georgian wine, chatting and listening to Georgian music,” he explains. Having advised other Georgians on setting up businesses in Poland, he’s upbeat about the increasing competition. “It’s good, I have nothing against it – I always say that more bakeries is better than more kebab shops.”

His old friend, Zviad Glonti – another long-term Polish resident – smiles when I ask him whether he approves of the influx of Georgian bakeries onto Poland’s high streets: “For me, it’s a luxury,” he beams. It doesn’t seem that this “luxury” is going anywhere, with migration from Georgia set to continue in the short term.

“Right now in Poland we have challenges in terms of a well-qualified and hard-working labour force,” says Raźniewski. “We see that the number will grow. Of course, we [also] see the risk for Polish companies that people from Georgia, after just a few months or years, will move to other European countries.”

Julukhidze also believes that the flow from Georgia will continue as long as the current visa rules remain in place. Ahead of the Georgian parliamentary elections in October, the European Commission warned that the 2017 agreement to make it easier for Georgians to enter the EU could be suspended if the “democratic decline” overseen by the ruling Georgian Dream party continued.

Days after the elections, which gave Georgian Dream a landslide victory amid allegations of vote rigging, an EU report on Georgia’s potential accession to the bloc detailed the country’s “backsliding” and its road to EU membership was effectively halted.

Even if the pro-EU opposition had come into power, Julukhidze says that the economic situation in the country would provoke further emigration to destinations such as Poland in the medium term.

“I see no scenario in which Georgia becomes a country with a strong economy in the near future, in the upcoming two to three years,” he says. “The number [of migrants to Poland] will be growing annually, and hopefully we’ll soon have more Georgians living in Poland than in Greece or Italy.”

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Siôn Pennar

Siôn Pennar is a Welsh journalist based in Poznań, western Poland. He previously worked as a senior reporter for the BBC Wales radio, TV and online news services.