Why Do Migrants Intend to Stay? Social Norms and Local Opportunity Structures in a Non-Capital City in Poland

Why migrants decide to remain in a destination city is a key question for research on migrant settlement and local integration, particularly beyond capital-city contexts. This article examines the determinants of settlement intentions among international migrants in Poznań, a major non-capital city in western Poland. Drawing on original survey data from 186 migrants and using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), the study analyses how settlement intentions are shaped by attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, selected migration motives, destination-related factors, and socio-demographic characteristics. The findings suggest that, within the surveyed sample, settlement intentions are influenced primarily by post-arrival evaluations and social influences rather than by pre-migration motives. Subjective norms and attitudes emerge as the strongest direct predictors of intentions to stay, while perceived behavioural control operates indirectly. Local opportunity structures—especially labour market opportunities, quality of public services, and the presence of co-ethnic networks—strengthen settlement intentions through their effects on attitudes and subjective norms. By contrast, push factors related to the country of origin do not significantly explain intentions to remain. The study advances research on migrant settlement by showing that local opportunity structures do not affect settlement intentions directly and uniformly but are translated into intentions through migrants’ attitudes, subjective norms and perceived settlement feasibility. The findings also suggest that long-term migrant retention in non-capital urban destinations depends not only on labour demand, but also on the quality of local inclusion.