The purpose of the article is to indicate the variability of the image of a refugee and a migrant in Poland. The change of image is directly related to the intensity of media coverage and specific conditions resulting from the international and current situation in a given country. In the case of Poland, we have several examples in which the image in the context changed from a refugee to a migrant, from a positive perception to a negative perception of specific national groups, but reverse processes were observed, from the image of a labour migrant to a refugee. The article has been divided into three parts. The first concerns the change in the image of Chechens, the second is related to the crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border in 2021, while the third concerns the change in the image of Ukrainians after the outbreak of war in 2022. The article was based on the analysis of existing data, surveys of the Public Opinion Research Center after 1989.