Processes of Change in the Social Structure of Poland’s Rural Population in the Years 1991–2013

Abstract

The article discusses changes in the social structure of rural population in the years 1991–2013. In that period the share of farmers decreased from 46% to 27%, the share of workers increasing from 33% to 45% and the share of middle class – from 15% to 27%. These changes are the result of three overlapping processes: deagrarianisation / depeasantization (the specific, two-phase “end” of the peasants), proletarianization (saturation of rural community by the representatives of social groups classified as blue-collar workers) and gentrification (i.e. the growth of middle class, also called bourgeois). In Poland, those processes took a different course than in the West: they are not only shifted in time, but they also overlap. The article is based on the data from 1991, 2003 and 2013.