This paper examines migratory movements into Poland with a special emphasis on refugee mobility. In the past twenty years, almost 90 000 Chechen refugees have come to Poland, as it was the first safe country they reached. According to the Office for Foreigners data they constituted approximately 90 per cent of applicants for refugee status, 38 per cent of persons granted refugee status, 90 per cent of persons granted ‘tolerated status’ and 93 per cent of persons granted ‘subsidiary protection status’. However, a peculiarity of the Polish situation, confirmed by official statistics and research, is that ref-ugees treat Poland mainly as a transit country. The author focuses on the issue of integrating Chechen refugee children into the Polish education system, as well as Chechen children granted international protection or waiting to be granted such protection. The results of the study suggest that Polish immi-gration policy has no impact on the choice of destination of the refugees that were interviewed. None of the interviewees wanted to return to Chechnya, nor did they perceive Poland as a destination country. Children with refugee status, which enables them to stay legally in the Schengen area, ‘disappear’ not only from the Polish educational system but from Poland as a whole as well. This phenomenon hampers the possibility of achieving educational success when working with foreign children, and it challenges the immense efforts by Polish institutions to integrate refugee children into the school and the local community. Both official statistical data and research results were used in this paper.

The article explores war as a perplexing social phenomenon, one that often appears more enticing to mankind than peace despite the numerous advantages attributed to the latter, as exemplified in the writings of Hesiod. The origins of war remain somewhat enigmatic, but evidence of its existence can be traced back to Paleo-lithic settlements and ancient texts like the Epic of Gilgamesh. After the abandonment of divine laws, we find ourselves in a world see-mingly devoid of rules, witnessing a growing state of anarchy in in-ternational relations, a trend that has intensified since the early 21st century, culminating in Putin’s 2022 attack on Ukraine. Some phi-losophers, such as Umberto Eco, argue that humanity has entered a new era akin to the “Middle Ages” characterized by the resur-gence of private violence and the proliferation of religious and civil wars. Former ceasefires have given way to “cold wars” which, re-grettably, still have the propensity to escalate into “hot wars” as seen in the full-scale war in Ukraine. Furthermore, the current interna-tional landscape is overshadowed by the specter of nuclear deter-rence, where a precarious balance of fear prevails. Additionally, assumptions about the brevity of contemporary wars and the immi-nent return of refugees, which were advocated until very recently, now face reconsideration.