Zmiany cywilizacyjne w województwie opolskim w latach 1950–2015
Civilizational changes in the Opolskie Voivodeship in the years 1950–2015

Summary/Abstract: This article characterises the demographic, socio-cultural, economic and spatial processes impacting upon the area of the contemporary Opolskie Voivodeship in the post-war period. The focus is on issues connected with transformations of the population structure. An attempt is made to indicate the causes of these population changes and also to evaluate their effects for the functioning of the regional system linked with Opolskie. It is established that population processes, and in particular migration, are a reflection of social and economic changes, which assume the character of civilizational changes at the time when their effects are new and different from the starting social structures. In the regional systems of historical Silesia it is also possible to identify this type of process resulting in new population structures. The term „civilizational change” here denotes such transformations in population structures and in the demographic behaviour of residents that leads to the formation of a new type of regional community. This can be understood as a historical process which unfolds differently in each region (including in the Opolskie Voivodeship). The article shows that the population, socio-cultural, economic and political transformations occurring in the Opolskie Voivodeship, mainly under the influence of a permanent state of emigration, are systematic and enduring and also so deeply rooted that one can reasonably term this to be a migration region. On the level of the Opolskie Voivodeship as a whole, the migration preferences of residents are no longer linked to the traditional dichotomous division of eastern (emigration) and western („settling”) parts; rather, to an ever greater degree, the current differentiation is socio-economic, in which not only the constant outflow abroad, but above all the fluctuating inflow of people holds significant meaning as a conditioning factor for the socio-economic development of the region.

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