Poland has rapidly transformed from an emigration country into an immigration destination, with Ukrainians, Turks, Nigerians, and others now seeking housing in its cities. But as EUI Fernand Braudel Fellow Barbara Jancewicz and Sara Bojarczuk’s forthcoming study reveals, finding an apartment depends heavily on where you're from.
The research team used ten testers representing different nationalities to call and message landlords about apartment viewings. The disparities were stark: Polish callers succeeded over 65% of the time, Ukrainian callers around 40%, and Nigerian callers just 27%. For every apartment viewing, a Polish person secured with one call, a Nigerian applicant needed to make four.
Yet perhaps the most surprising finding wasn't about who gets discriminated against, but about how different communication channels affect bias. As rental markets across Europe have shifted from phone calls to email and text messages, many assumed this digital transition might increase bias due to more anonymity of applicants. Bojarczuk and Jancewicz's research challenges that assumption.
"We were very surprised," says Jancewicz. "When you send text messages, you have a lower success rate overall because the conversation takes longer. But it didn't impact the levels of discrimination we found. It was the same."
Understanding this persistence of discrimination matters especially in Poland's context. "Poland is a very unique place right now," Jancewicz explains. "We used to be an emigration country, but now we suddenly find ourselves with a lot of people coming to us, and it's not something we've been used to for a very long time."
The research team wanted to understand who would face the most discrimination and why. Would landlords favour people from culturally similar backgrounds? Would groups that Poles frequently encounter face less bias due to familiarity? To test these questions, they chose four nationalities: Poles (the local baseline), Ukrainians (culturally close and increasingly common in Poland), Turks (more culturally distant), and Nigerians (a visible minority less commonly encountered).
"Discrimination is not just in Western Europe or the US," Jancewicz notes. "Wherever we look, we find it. It might be different groups: In Poland, Poles would be preferred, but they'd be discriminated against in Ireland or Germany."
The results largely aligned with cultural distance predictions, but Turkey presented a puzzle. Despite being a predominantly Muslim country, which researchers expected would trigger significant bias, Turkish callers achieved nearly 40%, almost matching Ukrainians.
"We don't know why that is. I think this is something for future study," Jancewicz admits. "We chose Turkey because it's a predominantly Muslim country, so we expected a lot of discrimination because of that, but it was not the case."
To understand what drives these decisions, Bojarczuk interviewed landlords and agents, asking them to explain their reasoning.
"When they talk about it, a lot of it makes sense," Jancewicz says. "They need a tenant who will pay, take care of the apartment, and who they can communicate with."
Landlords offered various justifications, some grounded in economic concerns. They worried that if a migrant tenant stops paying and returns home, they'd have no way to recover the money. "What they talked about more is risk. They were somehow convinced that with a Polish person, because they'd probably stay in Poland, they'd be more able to get their money back, which is reasonable."
They also worried about different cultural standards. "They said that a Polish person knows how to care for an apartment in Poland, and people from different cultures might have different standards. Particularly that migrants might want to live there in larger numbers than a Polish family would."
But then the explanations became less rational. Landlords repeated what Jancewicz calls "stories of weird content" – third-hand tales of problematic tenants that shaped their decisions about entire nationalities.
There was what she describes as a "culture of smells". "When they were discussing people from India, they would say they cook different dishes and the smell goes into the walls and you can't get rid of it after the person left," Jancewicz recounts. "I found this really weird. But then I was reading about one of the Nordic countries, and there was this comment from a landlord – about a different national group – and it was exactly about smell."
When shown profiles of potential tenants and asked to rank them, landlords consistently placed Polish applicants first. But when pressed on why they ranked others lower, many wouldn't articulate concrete reasons.
"A lot of times the answer would be 'I have this intuition,'" Jancewicz recalls. "It's very hard to push back when someone tells you they have an intuition that this would be a good tenant. I'm not sure if they're able to pinpoint exactly what the problem is."
One example reveals just how deep these biases run. "One of the participants said they would not rent to a person named Mustafa because when they think about the name, it sounds like dirt," Jancewicz says. "We're not talking about soft stories, but really deep connotations. This person said it made them worried the person wouldn't keep the apartment clean. I have no idea why Mustafa connects with something like this for them, but it's very strong."
The research team tried an intervention: In half of their calls, testers mentioned high-skilled professions: programmer, doctor or financial analyst. Surely, economic stability would help?
"It didn't help much. It was negligible," Jancewicz says. "Of course there are things you cannot fight. You cannot say 'I will not run away and not pay you money' or 'I will care for the apartment.' You're not going to say 'Hello, I'm Mustafa and I will keep the apartment clean' – that would sound really weird."
The finding underscores that housing discrimination isn't purely economic. "Economics plays a role, but also emotions and trust," Jancewicz explains. "When you give someone the apartment, you trust them to pay and take care of it. If you don't have this trust at the start, it's very hard."
This emotional dimension helps explain why the shift to digital communication hasn't reduced discrimination. Researchers initially theorised that email might make things worse because it removes the human connection, but it could also help by removing accent cues and giving landlords time to reflect.
"When you read someone's message, it's more anonymous and impersonal. You don't feel that close to this person," Jancewicz explains. "But then you have time to think about it. When you're talking, you need to decide on the spot."
During phone calls, researchers noticed revealing patterns. "In some calls, they would say yes, the apartment is available. "But then after a moment, they're like, 'Okay, it's available, but I can't arrange a meeting because I'm away,’” Jancewicz describes. "You could see this pause gave them a moment to reconsider, particularly with discriminated groups."
Yet, email's extra thinking time didn't help applicants. The mode of communication – phone versus text – made no difference to discrimination levels. "It was the same, which is actually very useful for research," Jancewicz notes. "It says this transition might not have had such a huge impact, enabling us to compare different studies more readily."
The research contributes to growing evidence that housing discrimination is pervasive across Europe, yet systematic comparison remains difficult. In a review of 107 discrimination studies conducted between 2000 and 2023, Jancewicz found only three that compared multiple countries.
"Most of them are in just one country, which makes it hard to find European patterns of discrimination," she explains.
This is beginning to change. During a month-long visit to the EUI through the EUI Widening Europe Programme-funded Fernand Braudel Fellowship, Jancewicz discovered that Professor Valentina Di Stasio is conducting a multi-country study. "This is going to be wonderful because we'll finally be able to see how it compares across countries."
For rapidly diversifying Poland, such cross-country comparisons might provide a valuable lesson of what might lie ahead. Even countries with long histories of diversity show entrenched bias. “In France, despite decades of immigration, discrimination persists," Jancewicz notes. "If we have more positive experiences with renting to such people, then it might improve, but it will take time."
Yet Jancewicz sees reasons for cautious optimism about Poland's particular trajectory. Unlike some Western European countries, Poland hasn't developed many concentrated ethnic enclaves. " The Ukrainians disperse within our cities, and I have a feeling that most other nationalities do too," she observes. "I think this will actually help them integrate better."
In most schools now, there are Ukrainian students in classrooms. "You have this experience from the start. Of course it doesn't have to go the good way; maybe they would learn to have negative views. But it's still a better situation than if they were separate, with special schools just for them or special locations just for them. I think this is going to be easier."
What happens next depends partly on whether positive interactions can overcome deep-seated biases, stereotypes, and gut feelings that even high-skilled qualifications cannot shift. The dispersal of immigrant communities throughout Polish cities, rather than concentration in separate neighbourhoods, may offer a path forward.
Barbara Jancewicz visited the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences in November 2025, through the EUI Widening Europe Programme-funded Fernand Braudel Fellowship. She is currently head of the Socio-Economic Research Unit at the University of Warsaw’s Centre of Migration Research. Her main research interests include income inequality perception, survey methodology, statistical analysis, and migration.
The Fernand Braudel Fellowship special call for applications was launched in the framework of the EUI Widening Europe Programme, which is supported by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States. The programme is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in targeted Widening countries.