In recent years the public discourses on Polish migration in the UK have rapidly turned hostile, especially in the context of economic crisis in 2008, and subsequently after the EU referendum in ...2016. While initially Poles have been perceived as a 'desirable' migrant group and labelled as 'invisible' due to their whiteness, this perception shifted to the representation of these migrants as taking jobs from British workers, putting a strain on public services and welfare. While racist and xenophobic violence has been particularly noted following the Brexit vote, Polish migrants experienced various forms of racist abuse before that. This paper draws on narrative interviews with Polish migrant women illustrating their experiences of racism and xenophobia in Greater Manchester before and after the Brexit vote, and how they make sense of anti-Polish discourses and attitudes. This paper illustrates the importance of the interplay between the media and political discourses, class, race and the local context in shaping relations between Polish migrants and the local population.
This article is based upon a study of 10, primarily younger (ages 22-35) unmarried Polish men in Norway and explores the role that gender plays in their migration and how these men navigate between ...different gender ideals in Norway and Poland. By using an intersectional approach and transnational lens, this article draws attention to how Polish men in Norway negotiate their gendered identities between the social fields they exist within. The research on Polish migrant masculinities has mainly taken place in the UK and focused on men in family situations. This article contributes to this growing field by drawing attention to a less studied demographic in a country like Norway which has similar and different gender hierarchies as the UK. I draw attention to the plurality of masculinities that exist among Polish migrants, and the welcome changes/tensions that emerge as they encounter different gendered expectations in Norway. This article also highlights how the participants see stereotypes about Polish men as both beneficial in situations in Norway, and also serve as a source of marginalization, and the different ways these men then respond to this perceived marginalization.
Migration under the European Union’s (EU) Freedom of Movement is constructed as temporary and circular, implying that migrants respond to changing circumstances by returning home or moving elsewhere. ...This construction underpins predictions of an exodus of EU migrants from the United Kingdom (UK) in the context of Brexit. While migration data indicate an increase in outflows since the vote to leave the EU, the scale does not constitute a “Brexodus.” Moreover, EU migrants’ applications for UK citizenship have been increasing. The data, though, are not sufficiently detailed to reveal who is responding to Brexit in which way. This article aims to offer a deeper understanding of how migrants experience and respond to changing geopolitical episodes such as Brexit. Introducing the term “unsettling events,” we analyze data collected longitudinally, in the context of three moments of significant change: 2004 EU enlargement, 2008–09 economic recession, and Brexit. Examining our data, mainly on Polish migrants, through a life-course lens, our findings highlight the need to account for the situatedness of migrant experiences as lived in particular times (both personal and historical), places, and relationships. In so doing, we reveal various factors informing migrants’ experiences of and reactions to unsettling events and the ways in which their experiences and reactions potentially impact migration projects.
This article applies the concept of Britain as a community of citizens and a community of communities to the analysis of post-2004 Polish migrants. This concept received its clearest articulation in ...the 2000 report on The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain chaired by Bhikhu Parekh, which constituted a hallmark of the national debate on multiculturalism. The report is used as an intellectual inspiration to see post-2004 Poles not just as white labour migrants to the UK, but as citizens and community within the multi-ethnic Britain envisaged by Parekh and his co-authors. The discussion draws on a set of qualitative data gathered in the Northern English district of Wakefield following the Brexit vote. The analysis reveals a high degree of local embeddedness of Polish migrants both as citizens and community, which involves civil relations across ethnic lines and the sense of shared commitment. This inclusion is however undermined by the pattern of paid employment, language difficulties and arbitrariness of the Brexit state, which interviewees experienced both as a community and as individual citizens. While following the dialectical frames set by the report, this article expands notions of the boundary of multi-ethnic Britain by putting this ethnic and post-EU enlargement group within its map.
There is a dearth of information on the link between racialised whiteness and migrants' residential decisions in England. This article aims to address this knowledge gap by analysing the narratives ...of 41 Polish migrants who resided in England between 2015 and 2016. The investigation uncovers that race influenced their residential decisions in two primary ways: firstly, by the migrants relying on potentially harmful stereotypes to classify their neighbourhoods as safe or unsafe, and secondly, by how other residents racialised their whiteness, affecting their visibility and making them vulnerable to discrimination and racism. These experiences led to intricate spatial strategies of inclusion and exclusion, which have temporal dimensions and are shaped by the migrants' interpretation of threat and their likelihood of encountering additional harmful encounters. The study's results hold significant implications for policymakers who are concerned with migrant integration, emphasizing the need for more inclusive spaces between migrants and existing residents.
Scholars sometimes conceptualize migrants and their kin as ‘transnational families' in acknowledgement that migration does not end with settlement and that migrants maintain regular contacts and ...exchange care across borders. Recent studies reveal that state policies and international regulations influence the maintenance of transnational family solidarity. We aim to contribute to our understanding of how families' care‐giving arrangements are situated within institutional contexts. We specify an analytical framework comprising a typology of care‐giving arrangements within transnational families, a typology of resources they require for care giving, and a specification of institutions through which those resources are in part derived. We illustrate the framework through a comparative analysis of two groups of migrants – Salvadorans in Belgium and Poles in the UK. We conclude by arguing that while institutions matter they are not the sole factor, and identify how future research might develop a more fully comprehensive situated transnationalism.
Multiple masculinities of Polish migrant men Bell, Justyna; Pustułka, Paula
Norma : International Journal for Masculinity Studies,
20/4/3/, Letnik:
12, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper examines the negotiation and re-shaping of multiple mobile masculinities among recent Polish intra-European migrants. It explores the impact of family and cross border relationships with ...other family members and friends on men's identities and the enactment of masculinities. Drawing on the data collected for five thematically linked qualitative research studies, we consider voices of men, as well as juxtapose them with the reflections shared by their partners. One of the questions leading the analysis is whether the hegemonic masculinity still holds for the Polish men abroad. While we suggest that it dominates the men's narratives, we seek to highlight its limitations and the emergence of stories pointing to divergent and plural masculinities. We explore how the alternative non-worker roles of migrant men as husbands, fathers, sons and friends figure into the picture.
Seit dem kurzen „Sommer der Migration“ 2015 sind Fragen, ob, unter welchen Bedingungen und mit welchen Folgen Zugezogene Teil der Gesellschaft oder bloß zeitweise geduldete Arbeitskräfte, Geflohene ...oder Asylsuchende sind, in der Politik und Öffentlichkeit wieder heftig umstritten. Dahinter wiederum steckt die tiefer greifende Frage, nach welchen Kriterien gegenwärtig wie historisch die Zugehörigkeit zu einer „Gesellschaft“ bemessen wird. Anknüpfend an neuere, relational vorgehende Ansätze zur Analyse von menschlicher Mobilität befasst sich der Aufsatz mit dem organisierten Umzug von deutsch-polnischen Arbeitern und ihren Familien aus dem Ruhrgebiet nach Frankreich zu Beginn und während der Ruhrbesetzung. Er zeigt auf der Ebene der historischen Interpretation, dass eine Untersuchung des Ruhrgebiets als eines von Mobilität geprägten Wirtschaftsraums geeignet ist, um – aufbauend auf den geschichtswissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zu Grenzregionen wie dem Elsass, Oberschlesien und Böhmen – verschiedene Formen zu erfassen, wie und mit welchen Konsequenzen sich Zugehörigkeitskonstruktionen unter den Bedingungen umstrittener staatlicher Souveränitäten etwa im Zuge des Ersten Weltkriegs oder der Auflösung der europäischen Imperien verändert haben. Zweitens wird auf methodologischer Ebene argumentiert, dass eine multiperspektivische Analyse besonders aufschlussreich ist, um Vorgänge zur Kategorisierung und Neuverortung von Menschen genauer zu erfassen und ihr Zusammenwirken auch in Hinsicht auf ihre langfristigen Auswirkungen auf die Kategorisierten besser zu verstehen. Im Kontext der Bemühungen in den Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, Zugehörigkeiten primär biographisch und situativ zu erfassen, können Historikerinnen und Historiker auf diese Weise dazu beitragen, das Ineinandergreifen von Selbstverortungen einerseits und organisierten, häufig rechtlich bindenden Zuordnungsvorgängen andererseits zu diskutieren und verschiedene Zugehörigkeitskonstruktionen zu historisieren.
Europe has recently become closely associated with LGBTQ rights. It remains unclear, however, what is the role of this association in everyday European imaginations and identifications. Empirical ...research on European identity hardly ever discusses the role of LGBTQ rights. Nor do we know much about European identifications of LGBTQ people themselves. In this article, I address those gaps from the perspective of Polish LGBTQs in the UK. Drawing on 30 interviews from a recent two-year research project, I discuss my participants’ European imaginations and identifications by developing the concepts of ‘uncanny Europe’ and ‘protective Europeanness’. I show how my participants tend to view Europe as ‘diverse’, ‘open’ and ‘tolerant’, while attributing those characteristics exclusively to Western Europe. I also demonstrate that they tend to readily identify as European in the context of increasingly hostile national identities, with the increasing anti-Polish xenophobia in the UK and growing anti-LGBTQ discrimination in Poland.
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