Study on Migration from Belarus to EU Countries

We present the study “Migration from Belarus to EU Countries (Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland): Before and After 2020”.

The migration of Belarusian citizens to the EU is not a new process: it began immediately after the collapse of the USSR. For a long time, this process attracted little research interest, and publications on the character and composition of this migration are currently almost absent. The situation has changed significantly since 2020. The political crisis in Belarus, followed by mass protests, led to broad mobilisation of the Belarusian diaspora around the world, turning it into an important political phenomenon in contemporary Belarus.

Over the past few years, the political, cultural, and economic significance of the diaspora has grown, but until now little has been known about its size and its social and political structure. In recent years, specialised studies of the Belarusian diaspora have appeared, but most of them focus on the politically active part of emigration. This study aims to at least partially fill this gap.

The author of the study is Andrei Kazakevich, PhD in Political Science, Director of the Political Sphere Institute.

Text of the study (English version)

Text of the study (Russian version)

This study was prepared within the framework of the international project “European Network for Belarus”. The project is coordinated by Austausch e.V. (Germany) and implemented in cooperation with partner organisations working in Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Germany. The network facilitates the exchange of expert knowledge about Belarus and makes Belarus more visible in Germany, the partner countries of the project, and at the EU level. The project is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office under the programme “Expanding Cooperation with Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia” and by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).