Contemporary Migrant Families

Contemporary Migrant Families:

Actors and Issues

Edited by

Magdalena Ślusarczyk, Paula Pustułka and Justyna Struzik

Contemporary Migrant Families: Actors and Issues Edited by Magdalena Ślusarczyk, Paula Pustułka and Justyna Struzik This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by Magdalena Ślusarczyk, Paula Pustułka, Justyna Struzik and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-1346-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1346-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures............................................................................................ vii List of Tables ............................................................................................ viii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Magdalena Ślusarczyk, Paula Pustułka and Justyna Struzik Part I. Migrant Experiences around Care and Health Chapter One ............................................................................................... 14 Expanding the Imagination of Care Scholarship through Studies at the Intersection between Ageing/Old Age and Migration Sandra Torres Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 33 When Work Becomes Family: Function and Dynamics of the “Professional Familiarisation” in the Transnational Domestic Care Network between Poland and Germany Patrycja Kniejska Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 48 Handling Ambivalence: Transnational Health Practices and Migrant Evaluations of Health Services Justyna Struzik, Justyna Bell, Paula Pustułka and Magdalena Ślusarczyk Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 74 The Polish Experience of Childbirth in Norway as an Element of Acculturation of Poles: Narrative Analysis Magdalena Gajewska and Magdalena Żadkowska

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Part II. Transnational Families Here and There Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 96 Sending and Receiving Country Perspectives on Family Migration Anne White Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 117 On Holiday? Polish Migrants Visit their Families in Poland Anna Horolets Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 137 How do Polish Migrant Mothers in the UK Deploy Cultural Capital when Negotiating their Children’s Educational Prospects? Magdalena Lopez Rodriguez Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 162 The Breadwinner and the Housekeeper: Constructions of Gender Identities in Post-2004 Polish Migration to Ireland Natalia Mazurkiewicz Chapter Nine ............................................................................................ 182 “I Just Can’t Imagine if My Kids Will Not Speak, Will Not Write and Read in Polish”: Heritage Language Transmission among Polish Families in the Republic of Ireland Michelle Share, Liz Kerrins and Cayla Williams Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 207 Transmission of the Culture of Migration: Growing Up to Transnationalism Bartłomiej Walczak

LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 2-1 Types of relationships between the players in the care settings Fig. 2-2 Functions and dynamics of professional familiarisation in

transnational care settings Fig. 10-1 Destination countries Fig. 10-2 Migration readiness and parents’ migration strategies

LIST OF TABLES Tab. 10-1 Migration readiness Tab. 10-2 Migratory readiness and gender Tab. 10-2 Determinants of migration readiness: Logistic regression Tab. 10-3 Determinants of migration readiness: Logistic regression model

for three educational levels

INTRODUCTION

MAGDALENA ŚLUSARCZYK, PAULA PUSTUŁKA AND JUSTYNA STRUZIK

Despite extensive and continuous academic interest in migrant and transnational families (see, for example, Bryceson and Vuorela 2002; Goulbourne et al. 2010; Parreñas 2005; Dreby 2010; Slany et al. 2018), a stereotypical view is still that those leading mobile lives are somehow beyond the contours of normativity. This concerns both kinship and family practices of “familyhood” across borders, and the bi- or multicultural settings of providing or offering care. Specifically, because family and care are strongly value-laden terms, they are usually talked about in connection with migration and mobility in predominantly negative contexts. Consequently, we primarily hear about migration leading to broken relationships, dissolution of families and bonds, substandard provisions of care, abandonment, exploitation of employees and so on. In this climate of public imagination of migrants either being “dangerous” or concurrently stealing one’s job and scrounging off the welfare, it is no small feat to be a migration scholar.

Trying to overcome the universalising views that essentialise human experience requires a wholly different point of departure, which we wish to take on in this volume on Contemporary Migrant Families: Actors and Issues. This is because a now-well-established transnational paradigm allows for a more nuanced analysis, originating with the premise that not only normalises mobility but also proves that various ties and relationships can be continued in the long-term despite spatial distance (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002; Slany et al. 2018). In other words, a transnational paradigm certainly accounts for migration challenges and their resulting family and care tensions, but it equally sheds light on the affective work linked to maintaining connections across borders. We therefore talk about both the technology-mediated and diffused practices in the contexts of physical separation, and ascertaining typical forms of “doing family” (Morgan 1996) during the process of visiting friends and relatives as migrants (Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2016). Analogously, the global circulation of

Introduction

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care has been primarily viewed as problematic, even though the interplay between shortages (in the destination states) and migrants’ absence resulting from economic struggles (in the sending countries) calls for an understanding of this process as somewhat of a necessity (Baldassar and Merla 2013). On the whole, a transnational lens may further showcase how new family practices are devised and deployed in mobile family lives, thus allowing an argument that migration shall not only hinder but also enrich certain dimensions of contemporary family life and caregiving.

This book plays on the dichotomy of migration as “the new normal” and mobility as a continuous source of challenges. It was originally inspired by a multifaceted study on transnational families conducted under the framework of the TRANSFAM project1 from 2013 to 2016. Four research teams in Poland and Norway drew on the idea of “doing family” (Morgan 1996) through everyday routine and creative practices within the mobility processes (see Slany et al. 2018). The core issues examined in this inquiry concerned such problems as maintaining kinship ties across borders, new patterns of mothering and fathering, children’s sense of belonging and identifications, and social capital and engagement in a community life. The study revealed that “doing family” in the migration context often eludes simple definitions of national space or typical family. Instead, it offered a transnational understanding of how a person practically and pragmatically arranges one’s family and kinship, strategically choosing pathways of care, child-rearing, relationships at home, maintaining traditions and so forth (ibid.). To reiterate, it was found in the study that people’s experiences of international mobility are always a composite of “good” and “bad”, rarely eliciting a clear-cut purely positive or completely negative outlook on the role of migration for different aspects like family, care, employment, values, sense of safety or overall happiness.

We believe that the contributions collected for this volume illustrate the very point made above, particularly zooming in on the fact that contemporary families are neither monolithic nor isolated. The present volume is grounded in family and care issues being at the core of multiple

1 The Transfam project (full title: Doing Family in Transnational Context. Demographic Choices, Welfare Adaptations, School Integration and Every-day Life of Polish Families Living in Polish-Norwegian Transnationality) was completed by an international consortium led by the Jagiellonian University from 2013 to 2016. Transfam received funding from the Polish-Norwegian Research Programme operated by the National Centre for Research and Development under the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 in the frame of Project Contract No. Pol-Nor/197905/4/2013.

Contemporary Migrant Families: Actors and Issues 3

interests and stakeholders, especially with reference to politics and policies. The book provides us also with a discussion on the intersection of migrant families’ practices with, among other factors, gender roles, (trans)national identities, dilemmas and risks related to raising children in multicultural settings. This is because families bear undeniable connectivity and relevance for multiple actors. While migrant individuals operate within nuclear families abroad, they also belong to extended and multilocal kinships structures (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002). A growing presence of wider families and communities affected by contemporary migration “here” and “there” in turn impacts the broader social challenges and warrants policy innovations in care, health, education, diaspora and so on. Multiple agents should continuously be seen as involved in migrant family meaning-making while stakeholders at different levels can contribute to altering the focus to family issues that become more pressing at certain times.

The volume enters into a discussion on an unstable and complex image of care-related issues and practices, especially when it comes to multiple care services provided by migrants and availability or accessibility of the public care sector (e.g., healthcare) to migrant populations. There are an infinite number of studies showing the complexity of the care phenomenon through the lens of gender, class, religion, ethnic and racial relations (Parreñas 2001; Slany et al. 2018), but also demonstrating global processes and shifts regarding mobility, inequalities and access to social security provisions (Hochschild 2000). Interestingly here, focusing on migration, care and social policies allows us to unpack currently emerging social, cultural and economic processes and occurrences like ageing societies, declining fertility, precarious and unstable labour, new models of family life, global care chains, right-wing shifts in public life or growing divisions in the communities (Hochschild 2016). It may also facilitate a better grasp on the presence of anti-immigration attitudes and behaviours in the realm of shrinking welfare programs.

The book also offers an exploration of a certain “normalcy” or casualness of migrant families’ practices by demonstrating how these experiences become an ordinary part of the social landscape and how they are anchored in transnational spaces. Such insights, often linking macro and micro levels of analysis, enable scholars and researchers to disentangle a complexity of migrant families’ lives by demonstrating how they negotiate, construct and reconstruct their positions, roles, capacity and agency in the social spaces they live in. One example of such an approach toward social research could be provided by the above-mentioned TRANSFAM project, in which everyday family habits and

Introduction

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activities have been used for defining the meanings of transnational spaces and exploring a sense of belonging performed by different family members and their communities.

The present publication explores the phenomenon of contemporary migrant families by focusing on selected important issues and actors, especially those actively shaping the realities of migrant communities. The questions brought up in the volume cover, among others, the following problems: providing and receiving care services in and by migrant communities, ageing-related challenges, healthcare experiences, education and integration processes, language and identity. Actors, and their roles, agency and capacities, explored in this book include (but are not limited to) care workers, migrants as patients, children in families and schools, their parents, families left behind, and non-human actors from an institutional spectrum (i.e., healthcare system, education policies, nation-states and so on).

Building on the themes discussed above, this book is divided into two parts. Importantly, both sections benefit from initial chapters by renowned scholars, specifically Professor Sandra Torres examining migration politics through care and Professor Anne White looking at how European sending and receiving countries frame migrant families. These works are complemented by chapters contributed by other authors.

The first part of the book comprises four chapters under the heading “Migrant Experiences Around Care and Health”. This section of the book not only furnishes theoretical conceptualisations of the care and mobility nexus but also showcases empirical examples of what migrants do when it comes to caring and health, both in the countries of origin and destination. Highlighting transnational experiences, this part of the volume looks at how migrants handle elderly care, as well as how they approach their health as migrants and migrant parents. The second part of the book, titled “Transnational Families Here and There”, encompasses six chapters on the daily lives led in the context of migrant kinship structures. In this section, the authors address decisions that need to be made because of mobility, as well as practices and strategies that migrants engage in and develop in order to accomplish their life goals and fulfil moral obligations abroad and back home. The focus is often on the longer trajectories of mobile lives “here” and “there”, which means, on the one hand, migrants working toward a better future (for themselves and their offspring) abroad and, on the other hand, maintaining bonds and connections with the country or locality of origin.

The opening chapter of the first part of the book is a thought-provoking piece on “Expanding the Imagination of Care Scholarship through Studies


at the Intersection between Ageing/Old Age and Migration” by Sandra Torres. The author argues that the juncture of ageing societies and global migration processes shall be explored as a conceptual field, as well as in relation to practical policy challenges. She emphasises that the two social phenomena are inherently connected and that looking at them together serves as an opportunity to find new pathways for social policy, especially as previous solutions are no longer sufficient. Torres analyses the way in which care scholarship evolved, particularly after its cultural and gendered character had been noted. After underlining the importance of intersectionality, she discusses incorporation of new dimensions like social class and ethnicity into novel definitions of care as “social good” (Daly 2002), which are key for social policy issues. While Sandra Torres expertly engages with ideas around continuity and discontinuity around ageing, these concepts can be overlain with the ideas of sedentarism and mobility in migration studies, shifting our common assumptions about the normative identities toward flexibility and denouncing the “sole negativity” of functioning in bi-cultural contexts (as migrants, carers, etc.). The chapter postulates foregrounding the cultural aspect of caring in transnational analyses of contemporary demographic shifts and ageing societies affected by migration. This culture-led understanding of care could change the construction of obligations and expectations toward migrants.

Patrycja Kniejska seemingly responds to Sandra Torres’ call in the following chapter, as she discusses ambiguity within emotional labour performed by migrants in the domestic work sector. In her chapter, “When Work Becomes Family: Function and Dynamics of the ‘Professional Familiarisation’ in the Transnational Domestic Care Network Between Poland and Germany”, we find empirical illustration of the importance of redefining care. With the use of a multi-level approach, Kniejska analyses the employment and living conditions of migrants taking care of the elderly in Germany. The author specifically looks at live-in carers who share home-space with their employers and proposes to look at care in a multidimensional manner, depicting strong bonds between the carers and their charges. She argues that these relationships frequently transgress the standard employer-employee relation, thus leading to a so-called “professional familiarisation”. Vitally supplementing the model are also other fields of relationality within the care setup, as the author factors in the care person’s relations with their charge’s family, as well as ties with their institutional context via representatives of healthcare professionals and social workers.

Introduction

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The two remaining chapters in this section shift the focus from broad aspects of care to the more practical arena of health practices. Both studies concern a specific example of Polish migrants in Norway, and it should be noted that this is a very recent population flow (see also Slany et al. 2018). In that sense, the analysis shows how new migrants deal with healthcare matters but also contribute significantly to the debate on the commonly understudied family migration patterns and practices within Europe (see Ryan and Sales 2013) and beyond. What is more, they also tackle what may be the most sensitive area in which it is generally difficult to declare “success” or “failure” with respect to migration. Unlike in employment, for which job satisfaction, social protections or income levels can be identified and probed for in a somewhat objectively comparable manner for the two nation-states, embedding one’s health in a broad state system does not eliminate the focus on the intimate, personal and highly subjective views.

The chapter by Justyna Struzik, Justyna Bell, Paula Pustułka and Magdalena Ślusarczyk paints an overview of how migrants handle the profound cultural and systemic discrepancies of the two national healthcare systems. This work, titled “Handling Ambivalence: Transnational Health Practices and Migrant Evaluations of Health Services”, looks at the continuum of reactions and assessments that migrants express when they are probed about their contact with healthcare services in the destination country. The authors argue that migrants develop a range of coping strategies for handling ambivalence and safeguard the best possible care for themselves and their children. The evaluations that the respondents of this study arrived at mirrored the multifaceted tensions between Eastern/Western Europe and social welfare and neo-liberal healthcare service models. They also testify to the feelings of disenchantment and possible discrimination, as well as factor in the role of the passage of time in tipping the balance in favour of a more nuanced or even positive view on healthcare systems abroad.

Similarly, in the subsequent chapter Magdalena Gajewska and Magdalena Żadkowska underline the fact that contrasting Norwegian health services with experiences from Poland should be seen as culture shock. The authors also look at a very sensitive topic, namely “The Polish Experience of Childbirth in Norway as an Element of Acculturation of Poles: Narrative Analysis”. As has been argued elsewhere, the context of reproduction and having children is emotionally charged (see, for example, DeSouza 2004), and it is quite astounding to see this come into play in the intra-European context of presumed cross-national similarities in the care frameworks. Conversely, some interviewees in the study were


simply unable to accept a model of care starkly different from the one they have known from Poland. By analysing experiences of families with Norway-born children, Gajewska and Żadkowska indicate another issue at hand, namely that childbirth is not an individual or medical experience only, but rather a transformative event. Though it dramatically changes the inner-workings of a family situation, a birth of a child additionally has a major cultural significance. The authors show that if it takes place in Norway it may constitute the first step toward integration.

Across the two chapters, Struzik, Bell, Pustułka and Ślusarczyk, as well as Gajewska and Żadkowska, catalogue transnational strategies for navigating health issues across national borders. The authors supplied migrants’ accounts centred on childbearing and children’s health (i.e., in terms of specialist intervention or prescribing antibiotics). These were rigidly set in cultural superiority convictions and were not particularly malleable. In order to feel safe and adhere to the cultural model of a good parent (or parent-to-be), as well as to simply cope with cultural discomfort, migrants found ways of handling health cross-nationally/transnationally. This practical arena of migrant health entails having annual check-ups in Poland, flying back for appointments or having ethnic doctors in Norway. As such, it ties back to the opening chapter by Torres and the work of Kniejska, clearly evidencing consequences of care models that lack intercultural sensitivity and affect migrant lives in profound ways.

The second part of the volume begins with a broad review chapter by Anne White. In “Sending and Receiving Country Perspectives on Family Migration”, the author underlined the paramount need for accounting for both sides of the migratory process, thus regarding sending and destination states as critical for understanding mobility. The main argument is that not only migrants but also those who stayed are affected by their peers’ or network members’ mobility, so the latter point of view should also be incorporated into the analyses. White sees social remittances as a topic ultimately requiring such bifocal attention because the expectancies, obligations and their fulfilment are constructed and realised by both movers and stayers. The new practices, values, norms, ideas, solutions or forms of action that migrants acquire do not remain in the isolated context of their homes/families but rather extend—to varying degrees—to their broader communities in the home country. White also encourages researchers to explore new themes of transnational family practices despite certain saturation. She wonders, for instance, how transnational practices and identities change with the passage of time, expressing interest in whether some issues remain significant while others disappear.

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As in the first part of the book, here we also witness a sequence in which the next author—Anna Horolets—appears to directly respond to the call made by White in the section-opening chapter. Horolets specifically examines one of the transnational family practices that greatly impacts those who moved and those who stayed, looking at short-term migrant return visits. This work also has a temporal dimension that is important for the longevity of migrant ties with the country/locality or family of origin. In her work “On Holiday? Polish Migrants Visit their Families in Poland”, Horolets nevertheless challenges the common view that going back home equals “vacation”. She instead suggests that visits are linked to complexities of families “here” and “there”, signifying a plethora of non-leisure meanings and motives connected to international migrants’ stays in Poland. The author points out that migrants fulfil the family obligations and conduct a lot of business “pragmatically”, meaning that they act on the belief that certain services are marked by better quality or accessibility in the sending country. One example connects this work to earlier chapters in the book as Horolets discusses general practitioner (GP) and specialist visits, as well as dental prophylactics. The author focuses also on tensions that the visits evoke, both for stayers who expect migrants to be “fully available” for family functions and tasks, and for migrants who are often tired after driving long hours to visit all relatives without actually getting any leisure time or rest. At the same time, Horolets believes that visiting Poland may still be a significant family project, a time dedicated to maintaining family memory as well as collecting new experiences in the homeland.

The next three chapters by Lopez Rodriguez, by Mazurkiewicz, and by Share, Kerrins and Williams, respectively, continue the discussion on migrant daily lives, yet centre on operating in the receiving states of the United Kingdom and Ireland. All three are linked to key aspects of modern families, focusing on the competing realms of socialisation and adaptation in a multicultural context of national and migrant identities. Two studies concern transmission of capital and gender identities, while the third looks specifically at migration-related language issues. Together the chapters highlight the fact that even in the case of a single practice like language learning, multiple social actors from different family members to the institutional context are taking part in framing what is appropriate, allowed or desirable. In addition, reading the three chapters together gives one a great overview of how intergenerational relations operate in modern migrant families. Specifically, we can see the dynamics of parental views on child-rearing and how they are mitigated by resources and institutions, yet we can also infer that certain practices are connected to broader social


networks and kinship in the country of origin, for instance when it comes to learning the language that enables communication with the migrant children’s grandparents. Along these lines, an intragenerational lens can also be discerned when coupledom is showcased, again proving the links and interdependencies between different family and non-family actors.

In her work “How do Polish Migrant Mothers in the UK Deploy Cultural Capital when Negotiating their Children’s Educational Prospects?”, Magdalena Lopez Rodriguez foregrounds the matter of educational chances and pathways among children with migratory backgrounds. Since education is one of the most important values for Poles, migrant mothers perform numerous actions that can alleviate the negative consequences of perceived or actual exclusion or marginalisation when it comes to their children. The author demarcates different strategies, particularly underscoring two components—ethnicity and religion—as key items in the maternal cultural capital and strategy repertoire in the context of Poles in the UK. She shows how these resources can be drawn upon in an institutional sense; for instance, when religious identification is used as a stepping stone for accessing schools that are better ranked. The analysis not only reiterates the importance of mothers as migration actors with powerful agency but also clarifies the fact that migrants are evidently forward-looking and hopeful for their children to be upwardly mobile in the receiving society. Again, the possible challenges of migration do not undercut the educational aspirations that mobile individuals hold for their offspring.

The subsequent chapter, “The Breadwinner and the Housekeeper: Constructions of Gender Identities in Post-2004 Polish Migration to Ireland” by Natalia Mazurkiewicz, focuses on the idea of “a good life”. Offering an interesting challenge to the normative views, in this case looking at what it means to be happy or successful, this chapter looks at how migrants fulfil their main goals, which are surprisingly shifted away from evident economic success. In fact, family migrants in the analysed couples viewed a “good life” as satisfying when it was marked by stability and sense of security. Mazurkiewicz zooms in on the mechanism that guarantees achievement of these goals, which she discovered to be rooted in acceptance and maintenance of traditional gender roles. The focus on family became a route to a happy life for the study respondents who were content with men being sole breadwinners and women being tasked with caring for the homestead. Behind this facade, Mazurkiewicz also reveals that this idyllic setup means that women get a chance of being socially recognised through their statuses of mother, wife and homemaker. While they do not have opportunities for accomplishing other non-family goals,

Introduction

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their Irish surroundings do not penalise but may rather embrace family-based identities, granting them alternative positioning in the broader social structure of the destination state.

In the last chapter of the aforementioned three, Michelle Share, Liz Kerrins and Cayla Williams take on migrants caring for their second-generation immigrant children, looking at parental views on transmitting their home country’s language to children born and raised abroad. The chapter, titled “‘I Just Can’t Imagine If My Kids Will Not Speak, Will Not Write and Read in Polish’: Heritage Language Transmission Among Polish Families in the Republic of Ireland”, presents intra-family language politics in the context of outer/institutional policies of the Irish educational frameworks. The authors shed light on the motivations behind the desire to teach children Polish, as well as catalogue best practices that can be effective in the face of barriers and difficulties. The authors convincingly demonstrate the lack of support from the local educational system, which essentially translates to the entire burden of heritage and language transmission being placed on the family.

Finally, the last chapter of the volume presents a different view on long-term consequences of migration for families, particularly as it utilises a quantitative approach. In “Transmission of the Culture of Migration: Growing Up to Transnationalism”, Bartłomiej Walczak returns to the sending country perspective. The author attempts to identify a particular social process of being socialised to migration by the pervasive migration culture in the surroundings of contemporary youth. Walczak wonders what factors—also in terms of earlier family migration—influence the young people’s views and convictions about migration being the correct and most appropriate life choice and strategy for them. The chapter centres on intergenerational transfer, posing a question about family transnationalism being conducive to mobility. Moreover, the author concludes with notes on what the continuously high migration readiness of young people means for the nation-state’s social policy and politics.

In conclusion, this volume therefore manages to bring together numerous contributions that reiterate what kinds of issues migrant families are tackling, addressing both certain challenges and the more successful and positive practices that lead to happiness, greater social or educational capital, mitigation of adverse circumstances or effective upward mobility. Through conceptual and empirical examples, the authors demonstrated that a lot of assumptions about families and caring on the move can be nuanced, expanded or simply viewed from a pragmatic stance that human actors generally tend to assume. What is more, the book closes the gap on


the many topics that are still little explored, especially in the European context of mobility and care research.

It can be argued that very different actors are represented throughout this book. Some authors focused on the macro-level actors and highlighted how nation-states must conceive policies that respond to mobility, while some argued that governments should engage with global populations due to ageing, care deficits or simply migration cultures and vast diasporas that are too pervasive to ignore. Those interested in the meso level honed in on the extended family and community actors. Even though many studies centre on Polish migrants, they can still be seen as illustrative and in part applicable to other migrant groups within the contemporary intra-European flows, and they may even shed light on the broader global realm. Particularly worthwhile are permeating arguments about the importance of seeing “here” and “there” as interdependent, be it through familial social remittances, home visits, or transnational health strategies and care provisions. As we also learn a lot about individual actors, as migrant family members are given voice and indirectly “share” their stories with readers of this volume, we do not shy away from an individual-level perspective and meanings of migration for personal biographies and histories. To conclude, we hope that the audience finds this volume to be an interesting resource on the key actors within increasingly transnational modern lives.

Bibliography

Baldassar, L., and L. Merla, eds. 2013. Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care: Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life. Vol. 29. London: Routledge.

Bryceson, D., and U. Vuorela. 2002. The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks. New York: Berg.

Daly, M. 2002. “Care as a Good for Social Policy.” Journal of Social Policy 31 (2): 251–70.

DeSouza, R. 2004. “Motherhood, Migration and Methodology: Giving Voice to the Other.” The Qualitative Report 9 (3): 463–82.

Dreby, J. 2010. Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Goulbourne, H., T. Reynolds, J. Solomos, and E. Zontini. 2010. Transnational Families: Ethnicities, Identities and Social Capital. London: Routledge.

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Hochschild, A. R. 2000. “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value.” In On the edge: Living with global capitalism, edited by W. Hutton and A. Giddens, 130–46. London: Jonathan Cape.

—. 2016. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. New York: New Press.

Morgan, D. H. J. 1996. Family Connections: An Introduction to Family Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Parreñas, R. S. 2005. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Pustułka, P., and M. Ślusarczyk. 2016. “Cultivation, Compensation and Indulgence: Transnational Short-Term Returns to Poland Across Three Family Generations.” Transnational Social Review 6 (1–2): 78–92.

Ryan, L., and R. Sales. 2013. “Family Migration: The Role of Children and Education in Family Decision-Making Strategies of Polish Migrants in London.” International Migration 51 (2): 90–103.

Slany, K., M. Ślusarczyk, P. Pustułka, and E. Guribye. 2018. Transnational Polish Families In Norway: Social Capital, Integration, Institutions And Care. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

PART I.

MIGRANT EXPERIENCES AROUND CARE AND HEALTH

CHAPTER ONE

EXPANDING THE IMAGINATION OF CARE SCHOLARSHIP THROUGH STUDIES

AT THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN AGEING/ OLD AGE AND MIGRATION

SANDRA TORRES

Introduction

The allusion to the “imagination” of care scholarship in this chapter’s title draws inspiration from C. Wright Mills’ (1959) seminal work The Sociological Imagination and the numerous debates that his work has ignited ever since its publication. To expand the imagination of a specific scholarship is to unleash the intellectual creativity of a scientific field through critical reflection upon the research questions that are deemed to be interesting (and the ones that have yet to be proposed), the assumptions behind them and the ways in which research questions are formulated and grappled with. It is my belief that the intellectual creativity of a field can be unleashed by the mere fact that a new context is introduced into a field’s radar and/or by the mere attempt to shift attention from one stage of the life-course to another. This is why I am proposing that both the context of migration and the life-course stage we tend to refer to as old age are interesting starting points for care scholarship. This chapter argues that the intersection between ageing/old age and migration is a theoretically abundant source of information about an array of care-related issues. I am arguing this because I believe that studies that take this intersection as their starting point have the capacity to contribute to expanding our imagination regarding how care is conceptualised and how caring relationships are established (and nurtured over time and space). I also believe that such studies could contribute to care scholarship’s understandings of how care arrangements can be shaped by the policies

Expanding the Imagination of Care Scholarship 15

that welfare states design to address the needs of the most vulnerable segments of their populations and, as I will show later on, how these segments of our populations go about navigating such policies. Phrased differently, one could say that this chapter argues that studies that take this intersection as their starting point have the potential to expand the imagination of care scholarship.

Before we begin it seems necessary to acknowledge that studies on ageing that have aimed to contribute to care scholarship have been part of the care vernacular for several decades now (e.g., Bengtson and Roberts 1991), and that the same is true for migration-informed studies (e.g., Browne and Braun 2008; Yeates 2004); thus, I am arguing here for two starting points that are recognised in their own rights. In spite of this, the intersection between ageing/old age and migration is not yet regarded as the theoretically rich source of information about care that it is. Even though some of us have implicitly suggested that much could be gained by launching inquiries into care, care arrangements, care relationships and care practices that take this intersection as their starting point (see, for example, Ackers 2004; Baldassar 2007; Karl and Torres 2016), the time has come to make a more explicit case for why this is so.

This chapter’s aims are threefold since different types of scholars are going to be addressed in the sections that follow. First, I want to raise interest in ageing and old age as a stage of the life-course that offers theoretically rich sources of information about migration. Second, I want to draw ageing and old age scholars’ attention to the fact that both migration (as a phenomenon) and the migratory life-course (with the specific ageing circumstances that this type of life-course entails) offer numerous angles of interrogation from which their scholarship can be developed further. Third, this chapter proposes that care scholarship could benefit from launching studies at the intersection between ageing/old age and migration since such studies have the potential to contribute to what “the third generation of care theorists” seem to be wanting to do, namely to shift care scholars’ attention from caregiving as a relationship to caregiving as a cultural practice.

Generations of care scholarship: how our understandings of care have evolved

Scholars who have focused on dismantling the ways in which the conceptualisation of care has developed over the past four decades often talk about the fact that one can think of care scholarship in terms of generations. This is at least what Hankivsky (2004) suggested when she

Chapter One 16

traced back how care conceptualisations have evolved within the feminist tradition known as the ethics of care (see also Anttonen and Zechner 2011, who have argued the same). Hankivsky (2004, 40) argued, namely, that care—an activity that Fisher and Tronto have proposed “includes everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (1990, 40)—was originally conceived “as a form of moral reasoning that emerged from the experiences of mothering, caring and nurturing” (Hankivsky 2004, 11–12). Care conceptualisations began, in other words, as preconceptions about what used to be considered “typical” women’s activities and practices. As such, these conceptualisations originally took for granted that the mother-child relationship is the relationship that caring relationships are modelled on (see also Noddings 1984).

According to Anttonen and Zechner (2011), the first generation of care scholarship started in the 1960s when research on domestic labour first came about. Those who debated what housework was at that point in time focused their attention on the economic value of this type of work and the fact that it often went unnoticed. This is how they managed to put women’s unpaid care labour on the social scientific agenda. In the early 1980s Scandinavian researchers like Kari Wærness (1984) started to draw attention away from the family to the women who worked within the different welfare sectors that provide care throughout the life-course to people to whom they were not related by blood. Although the first generation of care scholars was primarily concerned with the monetary transactions (or lack thereof) that took place as a result of care provision, their focus thus spanned from the care that was offered within families to the care that institutions offer to those in need.

Concepts such as Wærness’ (1984) rationality of care and Gilligan’s (1982) ethics of care versus ethics of justice are part of the legacy of the first generation of care scholars. The rationality of care drew attention to the fact that the complexities associated with care work cannot be understood if we fail to take into account the fact that the rationality of care is “different from and to some degree contradictory to the scientific rationality on which personal authority and control in the field of reproduction is legitimated” (Gilligan 1982, 195). The ethics of care, in turn, drew attention to the gendered way in which rationality used to be (and some would probably claim still is) understood. Gilligan (ibid.) argued that boys and girls tend to develop different moral orientations; girls orient themselves toward the ethics of care while boys most often take the ethics of justice as their point of departure. Their different ways of orienting themselves in moral matters is not the problem, she claimed.


Instead, the problem is that we value one rationality more than the other (see also Tronto 1993 and 2013, Olthuis, Kohlen, and Heier 2014, and Barnes et al. 2015, who have all contributed to this debate). According to Gilligan (1982), the notion of the ethics of care brings attention to responsibility and commitment rather than to rules, which is what the ethics of justice focuses on. It is worth noting that the former was developed in order to argue against the hierarchisation of morality. This was not, in other words, a concept developed specifically for care scholarship, even if most scholars of care now agree that Gilligan’s notion of ethics of care was pivotal to how care scholarship has evolved.

A few years later, Tronto (1987) criticised the implicit assumptions that underline Gilligan’s work (i.e., the assumption that women’s activities—including their reasoning—are essentially different from the activities that men are particularly interested in). She problematised Gilligan’s arguments because the latter’s work considered neither the differences that exist among women nor the fact that care can be an oppressive endeavour. Tronto also posited that the concept of the ethics of care inadvertently claims that women are “natural caregivers”—a matter that has been heavily criticised by others as well (see, for example, Walker 1984 and most recently Wallroth 2016). Although numerous debates have taken place around the concept of care, it is thus fair to say that the first generation of care researchers, in their quest to put the question of women’s care work on the agenda, tended to regard—albeit unintentionally—women as the caregivers par excellence. In doing so, they highlighted the gendered aspects of care at the expense of other aspects that are also important, such as class, race and ethnicity (Stack 1986).

The second generation of care theorists tried to emphasise intersectionality instead. This generation did not, in other words, focus solely on the difference between men and women (see, for example, Fisher and Tronto 1990, as well as Tronto 1987, 1993, 1995 and 2013). Phrased differently, one could say that the second generation wanted to free the conceptualisation of care from the gendered shackles that the debates of the first generation had created. It is also worth noting that I write “tried” and “wanted”, since Hankivsky (2004) has argued that despite the second-generation care theorists wanting to focus on intersectionality, most of them continued to regard gender as the social position of choice when discussing caring relationships. In spite of this, it is fair to say that the second generation of care theorists tried to draw attention to the differences that exist between women and not just the differences between women and men. Their work drew attention to the ways in which care work (irrespective of whether it is paid or unpaid) intersects with other

Chapter One 18

social positions (such as class and ethnicity, to name the two that have received the most attention so far). This generation of care researchers introduced concepts such as “care as citizenship” (Knijn and Kremer 1997) and “care as a social good” (Daly 2002). In doing so, they brought attention to the implications that care regimes have for how care arrangements are shaped and the various effects that specific policies (such as pension plans, maternity leave schemes and childcare systems) can have on how care arrangements are made. Daly (2002) argued, for example, that care scholarship had relied too heavily on differentiations (such as those between paid and unpaid care or those between formal and informal care). In doing so, an unnecessary distinction between what caring for children and caring for older people entails on the one hand, and between what it means to be a caregiver and a care provider on the other, was generated. Daly argued also that caring blurs the boundaries between family, state and market, which is why she proposed that we need to think of it not only as a social good but as a policy good as well (see also Tronto 2013 and Sevenhuijsen 1998, who have argued that care needs to be taken into greater account by policy makers).

Care is, in other words, a public as well as a private responsibility, it can be performed as both paid and unpaid work, it is both formally and informally provided, and it is delivered in non-profit as well as for-profit arrangements. This is why the second generation of care scholars brought attention to care as a gendered, raced and classed practice but also as a practice that is culturally defined and historically situated. It thus seems plausible to claim that it was the second generation of care theorists who began to deconstruct the concept of care rather than the activity of caregiving (with which the first generation seemed to be most concerned). In doing so, they drew attention not only to the fact that care often involves mutual dependence but also that the positions of caregiver and care recipient can be interchangeable.

One of the latest contributions to care scholarship can be found in the work of Wallroth (2016), who uses masculinity scholarship to inform care research. In her review of care scholarship, she proposes that researchers such as Hoschschild (1995) and Calasanti (2003) could be deemed to belong to the third generation of care scholars since they stress the cultural aspect of what motivates people to provide the type of care in which they are willing to engage. As such, these scholars regard care as a cultural ideal and practice, and not just a relational activity. It is, among other things, this focus on care ideals and practices that I think the intersection between ageing/old age and migration could contribute to.


Population ageing and the globalisation of international migration: rich sources of information about care

This section brings attention to the two societal trends (i.e., population ageing and the globalisation of international migration) that make the intersection between ageing/old age and migration an interesting starting point from which care scholarship can be expanded. This intersection draws attention to the time and space continuum in which care takes place but does so in a unique way. With respect to time, ageing/old age bring attention to the end-of-the-life-course as opposed to childhood (which is what care scholars have most often focused on). With respect to space, migration is characterised by discontinuity as opposed to continuity (which is what is often believed to be necessary for good quality of life in old age). Migration from one society to another means (in some cases at least) that one has moved to a space characterised by norms, values, regulations and expectations with which one may not be familiar. With regards to care this means that crossing geographical borders when one moves from one location to another can sometimes entail exposure to new care understandings that question what one has taken for granted as far as care culture is concerned, how care can be arranged and how good caring relationships are shaped.

The fact that the globalisation of international migration has brought about a new form of migration known as transnationalism is also something worth considering. This migration form means that some migrants do not move from one place to another once and for all (or move from “there” to “here”, as migration scholars often refer to traditional migration patterns) but rather move back and forth between places (which means that they are both “here” and “there” at the same time). This is something that could affect not only the care arrangements that people make but also the care expectations that different kinds of migrants have as far as old age is concerned (see Torres 2013, where I discuss transnationalism in relation to ageing and old age specifically). The globalisation of international migration has, in other words, brought about a new era in migration scholarship (Castles and Miller 1998). This era has challenged some of the taken-for-granted assumptions that migration scholarship builds upon (such as the assumption of what a temporary and a permanent migrant are, what being a receiving and a sending country means, and who migrants are since more and more women are migrating these days and there is also increased diversity within migrant groups). It is against this backdrop that I have argued that the globalisation of international migration, the new forms of migration that this entails and

Chapter One 20

the diversity of migrants that this phenomenon has brought about are all bound to have an effect on how care in old age is made sense of, delivered and experienced (Torres 2013).

With regards to population ageing specifically, it seems important to note that it used to be the case that reaching old age was an exceptional thing. Vallin (2002) writes, for example, that the unprecedented changes that we are bound to face as life expectancy has risen as dramatically as it has can only be understood against the backdrop offered by the fact that for the largest part of human history average life expectancy was actually as low as twenty-five years of age. The fact that more and more people today are reaching old age, and that this is the case worldwide, is therefore something exceptional since living into old age was not something most people did some decades ago. While only 8% of the world’s population was sixty years old or older in 1950, this segment of the population is expected to be 21% by 2050. It is against this backdrop that the “alarmist discourse” of population ageing must be made sense of. As a critical gerontologist who regards ageing as a natural part of the life-course, and old age as a positive stage in our lives, Katz (1992) does not regard population ageing as a catastrophe but rather as an extension of the opportunities that the life-course offers. This is why he describes the discourse on population ageing as “alarmist demography”. He argues that the reason demographers tend to regard population ageing as a problem is because this phenomenon is challenging almost all of the taken-for-granted assumptions upon which demography is based. Just as the globalisation of international migration is a societal trend that has caused migration scholars to question most of what they have taken for granted, population ageing is a phenomenon that has meant the end of the world as demographers have known it. Although population ageing is a demographic phenomenon with an end result (i.e., greater numbers of older people) that is in fact a testament of humankind’s achievements, it is not often regarded as such. Irrespective of how we regard population ageing, this phenomenon offers numerous angles of study for care scholarship since the transition to advanced old age means that more and more people could add care-dependent years to their lives and that more and more people must, in turn, grapple with greater caring expectations from their dependent relatives.

The mere fact that population ageing means that more and more people could end up experiencing an increase in the number of years that they end up being care-dependent merits, in and of itself, that care scholars shift their attention from childhood to old age. In addition, the fact that the migratory life-course is an interesting type of life-course that care scholars


have yet to address is also a circumstance that suggests that focusing on this makes sense. This life-course is characterised by discontinuity as opposed to continuity, which is what most ageing/old age scholars assume to be crucial to good quality of life in old age (see Torres 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2013). The life-course disruption that migration entails (especially when one migrates late in life) is, in other words, bound to have an impact on people’s care expectations, their ability to provide and receive informal care (see Warnes et al. 2004) and their ability to access formal services in old age due to compromised welfare eligibility (see Torres 2012). The fact that late-in-life migration generates new challenges for welfare sectors around the world that have to provide care in old age for people that have paid tax contributions elsewhere is but one of the many reasons why I believe the intersection of ageing/old age and migration to be a fruitful angle of investigation for care scholarship.

Phrased differently, one could say that population ageing and the globalisation of international migration are societal trends that are generating an array of challenges, not only as far as care provision and recipiency are concerned but also in terms of how welfare regimes go about the business of designing policies to address the care needs of those who grow into advanced old age (as well as how they go about facilitating the reconciliation of work and care that most informal caregivers rely on). The fact that elderly care sectors around the world are experiencing shortages in staff is also something that we must take into account. The globalisation of international migration has likewise also meant that more and more welfare regimes are relying on the import of migrant care workers to meet their welfare sectors’ care deficits (Browne and Braun 2008, as well as Yeates 2004, who address the global care chains that I am alluding to here). Overall, the intersection of ageing/old age and migration generates an array of research question about care, care arrangements, care relationships and care practices, which is why I have argued that population ageing and the globalisation of international migration are societal trends that are challenging care scholarship in fruitful ways.

Exploring the potential embedded in the intersection between ageing/old age and migration:

examples from ongoing research

In this section, I would like to draw attention to some of the care-related questions that my own ongoing research on media representations of elderly care, end-of-life care providers’ understandings of cross-cultural interaction and needs assessment practice has generated. The first project I

Chapter One 22

would like to draw attention to is a project that is analysing the ways in which the Swedish daily press has addressed issues having to do with migration, ethnicity, culture, language and religion within the elderly care sector. The data corpus for this project is comprised of all of the newspaper articles that have been published by the major national newspapers in Sweden (i.e., Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter) since the public debate on these issues started in 1995 (see Lindblom and Torres 2011, as well as Torres, Lindblom, and Nordberg 2012, 2014, for findings from this project based on the analysis of one of these newspapers). In one of the analyses we have performed we bring attention to how the recruitment of migrants for elderly care is being discussed as the solution par excellence to the staff shortage that the sector is experiencing. The following extract gives a bit of insight into this part of the debate:

The sector where employment is growing the fastest is care for the elderly—and it is expected that by 2050, one in ten Swedes will be older than 80. Who is going to take care of you when you get old? Demanding that well educated, young Swedes do it would crush their dreams and be enormously costly to the economy and the public finances. So why not let, say, Filipinos do it. They would earn more than they would have in Manila, and Swedes—old as well as young—would benefit from it. (Dagens Nyheter 2008)

This newspaper article illustrates how daily newspaper reporting in this part of the world is presenting the challenges that population ageing poses to a national audience. In this extract, we see how this societal trend is being discussed in relation to the demands on the elderly care sector that a growing number of older people are expected to pose. Something else worth noting here is that the kind of work that the elderly care sector offers is described as work that is not attractive. The article states quite bluntly that the kind of work that elderly care workers perform is not the kind of work that most people “dream” of having; in fact, the prospect of it is a “dream crusher” for some. The fact that people from different national backgrounds are juxtaposed against each other is also worth mentioning: Filipinos would not mind this work while Swedes would rather avoid having to work in this sector. Allusions such as this one reminds us of Robinson (2006). She, who is one of the care scholars that belongs to the second generation of care scholarship alluded to earlier, has argued that when we bring attention to the ethics of care and the discourses surrounding it we highlight the fact that “the values and work associated with care and caring are undervalued and under-resourced globally”


(Robinson 2006, 8). This article is not bringing attention to the ethics of care, but it is quite clearly showing how undervalued caring for older people is. Tronto has argued something similar when she proposed that “it is difficult to determine whether care work is poorly compensated because its denizens tend to be the less privileged in society, or whether, given the relatively unattractive nature of care positions, people who face discrimination elsewhere in the workforce become care workers” (2010, 166).

The short extract from a daily newspaper article presented here suggests that the daily newspaper articles analysed discuss the recruitment of migrant care workers by implicitly suggesting not only that care work is not most people’s idea of a dream job but also by assuming that migrants who have faced discrimination in other labour market spheres would gladly accept a job in the elderly care sector.1 Assertions such as this one give us interesting insights into how a society regards care and how care arrangements can be made so that some can pass on their caring responsibilities unto others (see Tronto 1993 and 2013). They are also a prime example of what can be divulged as far as care is concerned when the intersection between ageing/old age and migration is brought into focus.

In another ongoing research project on end-of-life care providers’ understandings of cross-cultural interaction we are exploring how these providers make sense of the caring practices that migrants and their families are assumed to have (see Torres, Ågård, and Milberg 2016; Milberg, Torres, and Ågård 2016 for findings from this project). In the following extract we see how the assumption that migrant families are larger, cannot pass unnoticed and demand different things (such as more space) was discussed in focus groups that were trying to verbalise what they thought to be challenging about providing end-of-life care to migrants:

The number of relatives who come to say goodbye may differ, there are more. In addition, the process becomes longer in that they may also take longer when they say goodbye. […]

1 The extract I have just shown is not about this, but most articles dealing with the recruitment question argue that it would be indefensible to recruit people from abroad when we have so many unemployed people with migrant backgrounds in our country as it is.

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And large families are a bit more demanding if one is to generalize […]. One must give a little more time in those cases… (Focus group #1 from ongoing project on end-of-life care)

In this extract, we see how the end-of-life care providers interviewed in this project take for granted that migrant families are different from Swedish families and that one of the things that differentiates them is their sheer size: migrant families are larger. These families therefore take longer when engaging in certain end-of-life care routines (for example, saying goodbye to somebody who is dying). The fact that the sheer size of these families means that they need more space was also something that the care providers discuss as a challenge since most Swedish end-of-life care facilities cannot accommodate them, they claimed. Something else that was discussed was the fact that migrant families were believed to be noisier and that this could create all kinds of distress not only for the dying patient but also for other patients and families visiting the ward at the same time as a migrant family. According to the end-of-life care providers, migrant families pose a dilemma since one has to decide which patients or families to focus on (i.e., the larger, louder and more demanding families of migrant patients or the families of non-migrant patients who might need quieter surroundings).

Tensions such as this one remind us of the second generation of care research, which is often concerned with the interactions that take place between care recipients and care providers. These tensions, however, shift the focus from the interaction itself to the underlining socio-cultural expectations about what are considered appropriate care practices in the end-of-life context. (Is grieving in a loud manner OK or not? Is accommodating extended family in a care ward a given or not? Can we provide patient-centred care to one patient and their family when it may mean disregarding the needs of another?) These tensions highlight the fact that in globalised times such as ours it is not always that easy to address the needs of families that have different care views, expectations and behaviours within the same formal care settings. By designing a project that uses the globalisation of international migration and population ageing as its starting point we have begun to expose what conflicting modes of care could mean to end-of-life care providers who have (up until recently, at least) not needed to reckon with what diversity can mean for their care practices.

The last ongoing project I would like to draw attention to is a study that focuses on needs assessment practice within the context of elderly care and asks similar questions (i.e., what does cross-cultural interaction mean to your everyday practices as a needs assessor?). In this study we


have interviewed care managers2 about how they regard older migrants and their families (see Forssell, Torres, and Olaison 2014, 2015; and Torres, Olaison, and Forssell 2015, for findings from this project). One of the things they mentioned was that older migrants (especially those who have migrated late in life) have different care expectations and practices than their Swedish counterparts. This means, among other things, that they do not understand how the needs assessment process works—what is expected of them and what they themselves can expect from the care managers that assess their needs (needs assessment is the process that all older people in need of help and support undergo if they want to access the elderly care services that the Swedish state offers). The following demonstrates this:

Responder [R]: You visit people with an immigrant background who maybe have an enormous respect for people in authority. To go there and to try to solve problems together…it is sort of like well… I think, surprising. That is often the way it is for them. Interviewer [I]: You mean they do not expect to be invited to have a dialogue. R: Yes, that a person in authority… it is a bit as if… you can get the feeling when you [visit them] … I think that they are overly respectful of authorities… (Focus group interview #6 from ongoing project on needs assessment)

Against this backdrop it is perhaps unsurprising that the care managers described older people with immigrant backgrounds as people who lack the confidence necessary to navigate the needs assessment process. This raises all kinds of questions, of course, about late-in-life migrants’ ability to make a convincing case for their deservingness as care recipients within the formal care sector. The fact that needs assessment meetings tend to expose the care culture shock that these older migrants and their families face is also something that the care managers interviewed talked about at length. According to them, some of these older people undergo the needs assessment process in the hopes that they will be able to get into one of the cash-for-care schemes that the Swedish welfare state offers (see Forssell, Torres, and Olaison 2014). Their hope is that the younger family members who care for them—and who are often, but not always, their adult children—will receive financial compensation from the state for the care 2 “Care managers” is one of the terms used to refer to the welfare representatives that assess older people’s needs when they apply for formal services from the welfare sector. In some countries, these welfare representatives are called “case managers”; in others, they are called “need assessors”.

Chapter One 26

responsibilities that they have taken on—a solution that they hope will make caring for them more attractive. The care managers interviewed talked about the fact that although some younger family members want this too, others encourage their older relatives to undergo the needs assessment process in the hopes that their families will be able to access home help care services. Their motivation is, in other words, different since what they are seeking to accomplish is not to access the cash-for-care schemes that their older relatives are most often hoping for but rather to have them access formal home help care services so that they themselves are relieved from the care responsibilities that they have had up until then. Phrased in a care scholarship-informed manner, one could say that this study taps into the difficulties that people face when they try to navigate a foreign formal care culture while wanting to rely on the informal care arrangements to which they are accustomed. The fact that migration has exposed these families to different care arrangements is also, of course, interesting since what this project exposes is how different care practices are shaped and how they create different kinds of expectations for kinship and state.

Examples such as the ones above illustrate what happens when a formal care culture (here exemplified by the experiences of Swedish care managers) offers services that can jeopardize the informal care relationships that other care cultures regard as the care arrangement par excellence in old age. What the care managers interviewed are conveying is that they currently face not only late-in-life immigrants who come from cultures where older people are cared for by their families but also their adult children—who have assimilated some of the Swedish care culture and therefore regard formal care arrangements as feasible alternatives for their older parents. The care arrangements that these care managers can offer to these families are arrangements that can sometimes inadvertently question the care expectations that people have around what is a good care arrangement in old age, who should be responsible for providing care and whether the primary responsibility for care in old age lies. It is because of this that the interviewed care managers described late-in-life immigrants and their families as people who have to navigate two care cultures, two sets of expectations, and an array of new care practices and arrangements which challenge the care relationships that they have established prior to seeking the help of the formal care sector.


Conclusion

In 1995, Narayan—who is another one of the care scholars associated with the second generation—argued that studies that draw attention to care discourses have the capacity to divulge the vulnerabilities that separate differently situated persons since such discourses run “the risk of being used to ideological ends where these ‘differences’ are defined in self-serving ways by the dominant and the powerful” (Narayan 1995, 136). This chapter has proposed that in the age of migration we cannot afford to disregard the various theoretically and empirically rich sources of information about care that the phenomena of population ageing brings attention to. These societal trends, and the intersection between ageing/old age and migration that they draw attention to, shift our focus from childcare (which is what most care scholars have focused on) to one of the welfare sectors that addresses the needs of some of the most vulnerable members of our societies (i.e., elderly care). They also bring attention to the ways in which “difference”—for example, the difference that the above-mentioned media representatives relied on when alluding to Filipinos and Swedes—is talked about “in self-serving ways by the dominant and the powerful” (Narayan 1995).

The fact that elderly care sectors in some parts of the world are relying on migrants to solve the “care deficits” that they are experiencing as more and more people grow into advanced old age and start to need help and support in their everyday lives is also something that needs to be stressed. In this respect, Tronto (1993, 113) has argued that:

if we look at questions of race, class, and gender, we notice that those who are least well off in a society are disproportionately those who do the work of caring, and the best off members of society often use their positions of superiority to pass caring work off to others.

In the previous sections I have tried to illustrate that a focus on the intersection between ageing/old age and migration has the capacity to generate a variety of research questions about age (not just old age but age in general) and migrancy in addition to the questions of race, class and gender to which Tronto is referring in the quote above. This is one of the many reasons why I have argued that the intersection in question offers a fruitful starting point from which the imagination of care scholarship can be expanded. In this respect, it seems necessary to remind the reader that in the previous section I alluded to the fact that older migrant families are often believed to prefer to care for their own family members. Tronto’s argument above suggests that this may be the case not only because of

Chapter One 28

their ethno-cultural understandings of care and the various expectations that these generate but also perhaps because of the socio-economic positions in which some migrants find themselves in the societies they now call home. When migrants belong to the less privileged groups in a society they are not in a position to pass their caring responsibilities on to others (as discussed in Tronto 1993 and 2013 when she alludes to the different “passes” that different members of society can get in order to avoid taking on their caring responsibilities). The ongoing research alluded to here suggests that the Swedish elderly care sector does not seem to expect that migrant families would want to pass on their caring responsibilities; these expectations are not only race-, class- and gender-based, they are also coloured by age-related expectations.

This chapter has proposed that the key to the expansion of the imagination of care scholarship may very well lie in research at the intersection of ageing/old age and migration. This intersection draws attention to those who inhabit (and could potentially inhabit) some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged positions in globalised times such as ours (i.e., older migrants) but also those believed to be able to help care for them (i.e., younger migrants). As such, the intersection exposes the ambivalence that exists as far as care discourses’ regard for migrants are concerned; namely, older migrants are often believed to pose a challenge to elderly care sectors while younger ones are often believed to be the key to solving the staff shortages that many societies’ welfare sectors are experiencing at present. The increasing reliance of long-term care systems on migrant workers and the gendered, racial and class-based challenges that the import of workers to the care sector entails are both examples of areas of investigation into which care scholars working at this intersection could shed light. Attention could also be brought to the impact that care regimes and migration regimes have on the ways in which care work is organised and what care work entails for those who receive it and provide it. The care arrangements that migrant families make, and the ways in which they choose to navigate the care sectors with which they come into contact, are also among the areas of investigation that care scholars could focus on. In globalised times such as ours, and in times when more and more people will grow into advanced old age, it seems important to set a future research agenda for care scholarship that regards population ageing and the globalisation of international migration not only as a challenge but as an opportunity as well. Both of these societal challenges offer us an array of opportunities to unleash our imagination on care.


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CHAPTER TWO

WHEN WORK BECOMES FAMILY: FUNCTION AND DYNAMICS

OF THE “PROFESSIONAL FAMILIARISATION” IN THE TRANSNATIONAL DOMESTIC CARE

NETWORK BETWEEN POLAND AND GERMANY

PATRYCJA KNIEJSKA

Introduction1

If a workplace becomes one’s new home, professional distance is difficult to maintain. Commodification and transnationalisation of the so-called “reproductive work” imply changes not only in the labour market but also in one’s private life. Commuting migration makes it possible to work and live in at least two different places and in two countries at the same time. This migration, mostly from Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Ukraine, among many others, to domestic work in Germany, has been a known phenomenon since the 1970s and a broad movement since the system transformation in Europe after 1989 (Kniejska 2016, 142). In this paper I present research findings of the living and working conditions of migrant care workers and their experiences with transnationalised domestic work as well as the definition, dynamic and functions of the “professional familiarisation” as a strategy often used in domestic care settings.

Those care workers whom we call in our project “live-ins” (because they often live at their workplace with their clients), are migrants who are doing (often undocumented) care and domestic work in return for payment

1 Parts of the introduction are also to be found in the paper: “Indispensable yet Invisible - Migrant Care Work in Germany. A Challenge for Social Work as a Human Rights’ Profession” in the European Journal of Social Education (Kniejska, Kiekiert, and Schirilla 2017).

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in both urban and rural areas (cf. Lutz 2008, 62). The major group of migrant carers in Germany consists of women (and, rarely, also men) from Poland, and this paper focuses on their living and occupational situation.

Care migration is part of the labour migration, but its working conditions are unique (e.g., bi-local lifestyle, personal rotation in the workplace, 24/7 availability, identification within own work, etc.). This article will present the features of work typical for a migrant care worker in Germany in more detail.

Push and pull factors for the commuting migration to domestic care in Germany

In the current discussion about the care crisis in Germany, both quantitative and qualitative aspects come into play. Political, academic and practical organisations are all looking for the answers and solutions to the problem of how they can ensure care for the increasing number of elderly people in need of care and/or suffering from dementia. Their ultimate goal is to develop forms of care which guarantee good life quality for the elderly and preserve future generations from too-high care costs.

The migration to domestic work would not be increasing without the influence of push and pull factors. The push factors encourage women and men from Poland to leave their current country and work to earn money abroad. These factors can be viewed on three levels:

(1) On the macro level this movement is an effect of the mass

transformatory unemployment in Poland after the system transformation in 1989, which affected most women (Robert 2006, 161–63). Other aspects are the vicinity of borders between both countries (making commuter migration more feasible) and still-large income differences between Poland and Germany.2 The migration became a sort of “earning tradition”, particularly in Polish region of Upper and Lower Silesia (cf. Solga 2002, 62–70; Irek 1998, 63);

(2) On the meso level, the situation for workers over 50 years old—who are preferred for the care of elders in need of care—is difficult on the Polish market. As German-Polish migrations have a long tradition, they have led to the establishment of a broad network of

2 The National Average Salary amounts are 4,622.84 PLN (about 1,155 EUR) in Poland and 3,809 EUR in Germany (cf. Trading Economics 2018).

When Work Becomes Family 35

contacts making looking for a job abroad and adapting to a new place easier;

(3) Relevant motives on the micro level can be of a personal nature; for example, in cases of violence in the family or bad experiences in the home country migration to domestic work can be seen as a strategy for crisis resolution.

The pull factors draw the migrants to Germany and can also be viewed on three levels:

(1) On the macro level there is an increasing number of disabled elderly and care costs. German care insurance3 covers only a part of these costs. Ambulatory services are seen as insufficient and are not able to cover the needs of every disabled client (cf. Pfau-Effinger, Och, and Eichler 2008, 83–98). Due to the lack of time and the skilled-worker shortage, ambulatory service is often called “care-in-rush” (dt, Minutenpflege). For the past few decades the German society has also been undergoing a de-standardization of lifestyles. Many children of elderly persons live and/or work far away and have their own families, and balancing work and care of their elderly parents is a great burden for them;

(2) At the same time, many elderly persons wish to be cared for at home.4 It is worth mentioning that the principle “domestic care before residential care” is the political postulate of the German government. The wish for domestic care is defined at the meso level as equivalent to the affiliation of migrant care workers from Poland to the same (Christian) cultural area, which implies a

3 German long-term care insurance is an independent part of the social security in Germany and makes financial provision for the risk of care necessity. A person is eligible for long-term care benefits (in cash or benefit-in-kind), if they are not able to independently manage their daily life activities for at least six months because of disability or impairment (physical, mental, psychological). Long-term care insurance was introduced as the fifth column of social insurance after health insurance, industrial injuries, pensions and unemployment insurance (cf. JuraForum 2013). 4 According to a study from the German Institute for Applied Care Research (dt, Deutsches Institut für angewandte Pflegeforschung e.V.) the main reasons for family members to employ a migrant care worker are: (1) domestic care is the sole acceptable alternative to a facility/retirement home, (2) great demand for support and supervision of the elderly person, (3) overextension of family carers/caring relatives (von der Malsburg and Isfort 2014, 3).

Chapter Two 36

conviction that the migrant carers know well and practice holidays, rituals and customs in the same way as their clients;

(3) On the micro level women from Central and Eastern Europe are seen as stereotypically “capable, resilient, well educated, attentive”, etc. (cf. Schmidt 2006, 16; Metz-Göckel, Münst, and Kałwa 2010, 51–52).

Number of domestic care workers in Germany

In different studies presented, statistics show the dimension of transnationalised care work. According to the most often-quoted guesstimates, between 200,000 and 300,000 migrants from Central and Eastern Europe work in Germany (cf. Larsen, Joost, and Heid 2009; Verdi 2015). Zacher (2015) speaks of approximately 200,000 German households provided for by approximately 400,000 to 500,000 care workers on a rotation basis. The rotation of two or more care workers within one workplace makes it difficult to estimate the real number of the domestic care workers. Other difficulties include irregular change of workers and, in many cases, undocumented employment.

Framework conditions for “professional familiarisation”

According to many qualitative study results (Karakayali 2010; Metz-Göckel, Münst, and Kałwa 2010; Kniejska 2016), elderly women are most favoured for domestic work. Many of them are married and have adult children, who they often still support financially. It was also noted that these women represent a wide range of educational levels (e.g., from high school diploma and vocational education up to full university degree). Migrant care workers from Poland have a legal stay within the European Union (EU), but their working conditions are very often illegal. Many of the women decide to work under irregular conditions because they distrust institutions such as job centres or care agencies and are convinced that the care agencies profit from their expense. Care agencies are seen as emergency solutions if there is no possibility of finding a job among informal networks. Moreover, the pension legislation in Poland is unfavourable in case of (female) pensioners, who work in domestic care abroad and are getting paid too much under Polish law (Arbeitlandia 2011). Last but not least, many people and organisations know about the care “black labour”, but they accept this situation; thus, in a way, they give their silent consent to illegal employment.


Most care workers live and work at their workplace and organise their life in at least two places: virtually, through modern communication technology, with their families in Poland, and directly, by taking care of elderly people in Germany. Since most migrants work as undocumented carers, they organise their services by themselves on a rotation basis (cf. Karakayali 2010, 291–93)—mostly in family or friends’ circles, which can be called “family-business-strategy” (cf. Kniejska 2016, 160). They commute regularly between Poland and Germany; in some cases they stay between six weeks and three months at work and go home for the same term/length of time. Some women, such as teachers or nurses, rotate only seldomly, mostly on vacation, in their holiday time (so-called “jumper”) or as replacement for other live-ins. There are also domestic care workers from Poland who were commuting to work in the beginning, but after some time they decided to stay and are now permanently residing in Germany. These findings show, on the one hand, tendencies and similarities within migrant care workers and, on the other, they also characterise this group as heterogeneous and dynamic.

Definition of “professional familiarisation”

Migrant care workers’ jobs are hard to define, but typical for this work area is the so-called “24/7 availability”, as well as the complexity and versatility of care workers’ tasks. Most of the care workers are not professionally trained. They work by intuition based on experiences from their family life (caring for children, elderly parents, etc.), earlier jobs or exchanges with other live-ins/colleagues. They create, develop and maintain their own informal working structure, which they benefit from if looking for alternative employment or to share care knowledge and as a strategy for easing their burdens.

It is difficult to characterise tasks and professional competences needed in domestic care work due to its similarities with private-home-environment and intimate/informal family life. As professional borders at this workplace are hard to define, some players in care settings develop their own strategies and expectations toward caregivers, which go far beyond regular working conditions. Tracy X. Karner (1998) speaks in this context about fictive kinship, which is often introduced in care settings with elderly dependents to fulfil their emotional needs and to provide a kind of family care for them if their family members are unwilling or unable to do it by themselves:

Chapter Two 38

The introduction of strangers, literally people one has never met before coming into the home and preparing meals or assisting with bathing, into a sphere of intimacy is sometimes accomplished by constructing a familial relationship with the caretaker. Thus the familial-type tasks provided by the stranger-caretaker can be reconstructed as appropriate and the realm of privacy and intimacy can be maintained. By “adopting” their homecare workers as fictive kin, the elder is able to maintain a sense of the cultural ideal of family caregiving. (Karner 1998, 71–72)

“Professional familiarisation” puts this phenomenon into greater context and describes the caregiver not as passive employee, who is “adopted” by the employing family, but rather as active player, who uses specific competences and strategies in the care work to achieve concrete goals. Moreover, “professional familiarisation” can be understand as a strategy for creating a working relationship using structures, tokens, behaviours, perceptions and verbal expressions that characterise a familiar relationship (see Kniejska 2015c, 135–37; Karner 1998) and is based on the subjective perceptions of some group of live-ins, who create and care about fictive kinship. Satola (2014, 255) speaks in this context about temporal self-professionalisation as development of diverse competences, which live-ins activate depending on the individual needs of their clients. This process has a temporary character, because the self-professionalisation has to be consistently (in every new work relationship) modified and aligned, but it always demands sacrifice of live-ins’ individual (e.g., emotional) needs and wishes.

Methodological approach

In the three years (2014–2017) of the research project EUMIP:5 Development of Support Structures for Middle and East European Migrants in Domestic Care Settings (dt, Entwicklung von Unterstützungsstrukturen für mittel- und osteuropäische MigrantInnen in häuslichen Pflegearrangements), we tried to develop, prove and spread long-term and transferable concepts for improvement: of the working conditions for live-ins, in care arrangements and for better domestic care. We also support legal employment and transfer of knowledge in care settings and in society. The research was undertaken in two model regions: Freiburg (smaller city, more rural areas) and Frankfurt am Main (big city agglomeration).

5 The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (dt, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung). The principal investigator of the project is Nausikaa Schirilla ([email protected]).


Within the scope of the project, different agents were surveyed. The research approach was both qualitative and quantitative. For the purpose of the study, twenty-five problem-centred semi-structured interviews with live-ins (n=11), German families (n=4) and professionals in ambulatory care (n=10), and nine exploratory talks with drop-in centres, were carried out. We ran also a quantitative online survey among care agencies in Germany. We contacted most of the interviewees through informal contacts, Catholic parishes and ambulatory care. The quantitative data was analysed with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), and for the interpretation of quantitative interviews we used summarising content analysis (Mayring 2008).

Players in the care settings and their relationship types

Within professional familiarisation there are four players specifically involved in the care settings: live-ins, care recipients, their relatives and professionals in ambulatory care. They develop different types of relationships, which have various motivations and either put live-ins in an employer role or let the line between live-ins’ work and their private lives blur. Figure 2-1 Types of relationships between the players in the care settings

Between some care recipients and live-ins a fictive kinship is established. In some cases, relatives also allow a semi-family relation, but more often they try to establish a friendly relationship. Sometimes the relatives withdraw and pass the entire responsibility for the elderly person

Chapter Two 40

onto the live-in. There are cases where the contact between both players is poor since the employers are not interested in the private lives of the migrant carers and show indifferent attitudes toward them. Between ambulatory care and live-ins two relationships were seen: team work only on a professional level and disrespectful relationships, as the professional carers criticise live-ins for the lack of qualifications and perceive them as laypersons who are not able to perform care tasks properly.

As mentioned above, the network of relationships in the care settings is complex and dynamic. It changes over the course of the work and can take both advantageous and burdensome characteristics for each player in care settings.

Supporting functions and dynamics of “professional familiarisation”

Professional familiarisation accomplishes many functions in the relationship between particular players in the care setting. Those functions can be supporting or can represent a burden for each player, meaning that their dynamics can be viewed as two-sided: every player achieves benefits and/or experiences burdens in daily interactions caused by this strategy:

Figure 2-2 Functions and dynamics of professional familiarisation in transnational care settings


As a result of the professional familiarisation, live-ins can become a sort of family substitution for the care recipient since he/she is “24/7 available” for the care recipient; therefore, the live-in is also able to be a contact person for the ambulatory care, informing them about changes in the health status of care recipients. Professional carers, on the other side, are able to guide live-ins through difficult or complicated tasks, such as transfers from bed or washing of care recipients with bedsores; hence, they share the responsibility for dependent elderly welfare. Describing live-ins as family members that are visiting and/or helping the care recipient allows them to avoid legal control and/or fines for illegal work and contributes to the ongoing persistence of the grey area. German families include live-ins in their lives, take them on trips, give extra gifts (e.g., for a birthday or holidays) and offer emotional support in case of private burdens:

As I worked in Berlin for a doctor family… They were honestly great people. I felt like a family member there. We always sat together at the table. On Saint Nicholas Day I had to sit together with grandma [care recipient] and her grandson [and we received gifts]. Her son was just so great! My mother just died and I became a phone call from Poland. Everybody came, they gave me hugs, expressed their condolences to me. That was very nice. (Ewa, 50, Hessen, 15)6

Such manners and signs can symbolise, on the one hand, acceptance and satisfaction with a live-in’s care work and, on the other, it can be a strategy for relocating the responsibility for the dependent elderly from relatives to the migrant carer.

Negative aspects of “professional familiarisation”

Professional familiarisation can also lead to burdens and conflicts in the areas of: working conditions, sharing tasks between care players and subjective perceptions of a live-in as a (non-professional) worker. The interviews showed that in some cases care recipients include live-ins in their intra-family conflicts. The women react to it in different ways. They feel often helpless and overwhelmed. In one case the live-in protested against the outrageous behaviour of a family member who tried to hit her client:

6 Names have been changed. Interviewee’s age, region of employment and year in which she started working in domestic care are shown in parentheses.

Chapter Two 42

She [care recipient’s wife] has absolutely no patience, and you need much much patience in this job. She had no patience for her husband, even worst: she hit him! He sits in a wheelchair, because Parkinson disease made him convulsed and later he was not able to eat by himself [sigh]. She hit him even in my presence, [sigh] and later when I noticed she wanted to pick a fight, I said immediately: “Stop! No hitting!”. Well, she was surprised, because for the first time I said to her harshly that she is not allowed to hit her husband. And then she wondered: “This is not allowed? Why so?” (Eliza, 57, Baden-Württemberg, 14)

Some employments—often involving clients with greater needs of care and support—are characterised by social isolation and exploitation in regard to working hours and time off. This is the case not only if there are no family members left but also if they do not want to care for their elderly family member. In these cases live-ins are not allowed to leave the household and they get no leisure time. The German family can exploit and emotionally blackmail the live-in and ask her for longer working hours (than those initially agreed in the informal contract) for the good of the care recipient. The borders between the work, time off, law and occupational protection fade away in the 24/7-domestic-care-arrangements —especially in the eyes of family members, who themselves are employed to regular and protected conditions:

He [care recipient’s son] told me I am not allowed to leave the house. I can lie down, if I feel ill, grandma do not need me or if I have no work to do, he said, but I cannot go out. To get three, four hours of free time is not possible, because she [care recipient] is afraid of calling him [care recipient’s son], because he would not come to bring her to the toilet or in other case… If I have to go out, to go shopping or for a walk I bring him a bell. I do it only then, when I know she would not call him, because she was already in the toilet and handled her business [laughs]. Only then I go out for a short walk or to buy few things, for one hour or one hour and a half… (Ewa, 50, Hessen, 15) Live-ins do not always see family members only as employers but

sometimes see them as partners in the caring process. They expect from them activities and engagement, which the relatives are often not able or willing to fulfil, such as common visits or takeover of some tasks; as a result, the live-in can act as an encroacher and tend to dictate how the daily life and habits of the dependent elderly person should be. This leads then to a situation where the live-in performs all the household tasks and duties by themself and does not encourage the dependent elderly person to take an active part in them (e.g., live-in cooks the whole meal alone


instead of preparing it together with the care recipient; feeds the elderly person instead of allowing them to try eating without any major help). Such a tendency can be called an “overprotective care” (dt, überbehütende Pflege) (see Baltes 1995, 163; Kniejska 2015a, 2015b), and it causes the elderly person to become dependent at an even faster pace.

Conflicts and refusals become a frequent consequence when the live-ins feel like servants with no rights but with a sole obligation to work around the clock. Migrant carers find it very frustrating if ambulatory professionals treat them this way. They try to openly communicate their discontent—straightforwardly or in the presence of family members. In some cases, if the relation to the ambulatory professionals becomes unbearable for the live-in, a family member will often cancel the ambulatory services only to keep the (cheaper) service of the live-in. Similarly, ambulatory care can also make use of the around-the-clock availability of migrant carers and exploit them by transferring some tasks or services to live-ins which care professionals would refuse to do due to of lack of time (e.g., morning toilet or hair washing, etc.) or even delegating tasks or services for which the ambulatory caregiver is paid by the care insurance. Such a strategy has been called, due to its resemblance to the cuckoo bird, which is well known for laying eggs in the nests of other bird species, the “cuckoo-strategy”:

I mean the contact is mostly O.K. There are days when they [professional carers] do not respond friendly or something. My colleague [other live-in] said, she [professional carer] wanted this and this from her. I do not allow such things. As an example, today the nurse came and removed grandpa’s [care recipient] bandages and left it on the ground. I did not put them in the closet. I wait for her [professional carer] to come, because it is her job not mine to put them to the right place. This is the reason, why it is good to learn German. I say to her: “Nurse, roll the bandage up please. This is not my task”. She does not do my job, I do not do her. (Elena, 52, Baden-Württemberg, 12)

When work becomes family: discussion and conclusions

A definition of the “professionalisation” remains elusive. This term is often related to qualifications and competences which are learned at school or educational institutions and are officially approved. The focus of the professional care for our purposes is to support people in need of care, to help them deal with their disease or care dependency with the goal of achieving the best possible quality of life for them (Schweizerische Akademie der medizinischen Wissenschaften 2008).

Chapter Two 44

Domestic care is a strongly feminised, unregulated, controversial and very complex working area, as the research material shows. Various biographies, nationalities, care methods, experiences, expectations and worries are brought into close proximity in the area of domestic care. It is worth mentioning that migrant care workers often view their job as a mainly non-professional position, similar to the other players in the care setting, since for many the domestic care is generally represented by its familiar and affectionate character.

Competences that are needed to organise the care in this form are, on the one hand, expected (by the family members) and, on the other hand, promoted and offered (by migrant carers). Due to the structure and regulation difficulty, players in the transnationalised care settings are all using the strategy of professional familiarisation to achieve their goals. On the one side they benefit from the constellation, on the other side they have to deal with burdens, which this constellation leads. Every group extracts as advantages as is endangered of burdens in this constellation. The burdens strongly correlate with the intensity and type of contact with the dependent elderly person.

Family members often do not live in their parents’ households and have difficulties not only with the appreciation of the elderly person’s needs but also with the acceptance of their behavioural and cognitive changes. At the same time, they want to cover and organise support for their relatives that is as familiar and intimate as possible. Professional familiarisation likewise interrelates with some motives for takeover care responsibility by family members, such as commitment motives (cf. Dammert 2009, 137), guilt feelings or pattern of the good child (cf. Gröning and Kunstmann 2008, 108). Migrant care workers offer a compromise for cultivating familiar, intimate and confident care for elderly parents; therefore, the abnormal working conditions in domestic care are often ignored.

Professional familiarisation can lead to isolation, exploitation and lack of cooperation among the players as it is relatively easy to give up the responsibility for an elderly dependent to only one party (who cares directly). Some players tend to strongly define their tasks and responsibility area as professional and appropriate for elderly person wealth and de-skill others in the setting; however, if all players are actively involved in the care process, it can be also a satisfying and comfortable work arrangement for migrant workers.

Fictive kinship (Karner 1998) is an integral part of the domestic care work, but it is more multidimensional, as previous research shows. It fulfils various functions which lead to both carers’ occupational success and adaptation to difficult and uncertain working conditions. According to


Satola (2014, 257), the self-professionalisation process of the female migrants helps to increase their self-confidence but can also lead to their exploitation, because family members/employers use this strategy to exert power over them. Our research material showed that professional familiarisation is used not only by the employers but also by migrant carers themselves and is often not forced upon them. It can be even initiated by live-ins to prove certain predispositions, skills and competences for achieving their own aims or fulfilling their own needs. Professional familiarisation works in both directions. There are care settings in which migrant carers are depersonalised and overburdened (Satola 2014, 257), but there are also examples of workers who exert influence, have a say and create strong positions at their workplaces. They do not have to give up their personal needs for the dependent elderly care recipients, and in some cases they are even reducing the independence of their clients. This proves that migrant care workers are at once active and passive, exploited and encroached, and self-sacrificing and reproachful players.

Transnationalised domestic care is a phenomenon that will get more and more public attention in the coming years. Challenges as well as potential in various fields (e.g., migration policies, care inclusion, living models in old age, care crisis) characterise this progression. It requires active involvement and openness for cooperation and sharing of responsibility between institutions, organisations and decision-makers to develop sustainable models which will fulfil the requirements and wishes on both sides: the caregivers and care recipients.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Nausikaa Schirilla and Jasmin Kiekert for collaboration and to Agata Widera for her comments and linguistic corrections.

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Kniejska, P., J. Kiekert and N. Schirilla. 2017. “Indispensable yet Invisible - Migrant Care Work in Germany. A Challenge for Social Work as a Human Rights` Profession.” European Journal of Social Education 28/29: 144-152.

Larsen, Ch., A. Joost, and S. Heid, eds. 2009. Illegale Beschäftigung in Europa. Die Situation in Privathaushalten älterer Personen. München/Mering: Rainer Hampp Verlag.

Lutz, H. 2008. “Sprich (nicht) darüber – Fürsorgearbeit von Migrantinnen in deutschen Privathaushalten.” Polis 49: 59–71.

Mayring, P. 2008. Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse: Grundlagen und Techniken. Weinheim und Basel: Beltz Verlag.

Metz-Göckel, S., S. Münst, and D. Kałwa. 2010. Migration als Ressource: Zur Pendelmigration polnischer Frauen in Privathaushalte der


Bundesrepublik. Opladen & Farmington Hills: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Pfau-Effinger, B., R. Och, and M. Eichler. 2008. “Ökonomisierung,

Pflegepolitik und Strukturen der Pflege älterer Menschen.” In Sozialpolitik: Ökonomisierung und Entgrenzung, edited by A. Evers and R.G. Heinze, 83–98.Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

Robert, G. 2006. “Kariera negatywna jako skutek migracji. Losy kobiet z Europy Wschodniej i Środkowej w zachodnich państwach dobrobytu.” In Współczesna Europa w procesie zmian: wybrane problemy, edited by J. Polakowska-Kujawa, 161–63.Warszawa: Difin.

Satola, A. 2014. “Selbstprofessionalisierungsprozesse in der dirty work: Polnische Frauen in der irregulären Pflege in deutschen Haushalten.” Migration und Soziale Arbeit 36 (3): 252–60.

Schmidt, J. 2006. Viel Arbeit für wenig Geld? Frauen aus Osteuropa als Haushaltshilfen in Haushalten mit Pflegebedürftigen. In Haushaltsnahe Dienstleistungen. Herausforderungen und Potenziale für ältere Menschen und die Beschäftigungspolitik. Dokumentation einer Fachveranstaltung vom 17.02.2006, edited by Bündnis 90/Die Grünen im Landtag NRW, 15-21.

Schweizerische Akademie der medizinischen Wissenschaften. “Definition von professioneller Pflege.” Schweizerische Akademie der medizinischen Wissenschaften, July 15, 2008. https://nursing.unibas.ch/institut/institut-fuer-pflegewissenschaft/definition-pflege/.

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Trading Economics. 2018. “Poland and Germany Average Gross Monthly Earnings.” Accessed July 02, 2018. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/wages; http://www.tradingeconomics.com/poland/wages.

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von der Malsburg, A., and M. Isfort. 2014. “Haushaltsnahe Dienstleistungen durch Migrantinnen in Familien mit Pflegebedürftigkeit. 24 Stunden verfügbar-Private Pflege in Deutschland.” WISO Direkt, June, 2014. http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/wiso/10811.pdf.

Zacher, B. 2015. Statistik. http://www.aerztezeitung.de/politik_gesellschaft/pflege/article/891523/neue-statistik-meisten-pflegekraefte-kommen-polen.html.

CHAPTER THREE

HANDLING AMBIVALENCE: TRANSNATIONAL HEALTH PRACTICES

AND MIGRANT EVALUATIONS OF HEALTH SERVICES

JUSTYNA STRUZIK, JUSTYNA BELL, PAULA PUSTUŁKA

AND MAGDALENA ŚLUSARCZYK

Introduction

Health and health practices often become the subject of sociological discussions centred around the ways in which patients perceive, experience and manage not only their own health but also their contacts and communication with healthcare service providers (Kronenfeld 2011). Over the last fifty years there has been a radical change in the perception of the relationship between a medical doctor and a patient, starting with a hierarchical classical setup (Parsons 1951), through the relationship within which the patient gains empowerment and agency, up to a corporative model, in which the patient becomes a customer (McKinlay and Stoeckle 1988). In broad social research, a greater autonomy and agency of patients in contemporary Western societies has been noted, especially with reference to the “patient-healthcare professional” relation becoming more egalitarian and less hierarchical (Renedo et al. 2015). In this context, special attention is given to healthcare experiences among the members of particular groups occupying minority or marginal positions. Within this setting, researchers increasingly observe inequalities stemming from being a non-normative patient and how this status exposes a person to discrimination and invokes barriers in healthcare access, both in terms of services and care facilities. This might concern ethnic minorities,

Handling Ambivalence 49

migrants, refugees, social strata in persistent economic precarization, LGBT people, and so on.

The goal of this chapter is to investigate diverse practices linked to access and utilization of healthcare services among Polish migrants in Norway. The context of the discussion is embedded in the evaluation of healthcare services—both in the country of origin and in the receiving society. The latter emerges as migrants encounter the Norwegian healthcare service providers. The chapter’s focus is on transnational health-related practices taken on by migrants. The respondents are importantly seen as heterogeneous regarding the forms of inclusion and exclusion they experience as a result of their intersectional positioning in terms of social class, migrant status and gender.

Healthcare and migration

Contemporary social studies on health, primarily honing in on the relations between a patient and a healthcare system, doctors and diagnoses, mirror the increasingly prominent interest in social identities and social practices (Lively and Smith 2011; Charmaz 1983; Sanders, Donovan, and Dieppe 2002). Sociologists and social researchers point to the increasing individualisation and agency of social actors, as well as looking at new forms of social knowledge and their role in shaping contemporary societies (Epstein 1998). One of the key research areas is that of patients’ opportunities for shaping relations with healthcare providers, especially regarding how they can impact the scope and type of treatment (Armstrong 2014). In the era of reflexive societies (Archer 2012), Parson’s passive patient who fully gives her or himself up to the discretion and competence of doctors is being replaced by a reflexive and well-informed client-patient (Oudshoorn and Somers 2006; Heritage and Maynard 2006). As a new subject rather than object of healthcare practice and process, a patient can take advantage of the body of knowledge available through modern technology—for instance on the Internet. This can alter the dynamics of the formerly clear “expert-layman” relation (Broom 2005a, 2005b; Stevenson et al. 2007). At the same time, this shift to reflexive patients does not erase barriers to accessing healthcare. Among the groups particularly prone to vulnerability in reaching healthcare professionals and using healthcare provisions offered by institutions are migrants and ethnic minorities (Scheppers 2006; Betancourt et al. 2016).

In the context of migrants’ access and utilisation of healthcare services, it is common to examine the structural, social and communicational barriers and facilitators, also including migrants’ perceptions and

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expectations toward health provision, health personnel and equal treatment in the receiving country (see, for example, Priebe et al. 2011; Goodwin, Polek, and Goodwin 2012; Osipovič 2013; Sime 2014; Czapka and Sagbakken 2016). Due to self-selection processes, voluntary migrants are often reported to be healthier than the general population of the country of origin1 and thus they might not investigate their rights and access to healthcare ahead of the arrival to the new country. Even when migrants gain full rights to accessing healthcare in the receiving country, however, this does not automatically equate with their ability, knowledge or readiness to use it (Czapka 2010; Priebe et al. 2011; Goodwin, Polek, and Goodwin 2012; Osipovič 2013; Czapka and Sagbakken 2016). As with many other aspects of mobile lives, the use of healthcare services yields a complex set of strategies and interactions within individual capabilities of navigating the system.

Polish migrants, along with other EU citizens, have access to the Norwegian labour market and gain rights to many means of social protection, including healthcare, unemployment benefits and family-related support. For those Poles who are allocated a Norwegian personal number, the first instance of coming into contact with the Norwegian healthcare system is when they receive a letter from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Organisation (NAV) informing them about the assignment of a general practitioner (GP). The letter is, however, in Norwegian, and, as reported in other studies (ibid.; Småland Goth and Berg 2011), this means that migrants often do not understand the content. The relationship with GPs is important since they are the gatekeepers to the Norwegian healthcare system, yet Polish migrants are reportedly sceptical about the Norwegian GPs’ competences and professionalism (Småland Goth and Berg 2011; Czapka and Sagbakken 2016), a phenomenon which concurs with evidence gathered for Polish migrants in the UK (Goodwin, Polek, and Goodwin 2012; Osipovič 2013; Sime 2014). This perception of the Norwegian GPs might additionally reflect on the overrepresentation of Polish migrants in the use of emergency services (Leaman, Rysdale, and Webber 2006; Ruud et al. 2015).

Contemporary migrants choose a range of strategies of transnational healthcare utilisation, from sole engagement with the healthcare system of the receiving country to seeking help exclusively in the home country or 1 This phenomenon is referred to as a “healthy migrant effect” (Bollini and Siem 1995); yet, there are conflicting results regarding its existence, especially in the European countries (Moullan and Jusot 2014). Moreover, many studies (Leão et al. 2009; Constant et al. 2017) indicate that this effect holds solely for the newly arrived migrants.


elsewhere (Goodwin, Polek, and Goodwin 2012; Osipovič 2013; Czapka and Sagbakken 2016; Sime 2014; Ignaszak-Szczepaniak et al. 2009); still, the majority opts for a combination of the two. Polish migrants often consult healthcare personnel in Poland in addition to, or sometimes instead of, their Norwegian counterparts (Czapka 2010; Sime 2014; Goodwin, Polek, and Goodwin 2012; Osipovič 2013).

As sociological and psychological studies show, feelings of distrust and vagueness of social norms and social anomie can yield ethnocentric attitudes (Heydari et al. 2014). Therefore barriers and difficulties in accessing healthcare may lead to either emergence or reinforcement of stereotypes, which can, in turn, translate into ethnocentric attitudes and views. As for stereotypes, those can concern both home and host countries as heuristic understandings which can make certain overly simplified ideas and claims more appealing. This applies to positive and negative images of healthcare alike, extending to doctors, nurses, treatment and beyond. For the realm of healthcare, ethnocentrism is here viewed as a conviction about the superiority of the quality of healthcare in general, as well as the higher competence of one’s own ethnic/national group’s representatives as healthcare professionals. Various studies (Aqueveque 2015; Spillan, Kang, and Barat 2011) show that ethnocentrism prevails in food choices (so-called consumer ethnocentrism; see also Rabikowska 2010; Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2017) and manifests itself in a preference for buying/consuming familiar products and in a rejection of what is foreign/unknown. Analogically, we recognise that ethnocentrism in the contact with the healthcare system in a receiving country can take the form of selecting a doctor of Polish origin, a preference to undergo medical procedures in Poland and belittling the competence of doctors from other ethnic groups, as well as undermining the effectiveness of healthcare in the host country (see Sime 2014). Choosing a doctor on the basis of ethnic ties can nevertheless also be pragmatic and related to shared language and cultural competences as well as migrants’ social capital. In the article we follow migrants’ narratives to demonstrate their nuanced and complex attitudes toward healthcare systems both in Poland and Norway, aiming to evaluate various transnational practices regarding health services.

Polish and Norwegian healthcare systems

In order to understand the grounds for negative or ambivalent evaluations of the Norwegian healthcare system among migrants, it seems important to present the systemic discrepancies between the Polish and Norwegian systems. It is worth noting that public opinion research demonstrates the

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general population’s continuous dissatisfaction with healthcare in Poland. According to a representative study conducted by the Public Opinion Research Center(CBOS 2014), 68% of Poles express discontent with services. Yet, certain dimensions of healthcare services receive more complex and nuanced evaluations. Similarly, in comparative international research conducted by the OECD (2015), Poland stood out as a country with low levels of patient satisfaction. More specifically, while Poland had a share of only 43% satisfied patients in 2014 (a drop from 51% in 2007), Norway boasted one of the highest indicators of satisfaction, standing at 82% in 2007 and 2014.

The system that migrants know from Poland has been affected by the 1989 transition in the sudden shift from lack of access to the globally used new medications and technologies, as well as specialist healthcare providers. The result is a somewhat overloaded system marked by tensions between public and private services (Charkiewicz 2012; Golinowska et al. 2012; Watson 2006). Golinowska et al. (2012) argue that the system in Poland did not manage to catch up after the isolation of 1970s and 1980s, and is now characterised by low spending, stringent budgets in the public schemes and corruption. The underfunded public system with low salaries for doctors, nurses and staff is considered subpar and it is frequently believed that the same doctor will provide more empathetic and engaged care when being seen privately (Goryszewski 2012).

Patients in Poland therefore experience numerous problems linked to healthcare, especially in the realm of access inequalities (Golinowska et al. 2012) including long queues and waiting times for procedures. At the same time, citizens are well informed about the systemic constraints and are able to navigate them in formal and informal ways, such as by using personal networks for getting appointments and handling heavy out-of-pocket payments (ibid; see also Leven 2005; Shahriari, Belli, and Lewis 2001; Golinowska 2010, 15 for a review). Those with resources can additionally benefit from an extensive system of privatized care. In many cases, private care is used not so much due to non-accessibility of state providers but rather because the better-off individuals believe that they will be treated with more dignity and can receive more effective treatment when they pay for care (Golinowska 2010). This puzzlement is reinforced by media discourse, where it is suggested that everyone should obtain a second, independent diagnosis to reaffirm that the first doctor proposed the right solution, and where it is advised that extra compensation for a midwife for her presence during childbirth or a nurse for caring for a loved one at night are standard practices. While corruption is deemed a major


social issue, it is always justified when one commits it for the sake of a close person (Stepurko et al. 2015).

The new perception of healthcare as a financial matter and enterprise-like structure has also translated to particular patient expectations, as over-medicalisation, over-use and a huge array of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals are being normalised (Piątek, Koziarska-Rościszewska, and Zawilska 2015; Windak et al. 1996; Chwiałkowski 2004). This serves as another arena for corruption, as doctors are said to receive payments from pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment suppliers while also seeing private patient in their state-provided facilities (Leven 2005; Golinowska 2010). As a result of these aspects, seeing a doctor privately is loaded with expectations that a patient will receive prescriptions and be sent for extensive diagnostics. The overflowing of specialists’ offices fuels the spiral of costs, effectively having the privately handled patients being checked “just in case”, while those who are actually in need of treatment face a very limited chance of moving past a GP with their ailments (Shahriari, Belli, and Lewis 2001).

The Norwegian healthcare system has also undergone intensive changes toward including patients’ experiences into the overall process of quality assurance regarding healthcare services (Ringard et al. 2013). Private practices and hospitals are not very common and they are located mainly in larger cities. All residents registered in the National Registry as living in Norway have the right to a GP. They can also choose their own doctor, as long as the doctor has available places.2 GPs play the role of gatekeepers in Norwegian healthcare by referring patients to specialists and sending them for hospital treatment (Vikum, Krokstad, and Westin 2012). GPs in Norway have much more scope for taking action and proposing treatment, as their Polish counterparts’ competences are limited in that sense and they are legally and financially constrained to referring patients for specialist care (Krztoń-Królewiecka et al. 2016).

In the light of the above-stated differences, it becomes clear that Polish migrants moving to Norway are faced with a challenging task of navigating the two systems.

Methods

Our analysis draws on thirty biographical semi-structured interviews (Wengraf 2001) conducted with Polish migrants living with their families in Oslo and the surrounding areas as part of the Transfam research. The

2 See more at https://Helsenorge.no, accessed May 29, 2017.

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overarching Transfam project was broadly rooted in an interpretative paradigm and benefitted from a mixed-method multi-stage design. In this article, we focus specifically on the analysis of the Work Package 2 study, which included accounts from interviewees aged between twenty-nine and fifty-four years (average age was thirty-seven and a half years). This group has been living in Norway for between six months and twenty years (with average length of stay of around eight and a half years). The interview group was diverse in terms of the area of origin, level of education and position in the labour market.

The data analysis involved grids and open coding. We then developed a framework for a theme-centred analysis, first putting single interviews under scrutiny as individual cases and then conducting a case-transcending comparison. The analysed material presented in this article is grounded in the interview questions revolving around utilisation of healthcare services among Polish migrants living in Norway and their attitudes to healthcare services in Norway and in Poland. In addition, all of the respondents had children of varying ages, which is important as migration was commonly framed as something one did for family’s sake and the improvement of children’s prospects. By this logic, paediatric care and emergency medicine for children, as well as reproductive health, were commonly foregrounded in the narratives.

Findings

Disappointment and fear: negative evaluations of healthcare provisions

There was a clear line of narratives relating a surprise with the perceived suboptimal standard of healthcare in Norway, concurrent with the aforementioned research (Czapka 2010; Priebe et al. 2011; Osipovič 2013; Czapka and Sagbakken 2016). These negative evaluations, however, have to be seen with the caveat that not all opinions are based on actual experiences; some are also derived from a peculiar mix of gossip and horror stories circulating in the ethnic community:

A friend told me about a seven-year-old boy, they took him to doctors and he was fine, and he was fine […] and then they went to Poland and it turned out he had a swine flu. (Klara, 29) Others judge the system on the basis of their personal negative

experiences:


I was with my brother and his son, aged six, [and the boy] had forty degree fever, we spent there six hours and nobody was interested, even though we signed up and the fever was taken on record, nothing happened, no water, no asking about how the child is doing, we sat there for six hours at night, we went at 9pm, and left at 4am after a standard exam. He probably had a stomach virus and nobody cared about us. (Karol, 36)

I have allergies, for example, but I had to wait almost a year and a half for a visit. (Michał, 40) The difference between the two systems means that Polish patients

come to doctors’ surgeries in Norway with a set of expectations that are then not met. The most typical accusation against the Norwegian system is that most ailment are simply addressed by the recommendation of rest and an over-the-counter dose of paracetamol:

Generally Paracet is for them exactly like Apap for us, but here you are to take it regardless of whether you have a headache, a broken leg, or when someone is in the wheelchair with an open belly wound, [it] does not matter what it is. The first reaction here is Paracet and then an ear thermometer, (Cyryl, 32) Cyryl’s statement directly questions a rather open-ended and minimally-

invasive approach preferred in Norway. This issue has been described by Polish migrants in the UK (Goodwin, Polek, and Goodwin 2012) as a “Paracetamol force” and is additionally connected to the feeling of being discriminated against. More specifically, there is a belief that a native citizen (non-migrant) in the same situation would have gotten a better or an “actual” treatment; this is sometimes narrated as a struggle for one’s health rights:

Here you have to fight […] they just brush it away, especially when one is not fully aware of certain things, for instance a check-up for a child—they could skip it; they have their own system and don’t bother with some thigs that are considered standard in Poland. (Karol, 36) It transpired that children’s health was commonly at the heart of the

concern, as ensuring healthy development was inherent to people’s ideas of being a good parent (see also McKeever and Miller 2004):

I don’t trust [the healthcare system] here, as my son had those problems recently, I dreamt about being in Poland, so that I would be informed, especially as he had larynx issues, he couldn’t breathe […]. I would have to go straight for a shot […] and I was always scared about this, that they

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did not offer [alternatives like] cough syrup, just paracetamol and “it will pass”. (Klara, 29)

Problems with skill-levels of the healthcare professionals as a sign of ethnicisation

Another arena which resulted in the contestation of the Norwegian model was the wariness about the lack of skills and qualifications among doctors. While it was acknowledged that Norway is a richer and more developed society, the stereotypes around the subpar qualifications and honest display of doubts and unfamiliarity with certain health issues were prevalent:

The example of healthcare system shows that the Norwegians have a lot of equipment. You enter a hospital and [see] newest equipment. But they also seem to have doctors who went back in time, or are incompetent, or they don’t feel like it. It is not everybody: many doctors here are Polish. (Kornelia, 34) In this quotation, we can clearly see that Kornelia draws a clear line

between the “local” doctors, who she sees as lacking, and the Polish doctors who came to Norway and can for some reason be trusted. On top of the observable signs of routinised nationalism, one can argue that the respondent struggles with reconciling the fact that progress does not automatically mean over-medicalisation, which is what she has likely absorbed as accurate from the Polish context.

Discussions around healthcare prompted comparisons between the two countries, with some respondents seeing it as an opportunity to display the feeling of superiority:

As they say: if Poles had the same equipment as they do here, then they would have been the best in the world [….the Norwegians] don’t know Jack, so to speak […] they are doing guess-work […] with the Paracet being the first thing at the door. (Cyryl, 32) The dismissiveness and lack of attention from the medical personnel

was seen as a failure of the system:

[When my son] had a virus, and he stopped eating for two days and we were [at the hospital]. Not only did we wait for four hours, […] and you know how it is with a kid—he was tired, sleepy, constantly crying and vomiting […] they said it was all fine and we should come back if he stopped drinking. Next day he did and we came back […] and some nurse


told us to give him spoons of water […], and we came back the next day and again waited for three hours […] the child was in a real bad shape and we did a fuss, yelled that we won’t go, and then a Pakistani doctor came along and the moment he saw our child, he said he should have been sent to the hospital two days ago […] and an ambulance took him straight away. (Cyryl, 32) This seems to be tied with a social construction of experts and the

contents of this professional role which is associated with more rigid descriptors self-assurance and prestige (Broom 2005a, 2005b). The length of stay in Norway functioned as a mitigating factor in the sense that more nuanced perspectives about societal change could be adopted:

[Healthcare] is getting worse right know, one has to wait long for a visit with a specialist, so that you can see a specialist at all—they are not keen to write you a referral, so this has really gone down, I think it is a result of them combining, decentralizing hospitals and schools [which means] that the quality is decreasing. (Antonina, 47) In the narratives of migrants comparing Norwegian and Polish

healthcare, there are statements that highlight the importance of ethnic ties in choosing a doctor, not only for those who have a negative opinion about the Norwegian healthcare but also for those with ambivalent attitudes. For many, one strategy is to look for Polish doctors within the Norwegian healthcare. Migrants also mention that they chose to contact doctors working in Poland (either during a holiday trip or organising travel specifically for the purpose of getting a consultation) and receive informal phone (or Skype) consultations with the doctors in Poland. The preference for Polish doctors and the emphasis on the superiority of Polish healthcare might be a result of the general sense of insecurity within the local healthcare system (Czapka and Sagbakken 2016, 6), language difficulties (Småland Goth and Berg 2011) and some negative experience (either encountered by the person or heard from others).

Oh yes, so the doctors, we can visit a doctor here but my son has health problems. We are very close with one optometrist, the same one since my son was very little [premature]. Anyway, my Norwegian is not fluent enough so it always is: gynecologist, dentist and my son´s optometrist. These are the things we always tick off once a year in Poland. (Edyta, 37) In the Norwegian healthcare system patients are allowed to change

their GP several times during a year. When switching practices, some of the Polish patients look for Polish doctors in particular. Our interviewees

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explained that they trusted the competences of the Polish doctors more than their Norwegian counterparts.

Here you don’t have private doctors, you get a designated one, in other words, just like a first contact doctor [GP] in Poland and you can choose them yourself. Obviously when you arrive here out of nowhere, you don’t know the doctors here and you don’t know your options… so at first, we came across an assigned doctor […] It was a Norwegian-South African lady […] now we registered ourselves with Polish doctors. (Jan, 53) The root cause of the generalised evaluation of the Norwegian healthcare

as well as ethnocentric attitudes can be traced back to Polish patients’ dependency on the knowledge and experiences with the medical sector acquired solely in Poland:

[In Poland] I take care of things like optometrician because you can do it there: you enter, pay 100 PLN, see a doctor. Here it is different, you have to order a visit with a doctor, who can then refer you to an eye specialist and then you wait and wait. In Poland this problem does not exist. And of course shopping: pharmacy. The majority of Polish people bring everything from pharmacies in Poland. (Patrycja, 36) While feelings and first experiences in Norway may in time become

dominant, so far the referring back to the country or origin has been awarded narrative priority in all accounts. Some interviewees went as far as explaining that a doctor who has completed their education in Poland is a better choice due to a belief that studying there ensures that nothing has been overlooked in the curriculum:

Maybe if we have grown up here, then we would have trusted the Norwegian doctors. And still, they all say that they studied in Poland when you come see them. (Jan, 53)

Handling ambivalence

Opinions vary. When you go see a general practitioner, then you hear “please drink a lot of water”, this is typical for Norway. (Andrzej, 34)

While many aspects of Norwegian healthcare are difficult to accept for Poles, the passage of time has to be factored in as easing the dichotomy of “good” and “bad”. As migrants collect more first-hand experiences, they seem to be more willing to notice that certain local frameworks, in fact, function well, perhaps even better than in Poland. In this realm, the


benefits of the Norwegian healthcare system were particularly connected to the health and well-being of children. This was especially pertinent with reference to the prevention medicine, even if other experiences were mixed:

Regarding dental care it is very cool here that children below the age of sixteen get it for free. And it’s not like the Polish NFZ [National Health Services—public provider] that you sing upand then there are some free slots, this is not the case here. You get a control visit every six month and these are all private clinics, not like for NFZ where entities are underfunded and they work on various equipment, especially in smaller towns where it is just a nightmare I believe […]. Here clinics are top-equipped though as far as professionalism is concerned, not being totally serious, I believe our staff is better educated regarding doctors and dentists […]. But it is common for a mother and child to see a doctor […] state the symptoms and then the doctor takes out a computer, searches on Google or in a medical book […]. Still, generally we did not experience any totally horrible situations. (Agata, 39) From Agata’s quotation, the demarcation between Polish and “local”

doctors is once again evident. What is also interesting is the emergence of what can be seen as a digital divide with reference to the acceptance of technology as an assistive tool in medical practice, which in Poland remains uncommon (Czapka 2010). It appears that the authority of a doctor—which in Poland is built on hierarchical distance and conviction that a professional must know everything—cannot go hand in hand with the fact that technology may be a sign of being thorough and up-to-date rather than incompetent. What is additionally intriguing here is that Agata had somewhat anticipated negative encounters with the Norwegian healthcare system and was rather surprised that she did not have such experiences.

The interviewed Poles frequently recalled what they had perceived as inappropriate care for children in the face of the adverse Scandinavian weather, which nevertheless does not prevent a focus on being outdoors:

This is very negative about Norway that the children can do whatever they want outside. I mean it is cool and all, but also…. I am not saying he can’t be outside in a tracksuit playing with his sandbox toys in a puddle, but when he is then swimming in mud and the water gets in through cuffs, meaning that he comes home with wet underwear despite wearing the waterproof gear and wellies, well, that is quite strange […]. However when I spoke up, the teacher told me he will swallow many things in his life […] and they believe that it’s only some bacteria that will make them resilient. On the other hand, [a son of our friends in Poland] cannot even go to a

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sandbox and every time he so much as sneezes, he gets antibiotics. And here my children never took any, maybe my son once […]. And in Poland you sneeze and there you go […] I think that they go overboard here and they go overboard there. (Kornelia, 34) Undoubtedly the fact that Kornelia tried to intervene in local practices

means that her original concerns were rather prominent; however, she also gradually started to notice the assumptions behind what it means to maintain a good health. She contrasted systemic reactions and eventually concluded that there are positive and negative components of healthcare both in Poland and Norway. There are, nevertheless, certain rules of medical practice that turn out to be much more difficult to accept for Polish patients. Pre-natal health clearly stands out as one such branch of care:

It will normalize, nature will take its course—this is the approach also towards pregnancy. When the pregnancy is endangered, then there’s a miscarriage and [a claim] that it was too weak, they don’t try to sustain it […]. In my circles […] this is how it is, they all were pregnant but they don’t fight for each pregnancy, […] they give up, I heard several extreme cases of this sort. (Aneta, 34) Many complex factors feed into Aneta’s statement, starting with the

overall different cultural climate, discourse and language, which in contemporary Poland shifted the understanding of a foetus—now almost universally equated with “a child in a womb” (see e.g. Chełstowska 2011). In this context, it is not surprising for Aneta to see women “not fighting for a pregnancy” as not fulfilling their duty. Feminist debates aside, within the area of health practices, the scientific evidence which found typical pregnancy sustaining treatment ineffective (e.g., Haas and Ramsey 2013) has been unevenly adopted across countries. Particularly in Poland, women who experience the first signs of a miscarriage in early pregnancies are routinely hospitalised and prescribed medication that has elsewhere proven ineffective. Knowing this while also learning that a pregnancy in Norway is fully midwife-led, Polish women may choose to consult Polish doctors in parallel during their pregnancies:

For me [pregnancy] was something horrifying. First of all nobody sees an obstetrician/gynaecologist here but only a midwife. I was shocked, so I was travelling, flying to Poland to see my gynaecologist with my older child in tow. (Marcelina, 39)


The migrants seem to rather rely on horror stories circulated in the community and the paramount assumption that over-medicalisation signifies better health outcomes instead of actually conducting research which could explain the grounding of different care setups. We observe that culture shock reinforces the transnationalisation of practices for those migrants who can afford to travel back and forth and privately obtain additional medical advice and services in Poland. Contemporary transnationalism means that cheap flights and other forms of travel, as well as an option to consult a doctor in Poland via Skype, means that the parents choose to double-check their children’s health across the borders:

Every time we go to Poland, we all get the check-ups. So that we know where we stand. (Aneta, 34; Karol, 36) I believe people go to doctors here but consult doctors in Poland when, for example, something bad is happening and you have to get a referral in advance […]. When there is something urgent […] it requires time to go from one doctor to another, to translate and explain which is difficult for us. So one grabs a phone and calls a doctor they know in Poland. That doctor tells you what it might be, what to ask about, what to say. He directs people. (Jan, 53)

On the one hand, there are everyday aspects that point people to transnationalisation, including communication difficulties in Norway and the increased access to private care stemming from higher earnings abroad. Alongside the latter, it might be that for the migrants, their overall health improves because earlier social inequalities become alleviated, not only by money, but also by a peculiar regularization and taking time to actually schedule appointments which might not have taken place had the people stayed in Poland. On the other hand, it is evident that migration heightens the already vivid fears about the well-being of one’s children. While accumulation of positive experiences and knowledge about the healthiness of children in Norway points the parents in the direction of acceptance, they never seem to be fully convinced that they have done enough. The discrepancy between perceived levels of country development vis-à-vis the available care therefore leads to an ever-present ambivalence which elicits excessive practices in transnational spaces.

Positive observations about the Norwegian system

It has to be noted that the respondents also mentioned many positive elements of the encountered healthcare provisions. Many were actually

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aware that their co-nationals issue unwarranted complaints against the local system, as evidenced by the following excerpt from Julia, who works as a nurse in Norway:

I really can’t complain but I witnessed… when one sits at the Polish school and listens to the stories people tell there, of course they remember only what has gone wrong, how the ambulance had arrived too late, and so on. But I work in healthcare […] and have no concerns about the system. (Julia, 41) Just like everyone else, Julia comments on the Norwegian system

through the comparative lens of her familiarity with the Polish counterpart. She is rather an exception among the respondents as she finds herself clearly and decidedly in favour of the local provisions. This also does not originate from external conditions like lack of resources for going back; it is caused instead by her familiarity with the Norwegian healthcare context. In short, being a nurse signifies having an extensive and grounded opinion, which excludes most of the non-factual stories, tales or one’s personal fragmented experiences.

I: Do you use healthcare services here or in Poland? R: Exclusively here. (Julia, 41) The insider perspective and daily observation of the healthcare system

in Norway from within enable Julia to evaluate the system through the lens of patterns in which patients are treated and in which doctors communicate with them. An interesting connection to broader notions about social equality seems to permeate opinions about healthcare being independent of one’s social class positioning.

It didn’t matter if it was a shop assistant or a guy recommended by the professor, (which in Poland would mean) two separate methods of treatment, this doesn’t happen here. Everybody is equal, everyone is a patient, every doctor has time for a patient; they communicate directly and informally […]. I remember when my mother was in the hospital [in Poland]—I was chasing after a doctor to find out what’s next, what are the results […] here a doctor has time for a patient and explains everything. (Julia , 41) The latter is tied with a more empathetic approach toward a patient.

Another interviewee, Andrzej, also stressed the benefits linked with state-of-the art medical equipment:


As far as specialists are concerned, and I had my hand operated on here, then I think that they have treated it well. Especially regarding the resources and equipment in the hospital, those were better than in Poland for certain, no contest […]. When I was being operated on, they were giving me anaesthesia and they asked what kind of music I like and they gave me headphones, played some music, told me to be calm and then it was all over. I cannot imagine this in Poland. (Andrzej, 34) As with the problematic areas, the benefits of the Norwegian

healthcare system were also connected to the well-being and health of children:

I cannot complain about healthcare. I had a surgery, and my child had a surgery, after he had an accident, it was an emergency and he was operated on. […] he was admitted instantly and moved to the front of the line, they have reacted right away. And it was great, there were several specialists, surgeons, so I can’t complain. […] some things are particular here, some things they could change, but generally healthcare here is in plus. (Sabina, 35) The migrants appreciate the surroundings that are empathetic to the

patients, especially facilitatory toward the young children stressed by health crises. Positive experiences with Norwegian healthcare seem to be crucial for shaping migrants’ attitudes toward the system and can constitute a type of an “entry badge” which can be used for establishing a route toward greater acceptance of local solutions. Having gained these “entry” experiences, Polish migrants can begin to feel anchored in the local system:

But [my daughter] fell off the tree, it was serious. It was during the afterschool program and she hurt her leg very badly, she needed to have it in a cast, though it was not broken. They have secured it to prevent further damage. It all went very quickly, it was great, she was given colourful crutches, colourful cast that she could have chosen herself, it was all done very quickly. (Agata, 39)

Developing coping strategies

The participants additionally spoke about developing certain strategies of navigating within the Norwegian system in order to be givenappointments within an acceptable time-frame:

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Here there is just one way of saving yourself: […my husband] can babble enough for them to get me in for a visit in ten minutes-time, while when I call myself I have to wait for two weeks, this is typical here. (Magda, 39) One of the strategies of adapting to the Norwegian healthcare system is

to suggest a possible diagnosis to physicians by attracting their attention to the specific symptoms. Coping strategies are inscribed in transnational self-management of one’s health and access to information. Despite using the Norwegian healthcare provisions, the migrants become self-equipped with extra knowledge from the Polish doctors. They seek consultations in their country of origin as they believe this can help their treatment in the destination states. These types of actions and behaviours can be interpreted as the sign of patients’ transition from passive users to active “makers and shapers” of health policy on the level of individualised solutions and choices (Cornwall and Gaventa 2001). Migrants who talked about their experiences of guiding the Norwegian doctors toward a diagnosis after a prior consultation with Polish specialists felt unsurprisingly conflicted about such scenarios. This could arise from the communication context of patient-doctor relations in Poland, which—according to sociological research (Jarosz et al. 2012; Ostrowska 2006)—is still more paternalistic than modelled around partnership and/or equality.

Once Ania had a horrible pain, in her C-spine, first we had to gather information about what it could be in Poland. We had to know what to ask for and what to tell the doctor so that we could then tell the Norwegian doctor. So that we could be sure that he diagnoses it here… I am not sure whether this is good. (Jan, 53)

Jan’s description of what is believed to be an appropriate and

necessary strategy showcases the ambivalence behind his actions. Perhaps he would have preferred to fully trust the doctor, because his choice of actions mean taking on at least partial responsibility for a diagnosis. The coping strategies and acquainting oneself with non-standard behaviours that cross occupational boundaries thus reveal migrants’ reflexivity. Quite clearly, they navigate between the differing Polish and Norwegian opportunity structures, and their migrant-patient transnational agency. This translates to challenging the Polish medical over-use without embracing the “natural” course of action generally perceived as characteristic of Norway. This in-between third route proves that coping strategies may not necessarily mean rejection of one of the models but point to agency in managing available knowledge and services instead.


Alongside the first strategy of consulting Polish doctors, the second realm of coping practices found among the migrants is buying and bringing over medications. This entails acquisition of medications that the Poles know will not be prescribed to them by Norwegian doctors. In their view, however, these medicaments can help prevent or treat certain diseases:

R: [laughs] at the beginning I was very sceptical. I had no trust for doctors because when you go see one here with a child who has a cold or is sneezing, you get feedback that all is fine and that it will simply go away on its own, and you just have to wait. In Poland we are used to going in and leaving with a batch of prescriptions, we can go to the pharmacy right away and give it to children. Here the approach is more natural and I was very sceptical to this [course of action]. Now after some time has passed I see it differently, I am less concerned and I also do not give so many meds to my children, even though I trust Polish medications. So for example when they have diarrhoea or something, then I give Polish medications. I: So you bring medications from Poland, right? R: Yes. Whenever I am in Poland I get a back-up stash. (Kaja, 33) On the one hand, Kaja has already accepted Norwegian treatment plans

to a great extent. On the other hand, she remains under the influence of the Polish ways of managing one’s health, which are based on efforts to eradicate the ailment as soon as possible, even if it requires intervention. The respondent does not wait for the health issues to resolve themselves, no matter how minor they are. Instead, she actively takes matters into her own hands, is at the helm of treatment and personifies a medical expert in a sense.

The third very common coping strategy is for the migrants to find a doctor from their own ethnic group in Norway. Having a Polish doctor is considered optimal and largely seen as a solution to most of the problems. This choice not only removes the risk of communication hurdles and signifies feeling “at ease” in a usually stressful situation, but it also means that informal networks of support can be created among co-ethnics in Norway. While the Norwegian system appears to be rigid, hard to access and requiring patience (i.e., in long waiting times), Polish doctors within the foreign system are seen as able to counter the system’s unacceptable components “from the inside”:

I have no problem with healthcare services because right now my family doctor is a Polish friend. Earlier we had issues with getting a child registered for a visit when she had a flu, throat infection or fever. I had to either wait for three weeks or argue so that the doctor would see us.

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Luckily now she is our doctor, she can be called and simply solve the issue at hand practically straight away. (Marcelina, 39)

Finally, it has to be noted that some migrants chose to withdraw from

the Norwegian system instead of coping with the hurdles. In such cases, they decide to rely entirely on the Polish system for medical treatment and advice. While this solution cannot be practically implemented in full—for instance, due to the nature of health emergencies—it is still seen as yielding the best results in certain areas. Notably, Poles opt for treatment and services in Poland when the matters concern prophylactics and prevention, or when care is expensive and can be privately obtained in Poland by planning ahead.

Dentist, dentist is a must [in Poland] because here you can spend all you have on dental care, it is very expensive here. [My daughter] has it for free because she is a minor, but for us a stupid extraction or root canal treatment costs thousands of kronas. So I think a majority of Poles that I know undergoes dental treatment in Poland. Even more and more Norwegians fly to Gdańsk or Kraków to get their teeth done. (Kornelia, 34)

As previously noted, seeing a doctor can be a sensitive matter, so the

lack of fluency in the language translates commonly into fear of not being understood. Feeling more at ease in Poland commonly results in seeing several specialists during a short return visit in Poland. It is typical for the migrants to have “trusted” and stable doctors in home localities, as there it was more straightforward to build social relations and trust:

Generally, yes, all check-ups and tests we do in Poland. Yes, we have our own dentist, she knows that we come in the summer, or sometimes in December when there’s something to be done. She knows to leave slots for us in her calendar so I just call and tell her when we come and get appointments. Practically when we come over to Poland, the first few days are always spent on doctors, diagnostics, undergoing tests that one shall do and so on. (Agnieszka, 33)

Conclusions

In this chapter, we argue that Polish migrants dealing with Norwegian healthcare services frequently base their evaluations not only on the objective factors of accessibility and quality of the services in their destination country but also on the experiences they had in their country of origin. This matrix of Polish-Norwegian pre- and post-migration healthcare assessments and concerns constitutes a continuum. On one end,


we note a profound and multifarious dissatisfaction with the Norwegian approach to healthcare and the local health practices (Småland Goth and Berg 2011). For this perspective, we employ the lens of ethnocentrism to explore how migrants use, in their reflection, their experiences concerning the Polish healthcare system to justify their critical evaluation of these services in Norway. On the other end, there is evidence of migrants issuing praise toward the foreign system in their country of residence. Most importantly, we observed a “middle-area” of handling ambivalence. For all dimensions, we provide an added value of transnationalism, attesting that all practices and evaluations occur in a bi-local, beyond-border space. This is because migrants not only cognitively debate the contexts of two countries; they also engage in de facto transnational health practices by executing certain health-related projects in Poland while limiting other aspects of health to Norway.

In the earlier part of this chapter we furnished an account of Julia, a nurse working in Norway. She was the only person who declared that she used solely the Norwegian healthcare services. In Julia’s case, full involvement in the Norwegian system was the result of the fact that she knew the system from “inside”. Most of our interviewees lacked such knowledge and, thus, they made decisions based on limited information supplemented by stereotypes and grand narratives existing within the Polish community. Only after some time did they manage to develop a more comprehensive outlook including reflexivity regarding the system as opposed to relying exclusively on personal views.

It is also worth mentioning that uniformly negative evaluations of the Norwegian healthcare model, in most cases, came up in the context of discussing interviewees’ own bad experiences reinforced by a range of stories heard on the grapevine. Having been, for years, immersed in the Polish healthcare system characterised by what they perceived as the high level of superiority among the staff combined with common difficulties and barriers to accessing suitable medical help in Norway, migrants have little confidence when approaching the Norwegian system. Problems with communication and the language barrier additionally hinder building trust in relations with the local doctors (see also Stachowski and Rye 2017). Migrants’ attitudes toward the Norwegian healthcare system are largely a result of the socialisation to another model of relationships between a doctor and a patient existing in their country of origin. Being accustomed to a hierarchical communication model in which a doctor is perceived as an expert and an essential source of knowledge, Polish patients sometimes demonstrate their discomfort with more equal and partnership-based relations with healthcare practitioners (Stachowski and Rye 2017). Under

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such circumstances, migrant patients often claim the superiority of Polish medical staff and the level of treatment in their home country over the Norwegian model.

Despite these negative evaluations, there is a wide spectrum of attitudes and behaviours indicating favourable assessment of contacts with the local healthcare system. At the same time, there are manifold manifestations of engagement in transnational healthcare among Polish migrants. In other words, while they utilise the Norwegian services, they concurrently schedule consultations at the trusted specialists in Poland during their home visits. On one hand, it remains financially feasible to use cheaper services in Poland, as in the case of the dentists. On the other hand, these additional consultations have been portrayed in our interviews as a safeguard against negligence, which could be a result of miscommunication in the interaction with the Norwegian doctors. Additionally, our interviewees displayed a range of strategies used for navigating the local system, including development of an array of keywords used to get immediate access to the doctors. Regardless of the level of healthcare utilisation in Norway or Poland, the respondents’ stories demonstrated a high attentiveness to their own health. This manifested itself in long-term planning of consultations with specialists, among other measures. This observation could also be associated with the fact that the Transfam project was focused mainly on migrant families, so it can be assumed that having children prompts people to concentrate more on their own and their children’s health. Moreover, migration in itself widens the spectrum of services available to people on the move. An improved financial position enables migrants to access private clinics in Poland—something that could have been out of their reach while they resided in their home country. Utilisation of Polish and Norwegian healthcare might also indicate a strong feeling of embeddedness in both countries. Coping strategies undertaken by Polish migrants usually take the form of transnational practices and enable making use of both Norwegian and Polish sources, tools and networks in order to manage their own health and the health of their close relatives.

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CHAPTER FOUR

THE POLISH EXPERIENCE OF CHILDBIRTH IN NORWAY AS AN ELEMENT

OF ACCULTURATION OF POLES: NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

MAGDALENA GAJEWSKA AND MAGDALENA ŻADKOWSKA

Introduction

Migrations pose a considerable challenge to modern societies. Indeed, they have triggered multidimensional changes in social structures. While the sending countries face the problem of their ageing societies, the host countries have to deal with social integration of the newcomers, who come and plan families within new social and cultural norms. Positive aspects of migration involve emancipation both at the micro (family life) and macro level, where migrants become a source of change in the country (Zubik 2009). For female migrants, for whom in many cases labour and birth are major life events (Benza and Liamputtong 2014), the new country creates conditions that allow them to: intensify the desire to plan their pregnancies (Wilson and McQuiston 2006), experience the “transformation of self” (Liamputtong 2006) and/or force reflexiveness about their two different worlds “back home” and “here” (Quintanilha et al. 2016). Qualitative studies (both focus groups and in-depth interviews conducted with women, men and couples) present tools that can be used to detect socio-cultural and environmental factors that couples need to successfully thrive during pregnancy and postpartum, such as the upgrade of healthy policies, establishment of social and support networks, the help for healthcare providers to better address the family planning needs and to achieve sensitive care for immigrant women.

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There are an estimated 100,000 Polish people in Norway, which makes them the country’s biggest immigrant group. Currently, more and more Polish women and children migrate to Norway, following the men who migrated earlier. Partner and family migration has been only a fraction of the economic migration from Poland since 2004. Zofia Kawczyńska-Butrym estimates the proportion of those who left the country with their children at 20.3% of married migrants with a family (2008a, 116). Since Scandinavian countries are among those whose equality and pro-family policies extend also to immigrants, the newcomers to Norway can rely on the support of its social institutions. In addition to the wish to live together, this might be conducive to family migration, joining families and decisions to start or enlarge a family abroad. Anna Łobodzińska observes that immigration of Polish women to Norway is largely explained by family factors (2012, 14). At the same time, the rate of unemployment among those residing in the country under four years is the highest in the entire Polish immigrant community.

Migration of a full family and the birth of a child abroad can be considered not only as an expression of a sense of security but also as a hidden strategy of acculturation. The presence of children, because of their educational responsibilities, forces integration processes, and increases proxemics between migrants and indigenous peoples. As research shows, a child is a bridge between the culture of origin and culture of residence (Slany and Pustułka 2016).

Migration from Poland to Norway offers a unique opportunity to observe the experience of living in a welfare state. Norway, the host country, adopts policies based on the assumption that both cultures should be equally valued and hence seeks diversity (“multiculturalism”) (Berry 1997).

The acculturation strategies and “national identity types” are visible in parental norms and practices (Slany and Strzemecka 2016). Since they are based on cultural premises which can be observed while interviewing migrants, we decided to use this “strategic” frame to analyse norms and practices present among Polish parents who had children while living in Norway.

In our research project (PAR Migration Navigator) we have identified three important outcomes concerning the impact of different acculturation strategies (Berry 1997) of Polish immigrants to Norway on their private life and work satisfaction.

On one hand, in some cases a “marginalisation” may be more effective than an “assimilation” acculturation strategy in terms of satisfaction with one’s private life (measured using factors diagnosing satisfaction with

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health, family life, sexual life and life in general). In other words, for some people, focusing on the relationship with their partner, maintaining close ties with family and friends in Poland, and rejecting contacts with Norwegians actually made it easier to achieve satisfaction in Norway than giving up their Polish identity while adjusting to Norwegian roles and cultural scripts (Krys et al. 2017).

On the other hand, as expected, the most efficient method of acculturation turned out to be “integration” (2), which involves maintaining Polish customs while at the same time learning and practising the Norwegian ones (Krys et al. 2017).

Having established the dominant position of these two strategies (“marginalisation” and “integration”) in the course of our quantitative study, we began to work on materials from interviews with Polish migrants in Norway. In order to study the question of family planning and giving birth, we have used joint in-depth interviews. We first talked with our informants in 2014;1 the topic concerned the trajectory of their relationship and migration. When we met them again in 2015, we focused on issues related to giving birth.

The target group consists of seventeen Polish couples living in Norway and nineteen Polish couples living in Poland. Among them there were childless couples (thirteen), as well as those with one, two or more children (twelve, eight and three couples, respectively) born both in Poland and Norway. The group contains couples with different periods of residence abroad, as well as ones who came back to their home country and those who never migrated. Such diversity enables a thorough analysis of the issues under consideration (Kaufmann 2010). The added value of the study was the possibility of gaining a male perspective—males were asked about the experience of labour, and their points of view could have been contrasted with the female ones. The process of recruitment involved contacts through social networks, individual meetings, posters, and contacts within the Polish Roman Catholic community and the Polish Roman Catholic Saturday School in Stavanger, with the snowball effect method applied subsequently.

In our article, on one hand, we want to present the birth of a child as an event that opens the migrant family to the integration process; on the other hand, we want to present an analysis of the birth experiences of Polish women giving birth in Norway. We think that this experience can be liminal (Van Gennep 2012; Turner 1983) for migrants. It means that 1 The project also involved partners being interviewed separately in 2014 and 2016, and jointly in 2016. Couples also blogged online, but the results acquired using these methods are not included in the present study.


pregnancy and labour is still a ritual passage of an individual into the community. It means that a medico-existential experience of childbirth can open the way for migrants to integration into the new culture.

We claim that, consequently, pregnancy and giving birth in a new country must be considered a result of serious intentions, expectations and projections of immigrant parents: they intend to remain there for longer, or even permanently; the place they have chosen is safe; it is a space where being a family with children consolidates family ties and improves the position of a family in the local community. It is also worth noting that the arrival of a child can be attributed to the dynamics of a relationship under new circumstances, as well as to protecting the family from problems stemming from its confrontation with a different system of values. Indeed, taking care of a new baby requires effort and commitment from the entire family, which stimulates proximity between its members. On the other hand, children born to immigrant parents in Norway also stimulate integration of their families with local communities. As regards the decisions of Polish newcomers to the country to have another child, additional factors at play might involve both institutional support from the state and an increased social interest in the well-being of immigrant families with children. In 2014, 13% of the Norwegian GDP was allocated to pro-family policy. According to Statistics Norway (2015), while the fertility rate of Polish women in Norway is 2, the corresponding figure for Poland is at the level of 1.29 (Rozkrut 2016).

Norwegian pro-family policy and migration

The emigration of family members may prove a considerable challenge and undermine the stability of the entire family pattern (Antman 2011, 3). On the one hand, leaving the country entails departure from loved ones and friends. On the other, it also involves an experience of living in, and adapting to, a new social environment (Kawczyńska-Butrym 2008a, 109; Wojaczek 2005, 209–22; Jurczyk 2009, 223–31). As the entire microsystem of a family is subject to transformation regardless of the number of its members who actually leave the home country, emigration consequently becomes a challenge to all of them. The patterns of migration as a psychological and social process have been broadly studied in literature (Germani 1965).

The decision to leave the country or to bring over the partner (or the whole family) relies on a calculation according to which residence of the entire family in a particular country will be more beneficial in the economic and emotional sense than living apart. Gino Germani argues that

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making decisions concerning migration can be analysed at three levels: objective (job prospects, working conditions, personal capital), normative (an attractive system of values and social rules) and psycho-social (the needs of particular individuals). The author recognises the importance of the last of these factors, whereby the desire to satisfy personal needs becomes the driving force behind individual action.

Drawing on the above model of decision-making and on Berry’s theory of acculturation, we consider family migration from Poland and the reasons for the higher fertility rates of Polish migrant couples. Within the framework of the PAR Migration Navigator research project, we asked our informants whether it was or would be easier or more difficult for them to make a decision to have children abroad than in Poland (thirty-six joint interviews). We also attempted to establish the reasons why Polish women migrating to Norway decide to enlarge their families and give birth to their children there, and what (if anything) prevents them from fulfilling their procreative needs in Poland. In a broader context, “recent surveys of European women at procreative age (19–45) indicate that only 10–15% of them do not want to have children at all. A much higher proportion of the respondents would like to have more children than they currently do” (Kancelaria Senatu 2013, 25). In addition, data provided by Eurostat reveal that the age at which European women give birth to their first children keeps increasing. Interestingly, in the midst of the demographic crisis of the Western world multi-child families appear to be a popular phenomenon in Scandinavia, with Finland and other countries of the region displaying top figures in this category.

Naturally, cultural differences between the sending and host countries are of paramount importance. The general orientation of Norwegian society toward immigration and immigrants is pluralism (Berry 1997). In 2004–2015, the number of Polish migrants in Norway grew almost tenfold, reaching almost 100,000, which makes them the largest immigrant community in the country (Godzimirski, Stormowska, and Dudzińska 2015).

At the start of 2015 there were 805,000 immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents in Norway who accounted for 15.6% of the entire population. 669,000 of these were immigrants who were born abroad, while 136,000 were born in Norway to immigrant parents. The total number of Polish immigrants and their children born in Norway is 99,424, which makes them by far the largest immigrant community in the country. (Statistics Norway 2015, 2–4) It is interesting to observe the evolution of the age and gender structure

of Polish immigration in Norway at the bottom of the age pyramid. While


males dominated in the early days of the process and the number of females increased after 2008, the period from 2012 has seen a growth in the 0–5 age group. “This may indicate immigration of young families with children, but should mainly be attributed to starting families and making procreative decisions by Polish immigrants to Norway” (Łobodzińska 2016, 9). The phenomenon is most likely stimulated by Norwegian pro-family policy.

Norwegian pro-family policy is rated among the most effective in the West. The country supports families with children by providing them with material assistance and an institutional system of child, youth and family welfare (Barnevernet). The state guarantees a paid leave during pregnancy and after birth, as well as a parental leave. Although there is no separate maternity leave, “part of parental leave [is] reserved for women before and after birth; it is treated separately (…), but is in effect part of the longer foreldrepengeperioden (parental money period). [The] length of leave [is] thirteen weeks: three weeks before the birth and ten weeks following birth. It is obligatory to take six weeks leave after birth for health reasons. Payment and funding: Hundred per cent of earnings up to a ceiling of six times the basic national insurance benefit payment (i.e. NOK 530,222 [€61,588] a year), funded from general taxation” (Brandth and Kvande 2015, 1).

Under Norwegian law, fathers are entitled to a two-week paternity leave after the birth of their child. It can be transferred to another person, for example in situations where the father does not live with the mother, since the purpose of the leave is to assist the mother. Parental leave, in turn, is “(…) forty-six or fifty-six weeks depending on payment level (…) plus a further three weeks before birth. Of the post-natal period, ten weeks are for mothers, plus three weeks before birth (…), and ten weeks are for fathers (fedrekvotenor “father’s quota”). The remaining twenty-six or thirty-six weeks is a family entitlement and may be taken by either the mother or father. (…). Parental money may either be taken for forty-nine weeks at 100% of earnings or for fifty-nine weeks at 80% of earnings, up to a ceiling of six times the basic national insurance benefit payment (i.e. NOK 530,222 [€61,588] a year). Non-employed women receive a flat-rate payment of NOK 44,190 [€5,133]. [The leave is] funded from general taxation” (Brandth and Kvande 2015, 2). Other legal regulations concerning parental leaves are quite flexible. In addition, each parent has the right to one year of unpaid childcare leave. As well as this, they are entitled to ten days’ childcare leave per year (twenty to thirty days in the case of single parents). Families residing in Norway have guaranteed access to medical care for children and nursery schools.

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Childbirth as a liminal and medical experience

Confrontation with a different system of medical care during pregnancy might be a significant stress factor for a woman and her family, particularly if they are not aware of the existing differences (Wilson and McQuiston 2006; Liamputtong 2006; Hennegan, Redshaw, and Kruske 2015; Shafiei, Small, and McLachlan 2015; Quintanilha et al. 2016). This comes in addition to childbirth itself, a life-changing event for all those concerned (Rich 2000). Most women giving birth to their first child in hospital find this encounter with medical culture a difficult experience, even in the country of origin. It is observed that pregnancy and childbirth in Poland are heavily influenced by the process of medicalisation (Domańska 2012; Gajewska 2012; Gajewska and Pawliszak 2012). Indeed, mothers-to-be in the country are subject to strict medical supervision using such procedures as ultrasound scans and blood tests. Throughout their pregnancy they are supposed to remain under the care of a specialist in gynaecology and obstetrics, supported and assisted by a fully qualified midwife. Over 90% of births in Poland are given in hospitals, with mothers staying there between two and four days afterward. Although fathers are allowed in delivery and maternity wards, the organisation of hospital facilities and procedures does not take particular notice of their presence (no family rooms and facilities, insufficient support for the active role of the father at childbirth, and insufficient guidance concerning his actions and behaviour during childbirth).

According to The Dark Side of Motherhood, the main concerns of Polish mothers are as follows: the health of the child, the child’s future and whether or not they will be able to stand up to the new challenge (Sikorska 2012). One of the mothers quoted in the publication recalls: “The very fact that I was pregnant was something new to me. (…) It was a shock when the waters burst, and from then on I was just in panic” (Sikorska 2012, 13). Women are worried not only about the baby’s health, but also about the course of the childbirth, the kind of pain they are going to experience and whether they will be able to breastfeed (Sikorska 2012, 14). One way of dealing with anxiety about the health of the child is to follow medical culture and go for pregnancy check-ups; however, the fear of long and painful childbirth is fuelled by stories about hours of labour and nasty experiences generated by members of medical staff of delivery wards in Polish hospitals and in other countries.

The birth of a child in Poland, despite changes in medical culture, remains in traumatic events narratives and can be classified as an element of culture of fear (Domańska 2012). This may be due to the fact that the


birth of a child was a liminal event for a woman, signifying a change in her social status, entering a new social role, and confronting the social expectation of maturity (Bergum 1989). As shown by worldwide studies on pregnancy medicalisation, it is not only a phenomenon that limits the subjectivity of a woman but also serves to “shape” proper maternity norms in pregnant women (Douglas 2007). By attending the fora, the pregnancy press (observed in the on-line discussion), and by participating in medical screening and parenting classes, the women enter Turner’s "communitas" under which they acquire the new normality (Turner 1983; van Gennep 2012). Medication is the framework for a transitional rite in which pregnant women and their partners acquire parental responsibility (Goffman 2010; Collins 2012). We may wonder what is the power of medical discourse in shaping the worldview and parental attitudes of people who undergo the medical process of pregnancy. Like other researchers we consider birth as a multidimensional experience, social fact and ritual (Callister, Julkunen, and Lauri 2001; Schwartz 2014), Unfortunately, there is no research on this process of socialisation. We can only try to recognise and to describe it through narratives about pregnancy and birth.

In fact, women’s anxiety about childbirth persists in spite of changes introduced after 1994 as a result of campaigns led by the Childbirth with Dignity Foundation (pl, Fundacja Rodzić po Ludzku) and new developments in Polish obstetrics. The year 2012, for example, saw the introduction of the birth plan, a document drawn up by the mother and the midwife, which specifies the choice of birth type and position, presence of the father or a doula, etc.; still, the general opinion about childbirth in Poland is far from positive. A number of women perceive it as a deeply traumatic experience invading their bodily integrity and leaving a lasting imprint on their memory. It is not only a Polish experience; other narratives about birth include trauma as a part of its description. Films like The Business of Being Born (Epstein 2008), Pregnant in America (Buonaugurio 2008), Orgasmic Birth (Pascali-Bonaro 2008) and Laboring Under an Illusion: Mass Media Childbirth vs. The Real Thing (Elson 2009) reflect this growing interest in looking beyond the culture of fear to see what is possible in the arena of natural, conscious birth. This inquiry will add to the small but growing body of research that explores the larger context of birth in all of its dimensions: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, cultural and social (Schwartz 2014, 5–20).

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Childbirth in Norway and acculturation strategies of Poles

There is a migrant strategy model that Slany and Strzemecka call “national identity types”, adopted from the framework proposed by Antonina Kłoskowska (1996). According to this model there are four types. Two of them are: “univalence” types (Polish univalence type and Norwegian univalence type). There are also: “bivalence” and “ambivalence” types. The first and second types presume inherent and integral identification with one country (Poland or Norway). The third type, bivalence, involves double national identification and the fourth, ambivalent national identification (Slany and Strzemecka 2016).

In this article, we adopt a similar but wider model to the one put forward by John Berry (1997). The author describes four possible choices involving four types of acculturation strategies. The first, when individuals do not wish to maintain their cultural identity and seek daily interaction with other cultures, is the “assimilation” strategy. The second, when individuals place a value on holding on to their original culture, while avoiding interaction with others, is the “separation” strategy. The third, when there is an interest in both maintaining one’s original culture and participating in daily interactions with other groups, is the “integration” strategy. The fourth strategy is when neither cultural maintenance nor having relations with other are an interest—the “marginalisation” strategy.

We have observed three types of parental attitudes toward medical service and “the organisation” of labour. The first group prefers to give birth in Norway. Female respondents who belong to this group appreciate the greater freedom allowed by the Norwegian social policies. They emphasise that labour is considered more natural there than in Poland, and they feel they are given more choice and are entitled to make their own decisions concerning labour itself. Birth is thus de-medicalised and the role of the father in the whole process is more active. Fathers are more involved in different stages of pregnancy, birth and childcare and take long leaves (ten to fourteen weeks). These practices mirror the assimilation strategy.

There’s more [advantages to giving birth in Norway] because of pro-family policy. Back home [in Poland], there’s no such policy. And that’s why things are the way they are. We are expecting the second child and we don’t have any doubts because of this situation. What are we going to do? Where are we going to live? Can we afford a child? Because here [in Norway] there are no such problems. And here children are not considered to be a cost. People don’t think “Can we afford a child?”, “Is our standard going to suffer?”, “Can we afford our child’s education?”. When they want


to have children, they have them. That’s if they can, of course. (Sebastian, 33, father of one, 3 years in Norway)

In Poland, you have to pay for everything, like anaesthesia for example. And here [in Norway], family childbirth is common and encouraged. The delivery ward is different, more like a hotel, because the rooms are like a living room. There is a corner bath in every room, there are things like a TV. After giving birth, if it was natural, the woman is not in a “hospital room”, she is in a hotel-room, close to hospital, with the father. And he can stay there overnight. (Marta, 33, mother of one, 3 years in Norway)

When you gave birth in hospital, there were lots of parents there, practically non-stop. I was there too. Everything in the hospital is well-organized; there is food there. It isn’t like in Polish hospitals. You feel at home there. It’s because of food, because it’s clean, because of the organization. All fathers were there non-stop. (Sebastian, 33, father of one, 3 years in Norway)

For the second group of Polish parents, giving birth in Norway can come across as a culture shock. They prefer to come back to Polish patterns and follow the path of pregnancy and labour with which they are familiar. They are afraid of different attitudes toward a pregnant woman and they choose medicalisation that is characteristic of the Polish healthcare system. These practices mirror the separation strategy.

My girl-friends, that do not know Norwegian well, they escape to give birth in Poland. I think, that healthcare in Norway is better equipped. But there is this myth: “only natural scheme”, “no intervention in the system”. (Martyna, 28 years old, became a mother in 2016, 3.5 years in Norway)

Finally, the third group of parents keeps on following two schemes

simultaneously; for example, having a Norwegian gynaecologist and a Polish gynaecologist as a backup and flying back home for an extra ultrasound. Since these practices make use of opportunities provided by both cultures, they resemble the integration strategy.

You might be aware that there aren’t so many pre-natal check-ups as there are in Poland. This comes as a kind of surprise when a child is born here [in Norway]. That’s why we went to Poland to do 3D-ultrasound or even 4D—to see the baby’s movements. There was no possibility of doing it here. (Monika, 35 years old, mother of one, 7.5 years in Norway)

Additionally, earlier in the article Monika was the one complementing the midwife and the procedure of cooperating with midwives.

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Although in our study there are practices of giving birth mirroring Berry’s three strategies of acculturation (assimilation, separation and integration) we assume that longer stays in Norway and the satisfaction of the migrant life-course story influences the integration strategy. Especially in the case of giving birth the freedom of choice of individual practices is very important. There are more practices to be chosen from in Norway, plus there are always options to integrate them with Polish practices. This is the reason why we decided to look inside Polish narratives about giving birth in Norway.

Childbirth in Norway as an expression of acculturation

Women expecting children in Norway are not left on their own. As in a number of other European countries, they have access to free medical care and information about applicable procedures. Female immigrants who do not feel comfortable about their command of spoken Norwegian or English have a guaranteed right to interpreter assistance.

The Norwegian system of care for pregnant women and their children includes instruments which enable adaptation to the norms and values observed in the Norwegian obstetric culture. Immigrants can use guides, websites and information booklets available both in Norwegian and English (Hollan 2006, 5). These publications provide information about a number of issues, including the course of pregnancy, possible complications involved, a glossary of terminology, and the scope of care guaranteed for the woman and her family at childbirth and in the post-natal period. They also cover such difficult subjects as abortion, miscarriage, contraception, post-natal depression and return of menstruation after childbirth.

At this point, it is interesting to note that a comparative analysis of similar publications in Poland reveals a general Polish focus on pre- rather than post-natal care, with the problems of post-natal depression given less attention than in Norway. One Norwegian guide, for example, includes the following excerpt:

During the initial days postpartum you will notice that tears come more frequently than before. Many notice this already during their pregnancy. One minute you might be happy and satisfied, and the next you might be distressed and start to cry. This is normal. Almost all women feel this way. When you are given care and love, assistance and comfort, sleep and rest, you will cope better. But all new mothers think about their responsibility for the new baby. In time you will grow accustomed to being a mother. (Hollan 2006, 58)


The preface to a pregnancy guide by Synne Hollan issued by the Norwegian Directorate of Health includes international perspective and cultural context:

Women become pregnant, give birth, breastfeed and care for their children in much the same way across the world, but societies organize their health care programmes for pregnant women differently. That is why we have prepared this information brochure to tell you how we do things in Norway. (Hollan 2006, 1) Another of our research interests was childbirth narratives of Polish

women who gave birth in Norway. Comparing the experience of giving birth in Poland and Norway, our informants mentioned some differences they experienced:

I think the greatest shock came to me when I already knew that I was just about to give birth to Tom and I asked where I was supposed to do it. There wasn’t any… well, there was a big bed, a huge one, like in a bedroom, with clean white bedclothes, no plastic wraps, no pads or anything… And she [the midwife] says “Wherever you like, here, there, over there”. I ask her “In what position?” She goes “Whatever you prefer…” So, I had these contractions and I was half-sitting, half-lying, I don’t really know what position it was. She just delivered the baby; they don’t tell you what position you have to take.

(…) You don’t give birth on this traditional kind of delivery bed; they don’t think it’s very good, they think it gives you stress when you have to do it in this or that particular position in a particular place… You just walk around the room and you give birth to your child wherever it comes. (Katarzyna, 33 years old, mother of three, living in Norway for 2.5 years) As illustrated above, an informant noted that she had been free to

choose her birthing position, as guaranteed in Norwegian obstetric practice. Most likely she stressed this difference considering that, although such freedom of choice is also available in Poland, the overwhelming majority of women give birth lying on their backs, a position comfortable for the medical staff rather than the women themselves and thus persistently present in Polish obstetric culture. On the other hand, the fact that beds are also the main piece of furniture in Norwegian delivery rooms does not at all mean they have to be used. Also, the category of “delivery bed” is much broader, as some Norwegian hospitals are equipped with “normal” beds, a fact noted with surprise by the first informant above.

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Norwegian pregnancy guides stress that the women need to learn useful phrases in Norwegian or use interpreter assistance. Indeed, an insufficient level of spoken Norwegian or English can be a significant stress factor with a major impact on their childbirth experience. Needless to say, obstetric vocabulary is not part of their daily life. In addition, it is easily forgotten owing to the extraordinary dynamics of the process.

I had language problems; my English—it’s alright now—but all these words… I was scared; for example, I ask Dominik [the father], in Polish, to tell them I had problems with my łożysko and he asks me “What’s łożysko in English?” “Placenta,” I say “it’s placenta in English”. Still, I was scared. When I had these final pangs, I only spoke Polish and Dominik kept saying that he wasn’t going to translate that. (Katarzyna, 33 years old, mother of three, living in Norway for 2.5 years) Language problems, however, do not affect a positive assessment of

communication between the woman and medical staff. One of our informants noticed the staff’s efforts to use simple language in order to efficiently communicate with her during labour and birth. This comes as a surprise to Polish women, as does the helpfulness of the midwives. It would seem that the informants expected or were used to a different attitude of Norwegians and of midwives.

At the hospital? You mean contact with the midwife? It was very good, but I was surprised that, for example, it wasn’t a gynaecologist who took care of me at an early stage. It was just an ordinary doctor; he later sent me to the midwife and it was there that I turned up for scheduled visits. They weren’t very frequent at first, but the closer to birth it got, the more often I went there. When the time got closer, I often had a problem with my blood pressure, so in the final two or three weeks they told me to get it checked every two or three days… So, there were these check-ups, they asked me about different things, there were these information booklets and just before giving birth the midwife told me what it was going to look like. So, there was a good flow of information. It was all in Norwegian, of course, but they all used quite simple language; I didn’t notice any distance; I mean you’re not treated differently because you’re a foreigner; it didn’t matter. (Monika, 35 years old, mother of one, 7.5 years in Norway)

At some point the midwife turns up asking if we’re alright. “He keeps crying all the time,” I say. “So why didn’t you call us? You’ve had a caesarean and it’s obvious you’re exhausted.” “Do you mean I could call you?” “Yes, you could.” I found it strange that they took such care of us, that she would take my little boy somewhere so that I could have a rest. (Monika, 35 years old, mother of one, 7.5 years in Norway)


The informant noted the caring attitude of the medical staff focused on the needs of women, not only during childbirth itself but also afterward:

Well, I had a problem with breastfeeding and my little boy just couldn’t get the hang of it. My breasts were in pain after one day. She [the midwife] noticed that and she told me she was going to feed him with something else for three hours because I just had to heal. So I think the kind of care you get in hospital here is just fantastic. (Monika, 35 years old, mother of one, 7.5 years in Norway)

Interviews conducted in the course of our study reveal that Poles find it most problematic to adjust to the non-medicalised approach to pregnancy in Norway. Indeed, this style of medical practice is not perceived positively and causes anxiety.

The main disadvantage is that you go to hospital only when you start labour. It’s different than in Poland, where you go to hospital, stay there for a week and then give birth. (Marta, 33 years old, mother of one, 3 years in Norway)

It depends when you’re due, whether you’re overdue, it’s a personal thing. From what I’ve heard, people often complain there aren’t enough check-ups. Of course, it isn’t a problem if everything is OK, but I’ve recently talked to some new mums and they often asked me “Marta, do you know what it’s like here?” and they often went to Poland to have some extra check-ups. (Marta, 33 years old, mother of one, 3 years in Norway)

They don’t do USS [ultrasound scan] here if it isn’t necessary. (Sebastian, 33 years old, father of one, 3 years in Norway)

Conclusions

Contact with medical services during pregnancy might be considered as socialisation of migrants and their families by the host country. In underdeveloped countries, medical care for pregnant migrants and young mothers with children still requires support from government and international institutions (Rokicki, Montana, and Fink 2013; Smith-Greenaway and Madhavan 2015).

There are strong religious (Liamputtong 2006; Shafiei, Small, and McLachlan 2015), cultural (Liamputtong 2006; Wilson and McQuiston 2006), medical (Shafiei, Small, and McLachlan 2015) and institutional (Bouris et al. 2012) differences between sending and hosting countries Research shows that in hosting country one might have less access to

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information as well as to medical help. The language is only one of the institutional problems (Hennegan, Redshaw, and Miller 2014). Migration has a significant impact on fertility and birth decisions. The influencing factors include not only the destination country but also the nature of the migration. The idea of fostering fertility is the idea of family reunion, as was the case with Turkish migrants in Germany in the 1970s (Wolf 2014, 2–3) or women migrants in Ghana (Rokicki, Montana, and Fink 2013). The work of adaptation refers to the socialisation of migrants, that is, the adjustment to the social, cultural and sexual norms of the destination’s residential environment, as well as to the economic constraints and opportunities that they face as a result of the move (Brockerhoff 1995; Chattopadhyay, White, and Debpuur 2006; Lindstrom 2003). Polish migration to Norway now involves the process of family reunification and adaptation.

An awareness of differences in childbirth practices is extremely important in the process of cultural adaptation for the immigrants. On the other hand, Norway does not provide a “variety” of childbirth practices but presents its own solutions as those that will have to be adopted by pregnant immigrants who want to give birth in the country:

The midwife or doctor arranges for you to give birth in a hospital or delivery room. If you feel their choice does not suit you, you have the right to choose another place. In Norway, not many people choose to give birth to their baby at home, but it is possible to do so. If this is what you want, you must arrange this with a midwife who attends to home births. (Hollan 2006, 5) As one of the European countries promoting a demedicalised approach

to childbirth, Norway offers one ultrasound scan free of charge (Domańska 2012). “All pregnant women are offered one ultrasound examination in around the 18th week of pregnancy. The examination is performed at the hospital where you are going to give birth to your baby or at the nearest hospital” (Hollan 2006, 5). Such a situation may be less comfortable for Polish women who had lived in heavily medicalised Polish culture of care for the pregnant woman. In Poland ultrasonography is performed at least three times during pregnancy, and the pregnancy is carried out by the obstetrician and not by the midwife.

Our study of the narratives about giving birth in Norway has shown that the experience of labour and birth confirms the fact that, for many migrant women, becoming a mother while settling into a new country where the culture is different can be a challenge (Benza and Liamputtong 2014). For some migrants, the new institutional culture might stop the


process of acculturation, and they may organise themselves within networks, norms and procedures of the culture of their country of origin. For other migrants, the experience of pre- and post-natal service can lead to an increase in confidence in health solutions that, in their native culture, could be considered dangerous to their health and to the health of the child.

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PART II.

TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES HERE AND THERE

CHAPTER FIVE

SENDING AND RECEIVING COUNTRY PERSPECTIVES ON FAMILY MIGRATION

ANNE WHITE

Introduction

This chapter is about “sending and receiving country perspectives” in the sense of how individual non-migrants and migrants perceive family migration, and their different inputs into the process. It also discusses why it is valuable for scholars to adopt a double perspective. The chapter is not about the views of politicians and governments, or about media discourses. These can certainly impinge on the lives of both migrants and stayers, often by making them feel stigmatised. Family migration is frequently assumed to be a social problem, with children and older people described as “left behind” in the origin country; however, the chapter adopts a neutral approach and tries to understand how migrants and stayers see their everyday lives and make decisions about migrating.

The chapter is structured around one methodological question and two empirical ones: How can scholars maintain a view of migration which adequately encompasses both sending and receiving societies? How do stayers in the origin country—such as grandparents—play an active role within the transnational family? How can migration have an impact on the wider society in both countries, through social remittances brought by family members? My data comes from four migration research projects which I conducted in Poland and the UK between 2006 and 2016. The first project was about Polish families, the second and third about return and circular migration, and the fourth considered migration from and social remittances to Polish cities. Altogether I conducted 230 interviews, as well as commissioning an opinion poll with 1,101 respondents.1

1 My four main projects were as follows: Polish families and migration since EU accession (2006–9) was funded by the British Academy. My opinion poll in

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Sending and receiving country perspectives

Throughout the chapter, sending and receiving countries are considered side by side. The adjectives in this case refer mostly to the role played by countries as origins and destinations for specific migrants or groups of migrants, although some countries are regarded as being receiving or sending countries by virtue of their net migration statistics and reputations. The UK, for example, is generally thought of as an “immigration country”, even though it also has considerable emigration. In general, Western European countries in recent years have been regarded as “receiving countries”, and this tends to reinforce existing hierarchical assumptions about East and West, a point to which I return below. Post-communist EU member states usually have more clear-cut identities: they are sending countries with little immigration, although this is beginning to change. Some countries such as Romania and Bulgaria are ethnically diverse thanks to established national minorities. This is not the case in post-World War II Poland. As a result, many Poles moving to or visiting Western countries today are particularly struck by their ethnic diversity and identity as immigration countries.

Migration research, particularly in Europe, usually investigates just one end of the migration arc. Usually there is a “receiving country bias”: most research is conducted in receiving countries, where research funding is

Podkarpacie in 2008 surveyed men and women across this high-migration region (excepting the regional capital, Rzeszów) about their views on children’s and parents’ migration. It was while analysing this poll that I became curious about social remittance effects, since these seemed the most likely explanation for the more radical, less gender-stereotyped responses given by interviewees who had lived in the UK (see White 2017, 91–92). I also conducted 115 in-depth interviews (seventy-two in Poland and thirty-three in the UK) with working-class mothers. Polish return and double return migration (2010–12) was based on twenty interviews in Poland (Warsaw, Poznań and a small town, Grajewo), and twelve in the UK (Bristol, Bath and Weston-super-Mare). There was an equal gender mix and interviewees came from a range of social backgrounds. The third project, Long-term unemployment and migration (2013), funded by the Polish Research Centre of the Jagiellonian University in London, was based on thirty-six interviews with unemployed people (twenty-eight women and eight men) in a small town, Limanowa. The last project, The impact of migration on social change in Poland (2015–16), funded by the Grabowski Fund, is based on forty-seven interviews with fifty people (thirty-one women and nineteen men, of different ages and backgrounds). Interviewees were stayers (mostly visitors to relatives abroad) and return migrants in Wrocław, Łódź, Warsaw and Lublin. All names in this chapter are pseudonyms.

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more often available, and in some cases social sciences are more developed. Twenty-first-century scholars investigating the lives of migrants in receiving countries rarely fail to note their transnational practices, but the object of analysis remains their life in the foreign country: for example, how transnational practices intersect with the integration process. By contrast, migration research in Poland, with its strong sociological tradition, has had a “sending country bias”. This has been less evident in recent years, because of the opportunities for scholarly mobility and research abroad since its EU accession, but it was marked in the period 1989–2004, between the end of the communist regime and Poland’s accession to the EU. In particular, numerous ethno-surveys conducted at the University of Warsaw, as well as some smaller studies, provided a wealth of information about households in Poland containing migrants and illustrated the different migration patterns in different localities (e.g., Anacka et al. 2011; Cieślińska 1997).

Perhaps more surprisingly, the theoretical literatures on sending and receiving countries are more separate than they need to be. There are, of course, exceptions, such as some of the research on return migration, which indicates that many returnees go through complex re-integration processes, comparable to their initial integration trajectories in the receiving country (King 2000). For the most part, however, the vast receiving society scholarship on integration is not applied to sending countries. Presumably this is partly because of the shortage of qualitative research on stayers in sending countries (for a recent Polish exception, see Grabowska 2016.) The literature on contact theory, conviviality and cosmopolitanism seems especially useful for understanding the impact of visiting on stayers. It pays attention to both the characteristics of individuals and the specificities of encounters between migrants and non-migrants in receiving countries. This literature, for example, shows that equality of status can be a precondition for people becoming more accepting of each other’s cultural practices and identities (Fonseca and McGarrigle 2012, 10). Since one aspect of the division of countries into “sending” and “receiving” is often a sense that receiving countries are inherently superior, one might expect this perception of unequal status to sometimes encourage stayers to reject practices they witnessed in the receiving countries. Overall, as will be discussed below, the insights of this literature about interactions within receiving countries is helpful in understanding how and why some people (but not others) engage in social remitting in the sending country, and why their attempts to spread new ideas might be adopted or resisted.


Empirically, it seems obvious that studying both countries provides a more complete picture; however, what does this mean in practice? What puzzles can be solved by investigating sending and receiving societies simultaneously? Thorough analysis of transnational family ties should take into account how families are located within the wider societies. As other chapters of this book amply illustrate migrating families cannot be studied in isolation but must be understood in their social context. Knowing about the social contexts (plural) of the entire transnational social space can help us understand more about some puzzling areas of family migration research. One such question is the extent to which families rather than individuals make migration decisions, and, if they do make collective decisions, how these are negotiated. Linked to this is a second important question regarding the circumstances under which migration empowers or disempowers women, different family members and individuals in general. By studying family members in their sending and receiving contexts one can also address various wider questions of contemporary European migration research. Does migration within the EU make people more open and tolerant? What impact does migration (i.e., emigration) have on sending societies? Although the specific research questions addressed in this chapter concern the links between transnational ties and family migration decisions, and the impact of social remittances brought by family members from visits abroad, the answers to these smaller questions also shed light on the bigger research areas outlined above.

The terms “sending” and “receiving” imply a binary. My interviews in Poland and the UK provided plenty of examples of family migration taking place in a chain along a single route, sometimes with a whole extended family based in the same receiving location, permanently or for visits:

Right after their wedding the husband went abroad, he spent two years there, he used to come to Poland to visit, but two years ago the wife and son went out and now they’re living in Ireland…. There’s also her sister, she helps look after the little boy. Their mother also came out for a month, and another sister with her daughter … and they rent a house with a second brother, and his wife, they went out with their children. (Halina, Sanok, 2008)

Interviewees themselves discussed the geography of their split lives in binaries, since Polish speakers frequently refer to only two locations, “here” and “there”. The adverbs are used much more extensively than their English equivalents in situations where native English speakers would refer to more specific places: “in Poland”, “in Lublin”, “in Oslo”, etc.

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As I show below, however, migrants often have more than one significant sending and receiving country in their lives, so transnational practices cannot be considered merely binary. “Having a foot in both worlds” (Bell 2016) seems a good metaphor for transnational lives, but, in fact, migrants often need more than two feet, since the complex web of migration patterns back and forth across Europe, encompassing multiple destinations, means that many have reference points in several countries. Moreover, if members of migrant families at some point return to their origin country, or their parents’ country of origin, the “sending country” becomes a “receiving country”, so the simple sending/receiving binary becomes blurred. The same is true if migrants move first to one (“receiving”) country but then move on to a third country, so the original “receiving” country becomes a “sending” one. Such migration trajectories are commonplace today. Polish migrants are to be found in every country of Western Europe, and many Poles have relatives based in different countries, as well as different locations in Poland.

It is not the case, of course, that migrants are perfectly mobile, with “magic carpets” to take them anywhere they choose (Faist 2000, 211). Families with children in particular are unlikely to move more than once. Even with regard to visits, time and money may not suffice for frequent visits to all corners of the migrant’s transnational network. Choices have to be made between destination countries, raising questions about how individuals and families prioritise certain transnational routes and practices over others. Things may be more complicated than they seem at first, and decisions not to migrate to or visit certain places can be significant. A couple in Warsaw, for example, told me that their daughter, having completed her MA in Poland, had enrolled on a PhD programme in the USA. It turned out that this was not a simple matter of deciding to move from Poland to the USA. After her undergraduate degree in one EU country (with a year in the USA) she had transnational networks stretching in different directions, and she had been offered PhD scholarships in two EU countries. Her parents would have preferred her to stay in Europe, but (according to them) it was their son who persuaded his sister to take up the US offer, as a first step to moving to the USA himself. In other cases, certain relationships call for prioritisation. In my sample, for example, godparenting was mentioned as one such relationship several times. As Iwona, a thirty-four-year-old godmother in Lublin explained: “It’s a responsibility and a bond, I’ve taken it on and I have to know how those children [in Italy] are getting on”. An interviewee in Wrocław, who had returned from the UK several years before and still had good friends there, had not been back to see them at all because he was godfather to his small


niece in Ireland, and this became the priority destination for visits. Maja, a twenty-one-year-old student in Wrocław, told me about her frequent visits to her godmother in Germany. The godmother was trying to persuade her to come and work in Germany, although Maja had friends in the UK and would have preferred to go there. In another example, Jan, aged nineteen, from Grajewo, had visited his godparents for a holiday in the USA and worked for three months in their garage.

The transnational lens on family migration

The public, politicians and journalists in sending countries such as Poland often persist in seeing migration as resulting only in gaps, such as “brain drain”, when highly educated people are lost to the sending country, or “care drain”, when family members leave their dependent relatives to migrate abroad. Migration researchers tend to adopt the opposite perspective. Rather than writing about gaps and loss, they are conscious of the ties which emerge between countries when people migrate but maintain strong links to their countries of origin. The power of the transnational turn in migration studies is such that scholars in the English-language international research field can hardly avoid seeing migration as transnational. This is abundantly illustrated in other chapters of this book, as indeed in the very title of the Transfam project. Qualitative research into different groups of migrants worldwide tends to justify this preoccupation, showing that migrants everywhere do engage in transnational practices. Most scholars, once introduced to the transnational lens, seem persuaded that it is essential for understanding contemporary migration. Broadly speaking, scholars are interested in three aspects of transnational ties: transmigration (where migrants are constantly on the move), transnational identities and transnational practices (White 2014).

Despite the apparent near consensus as to the usefulness of the concept, it has also attracted criticism, ever since Glick Schiller’s, Basch’s, and Blanc-Szanton’s seminal (1992) publication. In particular, it often seems to be used very loosely; as a number of scholars (e.g., Glick Schiller, Darieva, and Gruner-Domic 2011) have noted, the concept “transnational” is not a synonym for “ethnic”. In my opinion, the chief problem with the word “transnational” is that it is meaningless to people who are not social scientists. One cannot ask an interviewee directly about their “transnational practices”. Of course, the same is true about other common concepts in migration studies. It is equally unhelpful to ask a migrant about their “integration”, although, in the latter case, they will probably have some vague idea about what might be implied. Conducting

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research into how migrants view the world using a concept which they themselves do not understand implies a quite problematic degree of interpretation on the part of the researcher.

A second problem with “transnational” is that using the suffix “-national” carries the danger of over-emphasising “national”, at the expense of ethnic, translocal, trans-class, gender and other identities. A person migrating from Place A to Place B may not be very conscious of moving from one nation-state to another, particularly within the EU (where visas and even passports are unnecessary for travel) and particularly if travel between regional airports never brings the journeyer to the capital cities of either country (White 2011). Ethnic and local identities may be more salient: for example, for the most part the migrant may consider themself to be a Polish-speaking person from Kraków living in Southampton, rather than a Polish national in the UK. Moreover, migrants often have to cope with a new social status abroad and may additionally acquire new gender consciousness, for example when moving from a less gender-segregated professional environment in the sending country to a highly feminised or masculinised manual job, such as cleaning or building. Since these “old” identities may remain important to the individual even while they are living in a receiving country, it seems artificial to single out the “national” identity duos (e.g., ex-resident of Poland residing in Norway) rather than others (e.g., office-worker-turned-office-cleaner: a sense of dual social status). It is the intersectionality of their different identities—national, local, ethnic, gender, occupational, class, etc.—which shapes the individual’s life in the context of two or more geographical locations.

In the context of family migration research, “transnational” is additionally problematic because it is used in quite opposite ways. Goulbourne et al. (2010, 4) complain that the “concept is generally taken for granted or obvious… a straightforward description of families who live in different countries but manage to keep in touch with each other”. Matters are not so straightforward, however, since it makes a great deal of difference whether the entire nuclear family is located abroad or, conversely, if its members are separated by the migration of one or more family members. The term “transnational family” is often used by scholars in sending and receiving countries with completely different meanings: to refer respectively to any family in the sending country which has a parent working abroad, or to any (complete, nuclear) migrant family living in the receiving country. The reason this happens is presumably because researchers are rooted, respectively, in either the sending or receiving country context. In the sending country, the only families available to


study are the ones which are split by migration, while in the receiving country, parents without their children are not usually seen as families.

Rather than just attaching the label “transnational” to families containing migrants, it is more helpful to use a transnational lens as an analytical tool to take into account the entire extended family and their connected social networks—the whole social space inhabited by families, spanning sending and receiving countries. The transnational lens is an instrument for seeing links between countries, at the same time keeping both sending and receiving countries in view.

Of course, this is not a straightforward process of surveying something static. Sending and receiving societies change over time, and transnational ties are themselves dynamic, both at individual and family level; for example, being a Pole in the UK in 2016 is rather different from being a Pole in the UK in 2006. Firstly, large sections of British society are apparently much more hostile toward East European migrants than they were ten years ago. Secondly, Polish society in the UK has also changed. Most importantly, many more Poles have decided to stay for the medium- to long-term. Poland has also changed, with the demise and then return of the Law and Justice government, and rapid (but still geographically very uneven) economic development.

There is still a great deal to discover—and not just with reference to Poles—about how and why families’ transnational practices and identities evolve over time, how individuals function within households located in these changing transnational social spaces, and how families interconnect with the wider sending and receiving country societies. The questions regarding migrants’ decision-making and impact with which this chapter is concerned intertwine with the above-mentioned three strands of transnational family research.

The complementary quality of sending and receiving country perspectives: an illustration of why research

should be conducted in both

My book Polish Families and Migration since EU Accession (White 2017) looked at how and why families move internationally, and it addressed two main research questions: why so many Polish parents with their children were beginning to arrive in the UK, and what factors shaped their thoughts about how long to stay. My first interviews were in the UK, but I quickly became convinced that the phenomenon was impossible to understand without a transnational lens—in other words, without conducting interviews and participant observation in both countries. There

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clearly existed Poland-specific reasons for family migration, reasons which could not have been guessed by an interviewer based in the UK. Chief among these was the changing migration culture in Polish locations from which large numbers of families were migrating; these were often smaller towns and villages in eastern Poland. The preference was shifting away from “incomplete” migration (Okólski 2012) by just one parent, leaving the rest of the household in Poland, to migration by whole nuclear families. The opinion poll which I commissioned in 2008 in Podkarpacie, the south-east corner of Poland, revealed the popularity of this new form of family migration. My interviews with women from small towns and villages in eastern Poland, meanwhile, amply illustrated dissatisfaction with the old model, largely because of the unhappiness caused by parting, rather than any social problems arising from children being left with insufficient parental supervision—the supposed “Euro-orphan” phenomenon widely reported in the Polish media (Walczak 2014).

Moreover, while my interviewees in England told me a great deal about the process of family reunification, which seemed suddenly so widespread in the UK, women interviewed in Poland told other stories, revealing the backdrop to these successful family reunifications: a “dark matter” of failed reunifications. These were cases of non-migration, where husbands tried to persuade their wives in Poland to join them abroad, with their children, but the mothers refused for various reasons. By talking to stayers as well as migrants, it became clearer why not everyone migrates: jobs and/or extended family ties in Poland were too treasured by many women for them to agree to relocate with their children abroad.

The stayer interviewees also had their own impressions of migrants’ visits back to Poland—an intrinsic part of migrants’ transnational lifestyles. Migrants in the UK would complain that they had no time to relax when they went to Poland because they had to take their children to the doctor and dentist, visit the hairdresser and go around to various offices to sort out paperwork. Their contacts in Poland were in turn upset by the perceived lack of attention from visiting relatives, who seemed to prefer to go to the hairdresser rather than visiting them. The end result could be a weakening of transnational ties: a greater sense of emotional distance between the visitors and the visited. In other cases, however, the visit could be dominated by migrants’ attempts to impress the stayers and persuade them to move abroad—attempts which sometimes succeeded, strengthening the transnational tie and creating chain migration.

Finally, interviews in Poland reveal the great diversity between different Polish localities. This is hardly surprising, taking into account the different migration traditions of different parts of Poland, as well as


economic and demographic statistics. Publications by the Polish national statistical agency, GUS, and numerous social surveys produced by organisations such as CBOS show that behaviour, values and beliefs can vary markedly across the country, with the most dynamic cities such as Warsaw, Poznań and Wrocław often standing at one extreme in every respect. At the same time, however, the salient identities of migrating families clearly depend on a great deal more than place of origin: for example, poor people decide to migrate even from cities with a high average level of prosperity (White 2016). With regard to the second question posed in my book, of how Poles in the UK make decisions about how long to stay, it transpired that they were strongly influenced by considerations linked to Poland, particularly perceptions about the economic (un)attractiveness and range of available livelihoods in the origin location.

It would be impossible, however, to understand the dynamics of family migration and settlement by interviewing only stayers in the country of origin. Although it is true that stayers often inhabit transnational social spaces as much as migrants, their knowledge of the foreign side of that field must usually be much weaker. The migrant feels to some extent an expert in both contexts: at the very least, both geographical locations are familiar. Unless stayers make long and frequent visits it may be difficult for them to envisage the process of establishing new lives abroad which migrants undergo. Magdalena Lopez Rodriguez (2010) has described the “creeping normalcy” of forging new ties in the receiving country locality, which in turn affects the settlement process. As Justyna Bell (2016, 83) points out, “even if migrants’ loyalties on the level of belonging were equally shared between the two places, daily routines may gradually shift their commitment”, but if relatives in Poland do not see those “routines” they cannot understand the migrants’ developing attachment to the receiving location. Finally, migrants often make compromises, abandoning certain practices which link them to their Polishness and hence to their extended families in Poland: for example, not attending mass regularly because they need to work on Sundays, or not sending children to Polish Saturday School because the children protest at going. It is not easy for relatives to understand these decisions if they are not based in the receiving country.

Social remitting by family members

In her article about the evolving transnationalism of Poles in Northern Ireland, Bell (2016, 89) quotes the relief of an interviewee whose mother

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had visited her and gained a more realistic impression of her life in Belfast.

Earlier it was difficult to explain things to my mummy, you know, about how it is here. I couldn’t really tell her. However, my mummy has visited us here . . . so now, finally, she knows more or less . . . she has a realistic picture of this . . . when I am telling her “I went there” or “I do this”, now she finally has a picture of where I really am. The final part of my chapter considers the under-researched topic of

visits by stayers to relatives living abroad, as well as how stayers receive visits in Poland from foreign in-laws and friends of migrant children. Visits to friends and families barely show up in migration statistics, though a recent CBOS survey (Boguszewski 2016, 11) indicated that these were the third most common reason to travel abroad. “Tourism and sport” were the most common reasons (66%), followed by work abroad (27%), and visits to family and friends (17%).2 Visits abroad can potentially change the stayers’ views of the world, and, in turn, this may have an impact on the sending society where they normally reside.

In recent years, migration scholars, building on Peggy Levitt’s (1998) concept of “social remittances”, have become more interested in how migrants transport ideas and patterns of behaviour back to their places of origin, as well as the parcels, money and other goods which constitute material and economic remittances.

Social remittance exchanges occur when migrants return to live in or visit their communities of origin, when non-migrants visit those in the receiving country, or through the exchange of letters, videos, cassettes, e-mails, blog posts and telephone calls. They are distinct from, but often reinforce and are reinforced by, other forms of global cultural circulation. (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011, 3)

Although Levitt and Lamba-Nieves refer to “circulation”, and discuss examples, social remitting is most often understood to mean ideas flowing from receiving countries to sending countries, not in the opposite direction. Another point worth emphasising is that although Levitt and Lamba-Nieves mention that “non-migrants visit[ing] those in the receiving country” also bring home social remittances, research tends to focus more on migrants and return migrants.

2 Respondents were allowed to choose up to two reasons.


Despite the above considerations, non-migrant visitors can form strong impressions even on brief visits, as illustrated in the following extract from an interview in Wrocław.

My mother-in-law came to visit after our daughter was born [in Dublin], flew in just the same day I gave birth. We were leaving the hospital, everything was organised, being Polish we made sure our baby was all wrapped up, wrapped up in blanket, wearing a bonnet, no bare skin anywhere, and next to us a couple was leaving the hospital with a newborn baby in a sling, no hat, no socks, lightly dressed, although there was a breeze and a mist was falling. And my mother-in-law spread out her hands and said, “How can they do it?” (Izabela, aged 29)

The interesting question is what happened next: would the mother-in-

law be converted to the idea that children did not need to be dressed up warmly? Searching for evidence of social remittances focuses the researcher’s attention on migrants’ habitus and networks in both sending and receiving country, including their kin networks, and particularly how ideas are exchanged between network members. One could assume—following contact theory—that fleeting encounters are not likely to promote greater understanding of cultural difference, so that the mother-in-law, for example, was merely shocked by the sight of the Irish baby and had no intention of changing her beliefs. Within family networks, however, the probability of successful social remitting would prima facie seem to be much greater.

Recently there has been an expansion of social remittance research, focusing more precisely on how remittances work, or not. In particular, Grabowska et al. (2017) and Grabowska and Garapich (2016) suggest a useful framework for understanding how ideas are acquired and transmitted. They distinguish between three phases of social remitting. Remitters have to “acquire” social remittances in the first place, then “diffuse” them to stayers in the sending country, where they may be taken up by other stayers. As Grabowska and her team point out, at all stages there is potential for new ideas to be either blocked or accepted; for example, Izabela, the interviewee with the warmly dressed baby, said that she had not lived long enough in Ireland (three years) to start dressing her children like the Irish. Another interviewee was more convinced that it made sense to bring up children to be hardy.

My grandchildren go to their Montessori nursery school in Dakota when it’s minus seventeen, that’s normal, isn’t it? Up to minus seventeen they go for a walk every day at their nursery school. It snows. It rains. They wear their wellington boots… I like that. Because it’s easiest to teach people to

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be tough when they’re children… In Poland it’s “Oh my God she’s got a runny nose!” And Granny has to come and look after her at home for two weeks. (Ewa, aged 58, Wrocław)

Ewa was not only more educated than Izabela, but she was also an experienced, longer-term visitor, one of the “floating grandmothers” discussed by Bojarczuk and Mühlau (2018). Moreover, her daughter had arranged for her to take English lessons in a class with Bhutanese migrants, which she found very interesting. She was enthusiastic about the fact that having family in the USA meant “we can get to see the world, learn English at first hand… Otherwise I never would. Because we are not from such a rich family and aren’t so well-off that we could afford to go there as tourists”.

The length and quality of the visit, the intensity of contact with other cultures and the educational level of the visitor are not the only factors contributing to acquisition of social remittances. Family members can still be persuasive influences even when these factors do not apply, as shown in the following conversation with a 53-year old Warsaw cleaner whose sons lived abroad.

Jolanta: They have a different level of tolerance [in Copenhagen] and it’s totally obvious in public, with [two] men or [two] girls holding hands or embracing, no one is shy about doing it and no one will harass them. In Poland and other countries it’s not the same… Anne: Could you say that you yourself changed a bit as a result of visiting a different country? Jolanta: Yes. I changed, and my children changed me [laughs]… My children taught me some stuff—that you need to be more tolerant. I didn’t use to be as tolerant as I am now. At one time, at one time, well, that’s how it was. And now I’m quite different. I look at life differently. Similarly, Anna Gawlewicz (2015, 2016) shows how Polish people

living in the UK pass on either tolerant or racist attitudes to relatives visiting from Poland. Relatives often trust each other’s judgment and take on the views of their family members.

Social remittances most obviously involve the deliberate transfer of ideas and practices from the receiving country, but it seems sensible also to include unintended consequences of migration. Boccagni and Decimo (2013, 4) refer to “the discursive representations of migrant life which, through a cross-border flow of comments, narratives and gossips, make collectively sense of individual mobility”. These can help explain, for example, low levels of social trust among Poles abroad. Behaviour can also change unconsciously because of practical constraints. Understandings of


gender roles, for example, can change when parents work abroad and often have to depend only on each other for childcare; hence, fathers take on roles which in Poland might be undertaken by their mothers-in-law or other female relatives. This in turn could change perceptions in Poland about appropriate roles for fathers.

Fathering practices are, however, already somewhat changing in Poland (Krzaklewska et al. 2016, 14) for a variety of reasons. These factors are often not that different from those determining migrants’ behaviour, as this quotation from Suwada (2015, 475) illustrates.

I guess it is a comfort when you can divide who is responsible for what. Our interchangeability is partially linked with our attitudes that we are not squeezing into some roles, but also because we are forced by the situation. Simply, both grandmas are far away, so we are deprived of this source of help. Nurseries, I guess you’re going to ask about it later, but you know it’s hard. And we don’t earn lots of money and nannies… we could never afford to hire a nanny. (Konrad, 32 years old with a 2-year-old child, Poland)

Social remittances should be seen as only one of a number of factors influencing social trends in Poland. It can be hard to tease out the separate impact of social remittances from other cultural influences via journalism, advertising, social media, tourism and other means which spread information about foreign countries in Poland; however, there are also plenty of endogenous causes of change. It is always helpful to understand social remittances as part of the broader process of social transformation (White 2016).

To take another example of social remittance, Polish local authorities are increasingly energetic in trying to convince citizens to recycle their rubbish. Recycling is a good example of a practice which takes place in the home and whose success must depend on family members jointly agreeing to sort their rubbish. Willingness to engage may in some cases be connected to recycling habits learned abroad. Jacek, for example, aged 28 returned from Norway to Wrocław converted to the belief that recycling made sense. When interviewed, he explained that when he returned to Poland to live with his parents and sisters he had indeed continued to sort out the recycling as he had learned to do in Norway.

Attitudes in Poland are also somewhat changing in favour of more active ways of spending retirement. Krzyżowski et al. (2014, 158) identify a “slow cultural and social change, including adoption of models of ‘active aging’ from Western societies”. This involves moving away from the more passive model where, upon retirement, Poles “construct their identities in conformity with their new status as pensioners and/or grandparents, channelling their spheres of activity into stereotypically defined and

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restricted areas (family, grandchildren, the problem of loneliness or fear of loneliness, religion, concentration on health problems)” (Krzyżowski et al. 2014, 159).

Active ageing was a topic of particular interest to a sub-sample of my interviewees in Wrocław and Warsaw, energetic retired people with adult children abroad. In some cases they attended “seniors clubs” (e.g., to study English), and these were social occasions where they could swap impressions gained from visits abroad. It seemed that they “acquired” social remittances about active ageing.

Ewa [mother of Polish doctor in Minnesota]: There is an eighty-five year old lady who works twice a week at the hospital information desk as a volunteer. Very well-dressed. It’s really good. I think that will come to Poland too because being active is very important for older people, to be with other people, to do something. Anne: But there is more of that in Poland now. Ewa: More and more. I notice more consciousness about keeping fit. Additionally, eating habits are changing in Poland, though different

sociologists disagree as to the extent to which this is taking place (Arcimowicz, Bieńko, and Łaciak 2015, using qualitative data, are more convinced than Domański et al. 2015, who assert on the basis of quantitative data that Poles are still quite conservative). This is an area of remitting where families could be particularly influential. Beata, aged sixty, whose elder son lived abroad and who often travelled to different countries, explained to me how she transferred new eating practices to her younger son and husband in Wrocław:

I used to hate olives… [My son] said I should try… and from then on I’ve adored them and even, since you can add different things to salads, for my family, I began, you know, so it wasn’t perceptible, cutting up olives in tiny pieces. “Mummy, what did you add to the salad? It tastes nice.” Next time I added a bit more. And now they eat olives. You have to be cunning. Beata and Ewa seemed, from their own stories, to have been

adventurous all their lives, even within the confines of communist-era Poland, so it was not surprising that they were ready to like what they saw when they visited their children abroad. It also appeared, however, that their receptivity to new influences was connected to a happy sense of being able to bring aspects of Polish culture to their relatives abroad.

A balance of transnational practices was maintained and both women, as well as Beata’s son, strategically mixed Polish culture with that of the receiving country.


The wedding [in Spain] was half-Polish, half-Spanish… I knew all the friends [at the wedding] because heaps of them had been to visit us [in Wrocław]. My son invited them [to Wrocław] because I always love having guests… And they all turned up at the wedding… Generally they don’t dance [at Spanish weddings] but my son wanted everything to be Polish and Spanish…. (Beata)

I go to the USA, try to make Christmas into a Polish holiday, of course, all those seasonings, dried mushrooms, I bring with me… There’s a local Christmas tree, but obviously I bring our beautiful Polish baubles… We try to slightly exaggerate that Polishness, so they don’t forget… about Poland. So they have the contact, so they think about it, that’s the first thing. They are just symbols [but] I’m also encouraging them to buy some property in Wrocław to tie them even more to Poland. (Ewa)

In a similar case, Wanda (aged sixty-three) described how interesting she found her visits to her married daughter in the UK, but also how she and her husband deliberately brought objects—including a tree—and ideas, for example about patterns of present giving to children, which Wanda saw as being more rational than those displayed by her British in-laws. Slany and Strzemecka (2016) emphasise how important grandparental visits are to many Polish children in Norway; Ewa and Wanda clearly felt treasured and, therefore, influential.

Conversely, however, other grandparents reported unhappy experiences of visiting abroad, when they felt both that their views were not wanted and that they were not impressed by what they saw. In one case, for example, a visiting Wrocław grandmother with no English language sat at home for days on end, while her family was at school or work, in a California city where it was impossible to go anywhere without a car; not only did she have no interactions with local people, but she also sensed that her family was not interested in her. When I spoke to her she had decided never to visit again. In other words, because social remitting was blocked in one direction (she could not bring anything to her relatives in the USA), it seemed also to be blocked in the other (the USA had no influence on her).

The most efficient social remitting from the “sending” to the “receiving” country perhaps occurs when stayers “receive” their foreign in-laws and their children’s friends in the “sending country”. In this case it is the hospitality extended to non-Poles which creates the sense of equal exchange and circulation. Beata, quoted above, referred to having received many of her son’s foreign friends in Wrocław. Other interviewees had similar stories.

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They were in Kraków two years ago, they saw Kraków, Paolo’s mother was there too… she wanted to see Auschwitz, so they visited that part of Poland, and Paolo was at a Polish wedding, a friend’s wedding, so they saw all of that. Last year they spent two weeks at the seaside here in Poland, so they saw the seaside, with the children. They visit her parents, and see Lublin. (Iwona, describing her Italian in-laws)

Iwona also had close friends in Italy—family friends of her in-laws’, whom she described as being very interested in Poland. Polish practices and products transmitted by her sister-in-law and Paolo back to Italy thus found their way into their social networks in the receiving country.

Conclusions

The lives of stayers in sending countries are relatively invisible to migration scholars, even though, in countries like Poland, they usually live within transnational social spaces and migration cannot be understood without hearing their stories too. When they are discussed, stayers are often presented as passive victims—children or older people “left behind” by migrating relatives. Of course, stayers can feel “left behind”, particularly when they do not really understand how migration looks from a receiving country perspective, as migrants put down roots locally and form ties to people their relatives in Poland have never met. This chapter, however, has focused mainly on the agency of stayers. Stayers are responsible for cases of non-migration, where migrants try to persuade stayers to join them abroad but stayers refuse. Often in such cases it is the wives, who might otherwise be seen as less powerful than their migrant husbands, who exercise a veto over migration by the whole family.

Grandparents are a group of stayers who are usually seen as passive and vulnerable; however, as I have shown, grandparents can also play an active role in shaping the lives of their adult children abroad, by helping them maintain a sense of Polish identity and bring up their children to feel Polish. Grandparents who like to travel also pick up new ideas and habits while they are abroad and are often fascinated by the lives of their in-laws. In turn, they may pass on new ideas and habits to their friends and families back in Poland. The family setting would seem to be particularly suitable for certain types of cultural transferral, such as with regard to eating habits or recycling practices. Stayers also exercise agency by choosing to visit certain receiving countries rather than others; for example, it seems that godparents can be prone to visiting their godchildren abroad in preference to family and friends in other receiving locations. Stayers also influence


family members’ choice of migration destinations, as in the case of the brother who persuaded his sister to choose the USA over Europe.

Since families live within societies, these actions are both socially conditioned and have social consequences. Norms about godparenting and grandparenting, for example, help to shape patterns of visiting. In turn, it may be the case that social remittances within families are spread further within social networks in both sending and receiving societies, as the examples from Lublin/Italy and Wrocław/USA/Western Europe suggest. Polish society is already changing along many dimensions for a great variety of reasons; it is clear from the examples offered here and in other recent studies (notably Grabowska et al. 2016 and Gawlewicz 2015, 2016) that migrants and their stayer relatives have a role to play in contributing to this change.

With regard to theory, contact theory, although generally applied to relations between migrants and non-migrants in the receiving society, is also helpful for understanding why stayers visiting receiving countries sometimes wish to imitate what they see abroad, but in other cases reject it. Individual personality traits, educational level and other factors are important in helping determine the degree of openness, as one would suppose. More interesting, perhaps, are the intensity of the stayers’ contacts with foreigners (which can be very intense within the family circle) and the possibilities for creating equal relationships between family members of different nationalities which promote the circulation of ideas and practices. Over the last few years scholars of a social remittances have been at pains to emphasise that social remittances can flow in both directions, but the majority of empirical evidence describes flows from receiving to sending countries. Transnational families are sites where one can observe the reverse process.

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CHAPTER SIX

ON HOLIDAY? POLISH MIGRANTS VISIT

THEIR FAMILIES IN POLAND

ANNA HOROLETS The Swedish anthropologist Orvar Lofgren (1999) wrote a fascinating book entitled On Holiday: The History of Vacationing. His work uncovers the secret world of tourism that has become an unalienable part of the imaginary of “good life”1 in the contemporary Western world. By adding a question mark to Lofgren’s On Holiday in the title of this chapter, I seek to place under scrutiny the meaning of recent migrants’ visits to their home country. Specifically, I look for an answer to the question of how these visits contribute to migrants living a “good life”—or dreaming about it. Are they a holiday? Are they an obligation? Are they a pragmatic activity within broader livelihood strategies (cf. White 2016)? If they are a mixture of all three of the above, how do the different aspects of a visit work together?

In the chapter, migrants’ visits to their home country are viewed primarily from the perspective of leisure studies while a particular emphasis is placed on temporal and spatial dimensions of this mobility type. The chapter’s aim is to demonstrate how family “is done”2 through leisure practices in a transnational context.

1 I use the term “good life” in an Aristotelian way to denote a fulfilled and meaningful life. I share Fischer’s (2014, 2) contention that “good life” is about having the power to construct a life that one values, equivalent to what we tend to call “agency”. 2 Following the volume’s overarching theoretical framework, I speak about “doing family” rather than “family” in order to emphasise the multiplicity of ways in which family practices unfold (cf. Stiles 2002), including the family practices of transnational migrants.

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Literature Review

Family tourism

In tourism studies, especially in research devoted to tourism management and marketing, visiting friends and relatives (VFR) is considered an important segment of the tourist industry (Jackson 1990; Chen et al. 2013). Only recently, however, have the social and community aspects of VFR tourism started being considered in tourism scholarship (Griffin 2013; cf. Backer and King 2015). Both family tourism (Schänzel, Yeoman, and Backer 2012) and migrants’ tourism (e.g., Janta, Cohen, and Williams 2015; King and Dwyer 2015) are relatively new directions in tourism research. In migration studies the research on visiting home (e.g., Baldassar 2001; Duval 2002) addresses migrants’ relations with their families as well as their relations with their ethnic group or history of the nation writ large. The latter line of research is devoted to “diasporic tourism” or “nostalgic tourism” (Bandyopadhyay 2008; Wagner 2015). These studies are usually focused on visits of the second or third generation of migrants to the country of their parents’ or grandparents’ origin.

Polish migrants’ visits home

The scholarship devoted to the visits of first generation migrants from Central and Eastern Europe to their home countries burgeoned after the 2004 enlargement. The framework of transnationalism (Basch et al. 1994) has become particularly relevant to this line of research (e.g., Ignatowicz 2011; Klekowski von Koppenfels, Mulholland, and Ryan 2015; Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2016; Wojtyńska 2016). Family is an important context and a point of reference in these studies, as it is for the studies of post-2004 migration generally (e.g., White 2011). The study by Ignatowicz (2011), in which both migrant women and men partook, revealed that among the Polish migrants’ motivations for travelling to Poland the following were most significant: maintaining family ties, fulfilling obligations, nurturing the emotions of attachment and demonstrating one’s status. In an article devoted to Polish migrants in Iceland, Wojtyńska (2016) adds the need for heritage transmission to children as a motivation for visiting Poland. She also pays attention to the significance of bodily and symbolic dimensions of the visits; for instance, she shares Wagner’s (2015) interpretation that excessive consumption during a visit home is used as a symbolic marker of “fun-time”. The findings of Wojtyńska

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(2016) regarding the perceived need of giving one’s native culture to children is corroborated by Pustułka and Ślusarczyk (2016). Their article demonstrates that short-term visits to Poland among female migrants to Norway and the UK are plagued by a feeling of ambivalence. The visits are a part of three types of intergenerational family practices: compensatory, cultivation and indulgent. Pustułka and Ślusarczyk (2016) emphasise the gendered nature of the visitation experience. The feeling of ambivalence is attributed to the fact that migrants, women in particular, are exposed to conflicting images of what desirable leisure is as well as to the need to take conflicting roles (e.g., of a guest and of somebody who has to cater for home duties).

Whose leisure?

From the literature in leisure studies it follows that leisure partakes in “doing family” by catering for its needs of cohesion as well as adaptability (Zabriskie and McCormick 2004). At the same time family leisure is hardly unproblematic “fun for all”. Feminist researchers have long pointed at the unequal distribution of obligations and rewards during family leisure (Shaw 1992, 1997; Hochschild 1989; Frąckowiak-Sochańska 2010). The dilemma of family leisure boils down to the question of “whose leisure it is”. The answer often points at the fact that family leisure is ridden with inequalities. In the feminist perspective, it is common to juxtapose family leisure with “leisure of one’s own” (Henderson et al. 1989). This in turn presents family as a site of “un-leisure”. The proposed term “un-leisure” signals that the domain of obligation or work is secondary to the domain of realising oneself (through leisure). It is created by analogy with the Latin distinction between otium and negotium (de Grazia 1962). Otium is a primary and generic term, while the word for work and obligation (negotium) is derived from otium by adding a negative prefix. The difference might seem purely linguistic, but in fact it mirrors the socio-cultural optics, in which leisure comes first in the hierarchy of values. “Un-leisure” therefore connotes the drudgery of life that stands between an individual and the attainment of “good life” understood first and foremost as a domain of individual freedom.

Paradoxically, “family time” is currently perceived as both valuable and desirable in Western societies. It is also considered increasingly scarce in the mainstream discourse, and the perception of “family time famine” grows despite the fact that families spend more time together than fifty or seventy years ago (Daly 1996; Schänzel 2012). From a somewhat different perspective, the need to choose between “leisure of one’s own” and

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“family leisure” can be viewed as a competition between community-centred and individual-centred models of “good life” (Samdahl 2005).

To complicate this image still further, it should be added that in contemporary Western societies where many jobs require emotional labour, families increasingly treat their leisure instrumentally as an investment in developing emotional intelligence (Rojek 2010). “Family time” is more often understood as highly structured “quality time”, and its content is influenced by the desire to acquire some marketable soft skills and transmit them to children. A familiarity with the wider world and an ability to easily orient oneself in different cultural contexts, for instance, can be achieved through vacationing abroad; thus, the boundary between leisure and work blurs.

In this chapter I draw on the empirical material about Polish migrants’ visits to Poland in order to study the ways in which leisure participates in “doing family” in transnational situations. I aim to answer the question of whether migrants experience visits to Poland as “un-leisure” (an obligation that is not straightforwardly conductive to achieving a “good life”). While in the interviews migrants have articulated this stance, the contrasting views of idealising family leisure were also surfacing in their narratives. I will attempt to unpack the meanings that Polish migrants attach to their visits to Poland by analysing various temporal and spatial regimes that visiting family in Poland involves.

Methodology and research material

The empirical material for this study has been gathered in the course of a research project that was carried out among post-2004 Polish migrants in the West Midlands, UK, and included intensive one-year-long fieldwork between October 2010 and September 2011 as well as ensuing short-term visits and online research. The project was devoted to leisure mobility of post-2004 Polish migrants and was funded by a Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship and supported by the University of Wolverhampton.3 The fieldwork included participant observation among Polish post-2004 migrants who settled in the following towns and cities: Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Dudley, Walsall and West Bromwich, all situated in the post-industrial region of the West Midlands in England. Following migrants, the researcher took part in various activities at community

3 I would like to express my deep gratitude to Aleksandra Galasińska from the University of Wolverhampton, who encouraged and supported me in this project from the early stages of drafting its outline through the fieldwork and well beyond.


centres, schools, ethnic businesses, churches, parks, fairs, nature trails and the like. The researcher was making field-notes throughout the year. Apart from observations, thirty-eight in-depth interviews with forty-one participants aged 19–54, twenty-one of them male and twenty female, were carried out in Polish in migrants’ homes and in cafes. The migrants were asked to tell their migration stories as well as to speak about their habits of spending free time back in Poland and in the UK. Specifically, questions were asked about their “typical holiday”, “last holiday” and “dream holiday”. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. The fragments cited in the text were translated from Polish into English by the researcher herself. In this chapter, gender, year of birth and occupation of the interlocutor mark each quotation from an interview.

Additionally, a questionnaire was distributed to 110 patrons of Polish community centres by two research assistants in 2011–12. The number of respondents is small and the sample has been drawn exclusively among people who participated in the activities of diasporic organisations (such as Saturday Schools or ethnic churches), therefore the results of the study cannot be considered representative of the whole population of post-2004 Polish migrants in the West Midlands. Despite these limitations, the questionnaire results indicate—in an approximation— the frequency of visits to Poland by migrants (a mean of 1.5 visits per year) and the frequency of receiving visitors from Poland among the respondents (a mean of 1 visit per year). The mean year of arrival to the UK was 2007 (i.e., on average their time of stay in the UK has been 4–5 years). If nothing else, the questionnaire demonstrates that family holidays are regularly taken by recent migrants and that visitations go both ways, with slightly more visits paid by migrants to their home country. The findings that are presented below are based on the analysis and interpretation of qualitative data from the observations and interviews.

Findings

Typical holiday in Poland

When drawing a picture of their typical holiday in Poland, migrants with whom I spoke emphasised the family-centred nature of the activities they engaged in:

Most of my family lives in the countryside—from my dad’s and my mum’s side all the family lives in the same village. So when I am in Poland and we go to see family, it’s exactly [like that—I] go to the village and visit grandmas and granddads one by one. (M_1983, IT company employee)

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Visitations and family occasions such as birthdays, weddings, communions and the like were repeatedly mentioned in the interviews. The rural-to-urban or town-to-city character of migration from Poland to the UK in the cases of several of the migrants who participated in the research warranted that their family in Poland was an extended family rather than a nuclear family and that their relatives were numerous. The felt need to visit a wide circle of family members as well as friends resulted in the feeling of being overwhelmed or exhausted, as a young man in the following quotation reminisces: “In the beginning there was zero rest, a grandma, some friend or other, an auntie, a dinner with the parents, and it made me tired, to be honest”. (M_1985, teaching assistant)

From the temporal perspective, visiting family in Poland is a challenging organisational task. The account below demonstrates that due to the limited time of vacations the compression of visitations occurs. Additionally, the sequence in which the arrangements for visitations are made is important—friends and relatives “queue” in order fit in the migrants’ visitation schedule:

…so we went to Poland and not to visit family or friends would be terrible. As soon as we crossed the border, we had phones ringing, people asking where we were. Everyone wanted to ring first to make arrangements to meet, later the timetable was full [terminy były zawalone]. We even left our daughter at grandma’s to have some fun in peace [pobawić się na spokojnie]. (M1_1979, factory worker) If the quotation above is interpreted as an identity narrative, it signifies

that family and friends are crucial parts of the migrant’s identity. He perceives of himself and his nuclear family (wife and daughter) as the centre of a microcosm of his family and friends. At the same time, the cited fragment contains a sense of time pressure and feeling of obligation that accompanies visits to Poland. Family members expect that they should be prioritised in a queue of meetings. My interlocutor recounted that he had to negotiate when his friend was to be visited before or instead of his aunt; yet, on balance, he and his wife spent more time with friends than family. In other words, the value of family togetherness was recognised but not always enacted. The feeling of pressure and obligation has also been typical of the accounts of holiday in Poland. This leads to the question of whether—due to the feeling of obligation that permeates the experience of the visit—holidays in Poland should be treated as leisure experience or whether they would better fit in the domain of family obligations. This issue will be discussed in the following section.


“There’s no grandma on vacations…”

A female research participant addressed the dilemma of whether or not visits to Poland are leisure straightforwardly when juxtaposing its formal characteristics with her subjective experience: “It was time free from work but it was not relaxing time”. (F_1972, dentist) The inability to feel relaxed is linked to mounting obligations that—although they are not circumscribed to family visitations and include appointments with doctors, stylists or visits in offices—are dominated by the former, as a male participant accounts in the following fragment: “In Poland I feel that this is not a holiday for me, there is a lot of business to make… There are no vacations in Poland: aunties, grandma, dentist…” (M_1978, swimming pool installer and servicer). Although the feeling that most of the activities during the visits to Poland are obligatory in their character are reported by men and women alike, it seems the feeling of tiredness is more typically a female experience due to the fact that women are usually also responsible for making arrangements and keeping tight time schedules.

It would be nice to go not only visiting family, but really have some rest, cause when we go visiting family we have to make a round of family visits, and this is a little tiring when one comes for a week or two. (F_1977, on maternity leave)

It is also important to note that in the quotation above a research participant explicitly links the tiresomeness of family obligations to the limited amount of time one has for these activities. If prior to migration family visitations were carried out at a slower pace, after migration the visitation schedule has compressed, and this is what makes visits to Poland un-vacation-like. Another female research participant puts it very succinctly by juxtaposing holidays with “time with a grandma”: “[The visits to Poland] are not vacations, there is no grandma on vacations, vacations are without grandma. For me vacations are about getting to know new places” (F_1978, NGO CEO). In this fragment of an interview the ideal-typical vacations that consist of tourist activities (“getting to know new places”) are contrasted with “surrogate vacations”4 that migrants

4 The term “surrogate vacations” denotes two aspects of the leisure experience. On the one hand, I aim to emphasize their hybrid and ambivalent nature (cf. Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2016), the fact that they consist of the elements typical of “standard” vacations (such as geographic mobility, taking a leave, stopping working) and other elements that contradict the image of standard vacations (feeling of obligation, doing some everyday tasks such as paperwork or visits to

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experience when visiting their families and friends after migration. The question is whether this necessarily means that family loses its value for the migrants and, more generally, whether their values transform as a result of migration. In the following section it will be demonstrated that this is not necessarily the case, or at least it is not the case for all migrants.

Family leisure as a project and as a memory

When asked about their “dream holiday”, some research participants not only said they would probably choose Poland as a destination but placed their family at the centre of the image. One man in his mid-thirties said: “Dream holidays? I have no idea where, but I would take my wife, the parents, my mum, so that it would be nice, really, but where—I do not know really, difficult to say, Poland is very beautiful” (M1_1979, factory worker). This can be interpreted as placing family high in the hierarchy of values. Family is an unalienable part of the idea of “good life”. No female research participant spoke of family in similar terms. The idea of a dream holiday similar to the one cited above was articulated only by men. This could be a matter of a small sample that is by no means representative of the whole spectrum of migrants’ views; yet, relying on previous research (e.g., Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2016, 5) one can venture to speculate that this could also be a matter of the “dream-like” quality of family leisure being more perceptible to men than to women. For the latter, a lot of family leisure is about obligation and emotional labour (cf. Hochschild 1989; Frąckowiak-Sochańska 2012; Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2016); therefore, the “dream holiday” wording might be less likely to invoke an image of family vacations among women. For men, on the contrary, family holiday might acquire dream-like qualities. In this dream, men’s powerful identity as a “head of the family” surfaces. The quotation below illustrates how a research participant, a single man in his mid-thirties at the time of the interview, envisages a dream holiday in a way that not only brings family together but also places him at the centre of it:

Dream holidays would be with my future “second half”… Here I miss motherland and family, in my memories I go back to places that I visited with my parents when I was five. I would take my prospective hypothetical wife, go to Poland, I’d take parents with me, I’d pay for my siblings. The way we went with the family years ago. Let little sister come with her boyfriend. Let little brother come with his wife. Take the WHOLE family

the doctors). On the other hand, the term also implies that these vacations are taken instead of more desirable visits to new places, and, in this sense, they replace them.


and go somewhere. I like Mazury in Poland. There was a holiday resort of my father’s company at Mazury, near Augustów, almost in Suwałki… Augustów is beautiful—winter or summer. (M_1979, bus driver)

In terms of the bus driver’s class and position in the receiving society,

the fragment above may be interpreted as a project of social status achievement measured in materialistic terms; yet, my contention is that apart from class, national, gender and family-role-related identity is vital in this case. A male migrant not only dreams of a family holiday, he gives away a project of his own manhood—a project of a male head of the family. The dream holiday in this case is envisaged as a family-centred project, in which he sees himself acting as a breadwinner (e.g., he sponsors the holidays for other family members). The traditionalism of this identity project lies not only in the patriarchy that permeates the quotation but also in its past-orientedness. Dream holidays are modelled according to the pattern taken from the past experience: the way his parents used to arrange time for him when he was little is reproduced in his own plans for the future. From the perspective of historical temporality, the dream of family holidays becomes a way of maintaining the link with the past, both imaginary or ideal-typical and the one actually lived by the research participant. It projects the migrant’s past lived experience into his future. Longing for a family holiday in Poland is both a dream of a more stable and more dignified, if not dominant, position of a (male) individual which is not easily attainable in the receiving society and a dream of a united, instead of a fragmented (or transnational), family. This interpretation is largely speculative. Historical temporality, the imagery of the past and the future, does not suffice to explain the meaning of “holiday in Poland” for contemporary migrants. As leisure, holidays can be better understood in the context of work.

Temporalities of family and work

In broad terms, most of the post-2004 Polish migrants to the UK, and all of the research participants, are economic migrants. Not all of them work outside the home (maternity or sickness leave or unemployment being the most common reasons for this). For those who came to the UK to study at universities, work is usually a secondary activity (yet, all the students I spoke to spend at least twenty hours per week working); still, most of the recent Polish migrants I met during the fieldwork are gainfully employed. This means that when planning their visits to Poland they need to adjust their plans according to the demands of work, and sometimes work-

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schedules break down the plans for family holidays in Poland, as in the fragment below:

I have not been to my godson’s first communion, I sent my girlfriend with a present. Why didn’t you go? I can’t remember now… something was not fitting with my time off [work]. I was in a situation that I could not take time off when this little lady [babeczka], who had the same position, was not at work—someone always had to be available… there was something, I could not take time off. (M_1983, IT company employer)

Another male interlocutor presents the possibility of visiting family in

Poland as a rare good that is worth attaining by paying a bribe (“souvenirs”) or acting unfairly toward fellow co-workers:

I was in Poland almost two years ago, we set it with my brother that we would have a christening for my god daughter… so it’s almost two years, but there is such a group of drivers: he’d go to Poland every Easter, every Christmas. He’d drop some “souvenir” in the office and he’d have the following holiday or leave booked… I don’t play these games. (M_1979, bus driver)

Family surfaces from this fragment as an important value; yet, one has

to note that the interlocutor speaks about others—not himself. The reasons for not going to visit family can be numerous, not necessarily related to the limitations that work puts on employees: from conflict with the relatives in Poland to preference for other past-times (in another part of the interview I learned about a week-long holiday to a warm country that this same person went to several months prior to our interview). Regardless of these alternative reasons, however, the temporality of work should be seen as an important constraint on holidays in Poland.

The divergence between the rhythm of work and family life is not a new or surprising phenomenon, and migrants are not the only subjects who are affected by the conflicting temporalities of the two. In the case of migrants, however, the tension between work and family acquires a new dimension. Migrants can play this conflict out as a strategic resource, as in the interview below, in which the participant uses the possibility to visit Poland as a resource that allows him to turn an unpleasant situation of joblessness (or, in this particular case, a temporary cut in the availability of work) into an asset:


After I found this work in a factory, I was very happy first, the money was good, but then I had an “obligatory vacations” [wakacje przymusowe], the factory didn’t have orders, so I made a surprise visit in Poland for two weeks. (M2_1979, factory worker)

From the point of view of well-being and empowerment of a worker,

the transnational situation becomes a resource: migrants’ mobility (i.e., visits to Poland) offers an alternative system of reference, making work in the UK (or the loss of it) a less “serious” issue due to geographic and symbolic distance. In this sense, the fact that migrants are embedded in two geographically distant and socially distinct milieus multiplies their points of reference and creates possibilities for the alternative interpretations of their situation. Geographic distance is not always a resource in doing family transnationally, though; it can also become a limitation, as the following section demonstrates.

Spatio-temporal dependencies

The spatial distance between the two countries and its temporal manifestation stemming from technological and commerce developments (i.e., the means of transportation as well as their availability for given markets/destinations) is an important context to consider when deciphering the meaning of holidays in Poland for the migrants. The geographic position of the UK is considered favourable by many migrants, and the closeness of the country of residence (e.g., compared to the USA or Canada) is perceived as important from the perspective of visiting family members. Even for those who visit Poland only once a year, which is slightly less than average, a relatively close distance provides a comforting feeling that family members are not too far away: “From Canada I would not go back to Poland once a year, it would be rarer” (M_1982, translator/interpreter). Sometimes this feeling of Poland’s closeness takes on a quality of exaggerated or hyperbolic narratives of frequent visits, as in the fragment below, which is not a typical experience for most of the Polish migrants:

From UK I get on a plane and visit my mum for a weekend, it costs fifteen pounds and takes four hours both ways. From Canada it’d be the same as from the US, where one has to take at least two weeks and have at least monthly wages for such a trip… These distances are not without consequence after all. (M_1978, swimming pools installer and servicer)

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Despite the fact that this research participant exaggerates, he actually explains his decision to move from the USA to the UK by citing the possibility of visiting Poland more easily (quicker and at a lower price). The peculiarity of temporal geographies and its significance for VFR further unfolds in the fragment below, from which it can be inferred that difference stems not only from the global setting (the distance between the destination countries), but also from the local setting (the distance between the actual place of the migrant’s family residence as well as transportation opportunities):

[From Germany] I would be able to go once a month at least, but here [in UK] it’s a bit difficult for me, because I do not live in Wrocław, but a bit further. The weekend trip home does not pay off for me, cause I lose twelve hours for travel to my close ones, this doesn’t make sense. (M_1977, factory worker)

The observations of this research participant also remind us that the

perceived and actual travel distance can be relative to social class, that is, travel is easier for more educated groups both because their working hours are likely to be more flexible and because there is a greater possibility of them living in well-connected metropolises rather than in remote towns. On the other hand, the growing precariousness of work in many white-collar sectors of the job market calls for more detailed and contextualised consideration of this issue. While in this section of the article I tried to draw attention to the differentiation of the meaning of holiday in Poland in terms of spatial-cum-class difference, below I suggest returning to time, but viewing it in relation to migrants’ biographies.

Elapsing time

Time that elapses after migrants’ arrival to receiving countries has traditionally been viewed as having explanatory value (e.g., in such concepts as “immediate post-arrival period”). According to commonsensical understanding, but also to research, primarily in social psychology (Berry 2003), this period puts the strongest strain on migrants and is difficult for them. Other research (Stodolska 2000; Horolets 2015) has attested to the fact that if extreme constrains are not experienced migrants are more exited and susceptible to exploring the host country in the immediate post-arrival period, while with the years spent in the receiving country passing


by, they grow increasingly used to—if not bored by—the new environment.5 I therefore consider it worthwhile to view vacations in Poland, too, from the perspective of elapsing time.

Migrants’ psychological situations as well as economic standings undergo changes with the time spent in the receiving country. The following female interlocutor describes her first visits to Poland as stressful because in the beginning she longed for them too strongly. When visiting family in Poland she was unhappy about the need to go back to the UK and about the too-little time she could spend in Poland: “In the beginning when I went to Poland it was rather stressful time, I counted how many days are left…” (F_1972, dentist). As time passed, she both got new friends and hobbies in the UK, which made her feel more satisfied with life there, and she changed the place where she lived, which created the new opportunities for (transnational) family leisure:

Now life is not counted from visit to Poland to visit to Poland, from and to… […] I did not invite them… when I lived in a den. When I knew I was getting the keys [to a new apartment] I mentioned that maybe they wanted to spend vacations or something… My cousin came with her husband, I took them to Birmingham, I took them to Staffordshire and they liked it, they were over a weekend only and then, when they returned, my sister phoned and asked that maybe her daughter—my niece—could come and visit me over Christmas break, and I said: sure, sure… (F_1972, dentist)

Another interlocutor was pointing at yet another aspect of change—the

transformations in the home milieu:

A lot has changed over time, many people left… I just go there to visit my parents… there is no big pressure [of meeting many people] and now it has become relaxation for me. I even get bored there. I go less often, for shorter time, and I know I could go more often but I sometimes chose to go somewhere else. My parents started visiting me. They were here in 2009, for Christmas, they also visited in May 2010. So, it has solved itself in a way, because they want to visit. (M_1985, teaching assistant)

5 There is rich literature on migration and well-being (e.g., Melzer 2011; Simpson 2012), which suggests that migrants are less happy than those who stay (e.g., Bartram 2013). A straightforward comparison of the subjective well-being and happiness research with the findings presented in this chapter is not viable, however, since the used methodologies (survey v. ethnography) are not fully compatible.

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It would depend on the life stage and status of a migrant, but with the passing time some of the bonds that tied a migrant to the sending society loosen, especially in the case of migrants who tend to treat their stay in the receiving country as long-term or permanent. Additionally—and this is partially a consequence of the specific legal status of post-2004 migration which allows for maximum mobility6—visitations start increasingly going both ways. In the small survey that was carried out as a part of this research visits from Poland to the UK by friends and family occurred only slightly less often than the migrant visiting Poland. “Two-way traffic” creates new venues for exercising transnational family leisure, including vacations in third countries arranged for larger family circles (cf. Horolets 2015, on the empowering role of receiving visitors from Poland).

Discussion

Migrants’ visits home are an important part of the migration experience. This experience is ambivalent since it is composed of the practices stemming from the conflicting motivations of duty, pragmatism and hedonism. A leisure studies perspective may help in better understanding the meanings and mechanisms of visits to Poland by recent migrants. Leisure is peculiarly stretched between free will and obligation, doing something for its own sake and doing something in order to gain recognition and strengthen one’s position in a group. Importantly, leisure—as a complex notion—can be conceptualised as (1) time, (2) type of activity or (3) experience. Each of these conceptualisations offer alternative interpretative paths for the analysis of transnational mobility and “doing family” by migrants.

If migrants’ visits to Poland are considered to be “time away from paid work”, they can be classified as leisure. The findings give evidence that the timing of the migrants’ visits home had to be agreed with employers and coordinated with co-workers. Visits home therefore were an object of negotiation at workplace and sometimes a source of conflict. Time away from work that Polish migrants to the UK spend in Poland was covered by the institutional schemes of paid or unpaid leave, sometimes even the resignation from a (temporary) job is necessary to arrange a visit. All this suggests that migrants “formally” value visits to Poland highly as well as that this time has a leisurely quality for them.

6 These circumstances might undergo significant changes after the UK leaves the EU; the research was undertaken in 2010–11 when the membership of the UK in the EU had been perceived as an unquestionable given.


If leisure is considered to be time away from any kind of work, visits to Poland acquire a slightly more ambiguous character. Rather often migrants get involved in some work-like activities while they are in Poland such as renovating or building a house. This was the experience of a fifty-year-old bus driver who helped his aunt with house renovations, or a thirty-five-year-old factory employer who was building a house in Poland, where his wife and children stayed while he worked in the UK. The need to plan and keep up with busy schedules contribute to the meaning of vacations in Poland as “un-leisure”, since they involve a considerable amount of emotional labour, especially for women. In this sense vacations in Poland are typical family leisure, whose recreational quality is unevenly distributed between women and men, or grownups and children.

If we consider leisure as a “type of activity”, visits to Poland have leisurely and non-leisurely qualities, too. Their leisurely qualities are best realised in the activities such as visitations/sociality, short tourist trips, picnicking and attending family events (cf. Wojtyńska 2016, on Poland becoming a tourist destination for Polish migrants in Iceland, especially those with children). There are, however, other activities such as visiting a dentist or lawyer, as well as the above-mentioned DIY activities that would not qualify as leisure from the perspective of “leisure as an activity type”. For migrants—especially for women, who are often responsible for arranging other people’s schedules—the dominance of the latter type of activities becomes a reason for treating visits to Poland as not-fully-fledged leisure. Additionally, the migration-related separation of family members that prevents everyday (mundane) family togetherness creates a situation in which desirable holidays involving “visiting new places” are replaced by family visitation. As has been demonstrated in the section entitled “There is no grandma on vacations”, it is only after migration that the mobile transnational family members start to have a dilemma between going somewhere new and visiting family in Poland. Prior to migration they visited family on a daily basis and became tourists on vacations. Alternatively, visiting family was not such a pressing need due to the subjective feeling that family “was here” anyway.

In the “experiential” perspective on leisure, freedom and intrinsic motivation are outlined as the two major features defining the leisure experience (Neulinger 1981). Additional defining features include enjoyment or pleasure. Establishing whether the motivation for a visit is intrinsic or whether, when visiting, migrants feel they do what they want to do is not an easy task, as has been demonstrated in the findings section. Like previous research (Ignatowicz 2011; Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2016),

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this study also shows that migrants both authentically want to visit their families and experience these visits as riddled with pressure and strain. In order to better understand what kind of experience visits to Poland are, one needs to take a closer look at the ideas of “good life” that surface from migrants’ stories about their transnational family vacations.

On the one hand, some of the research participants succumb to more individualistic patterns of leisure, as expressed by one of the interlocutors in the phrase “There is no grandma on vacation”. If we assume that Poland is more traditional than the UK, the prevalence of the individualistic pattern of leisure may be explained by the influence that the acculturation to the receiving society has on migrants. In many respects, however, such an explanation would be far-fetched; for one, the populations of Poland and the UK are “objectively” rather similar in their time-spending patterns. (For the comparative analysis of time use in a number of European countries that shows a significant degree of convergence, see: Gershuny 2000; also, as Schänzel 2012 shows, family leisure has increased its value in the West lately). What is more important, class, gender, life stage, and other aspects of the spatial and temporal position of migrants clearly influence whether family vacations in Poland fit with migrants’ idea of a “good life” and desired ways of spending free time. Paradoxically, visits to Poland were associated with “dream vacations” more often by male participants than female ones. This can be explained by the fact that women carry a larger burden of responsibilities during visits to Poland. Gender alone, however, cannot explain the variety of ways in which vacations in Poland are experienced by migrants. The findings presented in this chapter suggest that several factors have to be considered concurrently when establishing the meaning that visits to Poland have for migrants. These include: (1) competing temporalities of work, leisure and family; (2) spatial distanciation that pushes family leisure away from the domain of the everyday; and (3) the change over time. The latter factor includes the following aspects of temporality: migrants’ and their family members’ life-cycles, life-changing events, stages of a migrant establishing themself in the receiving society, and the changes in the society of origin and receiving society.

“Doing family” in a transnational context is a practice affected by migrants’ ideas of “good life”. The shapes these ideas take have an important temporal dimension. Migrants envisage their “dream holiday” on the basis of their biographic and cultural memories but also on the basis of their aspirations and hopes for the future. The ideas of “good life” evolve over time, as do practices of “doing family” through visiting relatives in Poland. Among the Polish migrants to the UK who


participated in this project, family is firmly included in the idea of “good life”; yet, the scope and shape of a family holiday as one possible way of realising this idea varies considerably depending on migrants’ characteristics—gender, class, life-cycle moment and time after migration being the most prominent ones for my interlocutors.

To conclude, migrants’ vacations in Poland combine features of holiday and obligation. They are a livelihood strategy for some migrants, too, but among my research participants rather few relied on these visits in pragmatic terms (such as going to the dentist and the like). The latter might be connected partly to social class (migrants in white-collar and more stable job positions having less need to rely on transnational possibilities than migrants in blue collar jobs and in more precarious employment) and partly to the length of stay (the longer migrants live in a receiving country the more their livelihood depends on resources and social ties available there). The leisurely features of visits to Poland (actual and imagined) are related to spending time away from work and investing in family and friendship ties that are strained by geographic separation. Family ties acquire new value exactly because they move from the domain of mundane activities to the domain of holiday; yet, the limited time and condensation of activities that are concomitant with this shift create a feeling of pressure and obligation. The latter are felt more by women than men. The question of whether migrants’ visits to Poland are holidays, posed in the title of this chapter, should be therefore answered positively, but with the reservation that the very meaning of “holiday” changes in migratory situations in a number of ways.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

HOW DO POLISH MIGRANT MOTHERS IN THE UK DEPLOY CULTURAL CAPITAL WHEN NEGOTIATING THEIR CHILDREN’S

EDUCATIONAL PROSPECTS?

MAGDALENA LOPEZ RODRIGUEZ

Introduction

In the past, works tackling the topic of deployment of forms of capital among ethnic minorities, migrants or non-native groups were predominantly based on the notion of those groups lacking (all forms of capital) or having the wrong type of cultural capital (Aguilera 2005; Bhatti 1999; Blackledge 2001; Brooker 2002; Cardenas and Cardenas 1977; Dwyer et al. 2006; Hayes 1992; Macleod 1985; Perna and Titus 2004). Such literature focused on and developed arguments on the assumptions that migrants are not insiders and hence frequently do not possess any of the indigenous or acquired capital required to thrive, whether it be economic, cultural or social. Whereas various structures that produce disadvantage or exclude migrants, which can be conceptualised in terms of capital, currently exist in our societies (Cederberg 2015), mechanisms which produce the opposite effect—inclusion and privilege—also operate, especially for certain migrant groups. Cederberg’s outline of Bourdieu’s definition of the exclusionary aspect of different forms of capital aptly captures the positioning of such groups: “Different individuals and groups are differently able to access and use resources/capital and those who do have access use the resources to secure their advantage over others” (2015, 35). Indeed, in my study on Polish migrant mothers in the UK I also found that on many occasions the mothers expressed the feeling that the settled native populations had a certain advantage over them with regard to choosing schools, obtaining places in favoured ones or teaching their children what

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they needed to know to excel educationally. The migrants, however, implemented strategies which would remedy their disadvantageous status, and my aim here is to demonstrate those mechanisms performed or applied by my participants.

In this paper (in which I draw on findings from my doctoral research) I examine how various forms of capital (here I only focus on ethnicity and religion) impact the Polish migrant mothers’ processes of integration into the educational settings of their children in the UK. Consequently, bridging the mothers’ “Polish” capital with the strategies, which they deliberately and inadvertently deploy in their children’s rearing in the UK, is the main theme of this paper.

Deployment of family capital in education

In order to analyse the realities of settlement and the degree of integration and satisfaction of migrants, various authors have applied the concept of social and cultural capital by measuring and attempting to define what it represents when it is used as a means of successful adaptation and socio-economic mobility (see, for example, Kindler, Ratcheva, and Piechowska 2015; Erel 2010; Bankston 2004; Goulbourne and Solomos 2003; Lee and Bowen 2006; Perna and Titus 2005; Pieterse 2003; Platt and Thompson 2006). There are two major trends which tackle maintenance and deployment of capital by transnational communities (Dürrschmidt et al. 2010). On the one hand, in one body of literature, geographical mobility is linked to a decline and breakdown of capital while family members break with the original capital, not being able to access it anymore in the new context or create new capital. On the other hand, other sources portray this mobility as a trigger for the “creation of new forms appropriate to their changed circumstances, with migrant families maintaining their original social capital in different ways as well as building new social capital rich networks” (Dürrschmidt et al. 2010, 8). Scholars frequently look at social and cultural capitals, embodied within ethnic minority families and communities, as potential for converting it into a capital asset—economic capital—particularly when the latter is lacking, as is often the case for many migrants (Vershinina, Barrett, and Meyer 2011; Maxwell 2012). Education serves as one form of such capital, and much effort is put into producing and reproducing it.

Although most studies on deployment of capital and its outcomes operate around the structure of class and social experience rather than ethnic origin, there has been a significant body of literature which links the concept with the integration of ethnic “outsiders” (e.g., Bodovsky and

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Benavot 2006; Ryan 2011; Morosanu 2013). They concern youth from the former Soviet Union in Israel, Poles in London, Romanians in London and Somalis in Europe, respectively.1 There is an abundance of research carried out on Latino migrants in the USA (e.g., Aguilera 2005; Hayes 1992; Perna and Titus 2005; Morales 2016; Vallejo 2016) whose failure is largely blamed on the mismatch of the capitals and of habitus among the ethnics and the natives. In the UK similar studies focused on Bangladeshi and Pakistani migrant families (though many authors treat ethnicity as an asset, turning it into capital), whose stark educational underachievement sparked debates on the incompatibility of school provision with home culture among these families (see, for example, Bhatti 1999; Blackledge 2001; Brooker 2002; Dwyer, Modood, Sanghera, Shah, and Thapar-Bjorkert 2006; Macleod 1985; Geay, McNally, and Telhaj 2012).

Leopold and Shavit (2013, 10) discuss devaluation of cultural capital for educational achievement and make a distinction between local and foreign cultural capital. They maintain that, while native students (Israeli, in their research) who are raised in culturally endowed homes are likely to benefit from the cultural capital of their parents, the cultural capital of immigrant parents (former Soviet Union pupils, in their research) can differ from the codes which prevail in the school system of the host country, and thus it is unlikely to benefit the educational achievement of children to the same extent that local cultural capital does. Another aspect raised in the research is teachers’ stereotyping of (migrant) children who do not possess the adequate (right) cultural capital; they found that what was predicative of pupils’ success was schools’ cultural prejudice rather than parental reading behaviour as might be expected. Importantly, Portes, Aparicio, and Haller (2016) maintain that for some immigrants retention of ethnic cultural ties and selective acculturation—where families preserve certain cultural values and practices while at the same time engaging in selected mainstream practices of the host society—may not necessarily inhibit participation but may actually facilitate participation in the new culture and “tends to produce better adaptation outcomes” (Portes, Aparicio, and Haller 2016, 30).

More recent works focus on conceptualising migrants as powerful agents of change, and as those capable of constructing new forms of capital (Dwyer et al. 2011; Reynolds 2013; Deeb and Bauder 2015; Archer 2010), or on exploring how social, economic and cultural capitals are 1 Such works predominantly expound on the idea of ethnic minorities, migrants, refugees and any other non-native populations as educationally downgraded and socially inferior due to the lack of or having the “wrong” type of cultural capital as compared with the dominant native groups.

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generated within migrants’ social ties (see, for example, Reynolds 2015; D’Angelo 2015, Ryan and Mulholland 2014; Morosanu 2013). Migrants, when geographically (and socially) mobile, at times acquire, accumulate and lose cultural capital in unexpected ways (Erel 2010). Although this process cannot be reduced to individual endeavours and is bound up with wider historical, socio-political and institutional factors, according to Erel, individual and collective agency are important for creating new cultural resources in migration and transforming cultural practices into capital. Portes discusses acting with certain means (“habitus”) as being subjected to the activation or the neutralisation in a specific context. Referring specifically to migrant communities, he lists the development of the political and the social capital in the host culture as one of the factors in the process of acculturation (Portes 1999). Consequently, although the “habitus” is a product of early childhood experiences and, in particular, of socialisation within the family, it is continually restructured by individuals’ encounters with the outside world. Schooling, serving as a key institution taking over most of the main socialisation tasks, is a dynamic arena for generating new, creative responses that are capable of transcending the social conditions in which “habitus” was produced (Reay 2004).

Forces contributing to failure versus success in schooling and settlement

Although the question of “failure versus success” in academic achievement appears somewhat essentialist, it is still commonly equated with successful educational integration; it is often used as an objectified indicator of educational and even social integration. Needless to say, there is the other side of the coin; the subjective, ethnographically grasped concept of integration, that is, how the participants see it themselves. Bauman (2001, 2) observes that every cultural entity aims for “not just living in society” but “living happily”, in their own terms. This all-embracing, universal statement allows me to clarify what is understood here by success; it is having the chance to fulfil one’s aspirations.

The question that scholarly literature recurrently attempts to unravel is: What forms of capital are critical for the realisation of more ambitious educational choices or for the prevention of failure? Cultural capital, particularly the one conveyed at home in one’s early years, is frequently exposed as crucial in the process of this realisation, yet it is unquestionable that other forms of capital also help individuals achieve this goal. Scherger and Savage (2010) point to financial resources, social networks or other


persons with expert knowledge of the educational system as those factors that can help one gain support or access to further resources.2 Others draw attention to societal structures, immigration histories and the context of reception having an effect on educational performance, and they place those attributes before the characteristics of the educational system in determining the rate of success (Dronkers and de Heus 2010).

Among other factors3 which can influence relative fulfilment and “success” on the educational and social arena, cultural location has an impact on the degree and the dynamic of integration into the new country: “religious orientation”, “explicit cultural practices”, “colour” or “ethnicity” will all, it is maintained, influence academic achievement. The context of reception of migrants entails the whole range of perceptions and self-perceptions. Migrants are constantly negotiating multiple contradictions from their displaced existence, and this also pertains to the group of Polish migrants in the UK, particularly in the context of Brexit.4

Polish capital

Following the EU accession by Poland in 2004, numerous voices in the media, particularly in both the English and Polish press, began to identify issues that Polish children were facing in British schools. These reports focused on perceptions by Polish children and their carers of UK schools as friendly places, on robust academic discipline and parental involvement among Polish families,5 but also on strong criticism of academic standards

2 They stress that “it is not only the substance of cultural practices (‘contents’, knowledge, tastes, preferences) that may play a role, but also the social organisation of participation in arts” (Scherger and Savage 2010, 21). 3 I describe and examine those factors in more depth in my doctoral thesis. Based on a review of the relevant literature, the following factors were identified as pertaining predominantly to the notion of integration perceived in the light of academic success and failure: preservation of traditional ethnic values versus assimilating, literacy in the native language, class differences, culture, economic condition, societal forces that depict the structures of wider society, ability to use those structures as enablers, the context of reception (perceptions and self-perceptions), colour or ethnicity, religious orientation, explicit cultural practices, stage of cultural adaptation, and past educational experiences. 4 The UK is set to withdraw from the European Union, a process commonly known as “Brexit”, as a result of the June 2016 referendum in which 51.9% of those who voted elected to leave the EU. 5 A study by Flynn (2013), for example, presents Polish parents as supportive, hard-working, aspirational and demanding. She maintains that Polish children are perceived by teachers as “model learners” and that other ethnic parents, with lower

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in UK schools, alienation of Polish youngsters, bullying and racism (see Lopez Rodriguez et al. 2010, 2010a; Moskal 2010, 2014, 2016; Sales et al. 2008, 2010; Trevena 2012; Flynn 2013).

While in the first few years following the accession such reports and scarce press articles about Polish children in UK schools were occasionally cropping up, a comparatively thorough study exploring the intersection of class and ethnicity among Polish migrants appeared in 2006 (Cronem 2006) which impinged on this study. The authors highlighted the dimension of class as pivotal in establishing social relations in migratory circumstances and in establishing migrants’ own positionality in the UK as contrasted with ethnicity. Also, White (2011, 162) argues that “too much emphasis can be placed on the role of ethnicity and national belonging in the lives of migrants, and ‘translocal’ is sometimes a more helpful label than ‘transnational’ to describe the lifestyles of Polish labour migrants in the UK”, meaning that social setting may play a more significant role in settlement and well-being than the cross-national context of their move, which is usually considered to be the determining factor. It is nevertheless important to acknowledge that for many A8 migrants the factors underpinning their migration are not only opportunistic economic motivations and that other determinants such as gender and ethnicity must be deemed pivotal (Cook, Dwyer, and Waite 2010).

Identity nowadays is increasingly constructed by subjects on the basis of cultural strategies and shaped by self-identification and consumption (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2015). Identity is also instigated and intensified by how others perceive us. Migrant Poles’ understanding of their position in the class structure focused on what they expected to achieve in the future, as they took advantage of the opportunities that, so they thought, lay ahead of them (Garapich 2006). Cronem’s study has shown that the UK is seen by immigrating Poles as a predominantly middle-class society where social mobility is highly achievable and where merit is instantly rewarded. Another study has shown that a broader group of Eastern European migrants see England as a place of opportunity and that they pragmatically believe in individual efforts to take advantage of the existing opportunities (Tereschenko and Archer 2014). Also, Duvell (2004) asserts that Polish migrants may feel successful when compared to their realities in Poland, even if in the UK they were socially degraded and performing jobs below their qualifications. Even if someone sees themself as on the very bottom of the ladder after coming to the UK, that individual is still full of hope to

levels of confidence and social capital, may not compare favourably with Polish parents.


succeed in “a capitalist culture of individualistic, profit-driven self-development”, and this is “coupled with a strong belief in an ideal meritocratic system” (Garapich 2016, 210).

Szewczyk (2014) notes that Polish graduates in the UK quickly become accustomed to life uncertainties and are able to take diverse flexible routes to advance their careers. Polish migrants make perfect actors in the fragmented, unstable, constantly changing and precarious “risk society” (Beck 1992). They deny the existence of class structure, as if affirming its “realness” would impede their advancement and social climbing, and would amount to agreeing that “not all is possible here” (Garapich 2006). In contrast to the group of non-white migrants, Poles, being white, are almost invisible: “The New Europeans are hard-working, presentable, well educated, and integrate so perfectly that they will disappear within a generation” (Browne 2006). The myths of whiteness, better education and the ethics of hard work (Duvell 2004) acted as a self-encouraging machine for migrants to aspire and “make it”. This self-winding machine also constitutes an engine for being able to feel that one can compete with others, both minorities and natives. Strikingly, the discourses of “anybody can make it here” are mingled with disparaging, blatantly racist discourses of cultural otherness. Garapich (2016) highlights the fact that when Poles are asked about social divisions in London they emphasise cultural differences, meaning mainly racial differences between “black” and “white” people. Notably, for most Eastern European parents, experiences of racism and ethnic prejudice were not part of their everyday life in England (Tereschenko and Archer 2014). The authors also observe that:

This notion that “everything is possible” contrasts with results from previous research that has found more ambivalent views among earlier immigrant groups (particularly “visible” minority ethnic groups) who have been in the UK long enough to experience racism and discrimination, and who, despite expressing high aspirations, tend to link their chances for success to discriminatory policies and practices in schools and in society. (Tereschenko and Archer 2014, 26)

Following this condensed outline of characteristics of Polish class, ethnic background and gender (all my interviewees were women), I can only emphasise the importance of intersectionality in the researching positioning of a migrant. As Anthias (2012, 106) highlighted, “we need to simultaneously attend to processes of ethnicity, gender, class and so on in order to grasp the complexities of the social world and the multifaceted nature of social identities and advantage/disadvantage”.

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Design and Methods

The analysis is based on fifty interviews conducted for a PhD research study, for which forty Polish mothers living in the UK were interviewed, almost all of them in London. There were two waves of semi-structured, in-depth interviews (2005–6 and 2008–9). In the second wave, out of the initial forty participants, ten were re-interviewed. The study focused on how “capital” influences the Polish mothers’ strategies with respect to their children’s education throughout the migratory process. The mothers in the sample spent at least the first twenty years of their lives in Poland—some of them during communist regime and some experienced both communist rule and the post-communist period. All of them had children attending schools (primary or secondary) in England (all but six in London), and twenty-three were educated to university level, holding at least a BA degree; twelve worked in the UK in non-menial occupations, five in menial jobs, and twenty-three were not in paid employment. Their ages ranged from mid 20s to early 50s. Only five mothers (8%) had lived in the UK for more than eleven years. Twenty-seven formed “Polish relationships”, as opposed to twelve who were in mixed partnerships. All the women, with an exception of one, lived with their partners, whether the latter were Polish or not. Their children were of different ages, the youngest being three weeks old and the oldest fifteen years old. All children attended state-run (primary or secondary) schools6—community (20),7 Roman Catholic (17) or Church of England (17). Family sizes varied between one and five children, with the majority of mothers (16) having two.

When quoting the mothers, I use an index system. To each name, I add the following signifiers in parentheses: name, level of education group, professional status in the UK, time of arrival in the UK group, and first/second interview in the case of panel interviews. The mothers’ levels of education were divided into four groups:8 (1) no A-levels completed (2) A-levels completed (3) graduates with Bachelor’s degrees, (4) eighteen mothers with postgraduate qualifications (Master’s degrees, doctoral degrees

6 Data are provided for the second interview in the case of panel interviews. 7 This number is inflated by one family of five children and one family of three children, all attending community, non-denominational schools. 8 This is based on the mothers’ reporting about their education. Several were involved in doing various post-compulsory courses, but these courses were not taken into account in this compilation.


or university postgraduate diplomas).9 Group (A) comprises mothers who came before 1990 (fall of the communist regime in Poland), group (B) includes mothers who came between 1990 and 1 April 2004, group (C) includes mothers who came after 1 May 2004; for example, (Mariola, 4, not in paid work, B, 2nd int.).

Results

Construction of identity as capital: facing multicultural London

The strenuous act of coping with “the other” among the Polish community is doubtlessly a consequence of a shared experience of a lack of cohabiting with difference; it is a legacy of the post-war period when Poland was relatively non-multicultural. It is important to define this feature as a legacy of post-war years of ethnic unity in Poland, rather than as an idiosyncratic innate feature of individual Poles. It has been apparent in this research that the construction of identity is almost always happening in the condemnatory atmosphere toward “the other”, “the irregular”, “the unlike”. The collectivist and unifying nature of the communist ideology has contributed to the fact that Poland, in the post-war period, was relatively ethnically homogeneous (Garapich 2016; Sales et al. 2008). With this rather forthright statement, expressed by one of the mothers who came to the interview with her two primary school children, I move to the next part of the research results, which examines Poles’ religion and ethnicity:

When my children came here, they were shocked; black child, Chinese child…not that they were…at our home there is no racism at all. (Danuta, 2, works from home in small business, C)

Religion and ethnicity

Some Polish parents don’t tolerate for example black people or don’t want their children to be with Muslim children in the same class. (…) I always tell Sasha to play with everyone regardless their colour or religion but

9 This number may feel slightly inflated; in Poland a Master’s degree (lasting five years) was previously a standard degree, and there was no option to cease studies at Bachelor’s level. Also, the educational boom of the 1990s resulted in an unprecedented increase in the number of university graduates, and, in effect, a pool of highly educated labour was created (Trevena 2010).

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other Polish children tell her not to relate to children of other cultures. (…) What’s the current school of Rafal and Sasha like? The school is very mixed. There are black children, with scarves, Chinese or Japanese, Polish. The Catholic school, the one you are trying to get a place for Rafal and Sasha…is it the same mixed? Oh no, that is better, much much better. I was there, the first impression is so much better. There aren’t any Muslim children because you need to have a letter from your church. We want to move them for certain to that school. (From an interview with Zofia, 2, not in paid work, C)

The above excerpt from one of the interviews shows an interesting dynamic which had been an underlying theme when I spoke to the mothers about their ethnicity and relations with people of other cultures. On one hand, the mothers were claiming to be open toward otherness and explicitly celebrating the differences, but on the other there were manifold subtle manifestations of the less tolerant aspects. It is possible that, at times, the mothers were in fact unaware of their condemning remarks and undermining attitudes. They are both victims of ethnic unrest and victimising—blatantly, or sometimes simply thoughtlessly—others. In this part I am exposing intersecting facets of mothers’ religiousness (frequently leading to participation in faith education in the UK) and self-perceptions as part of a non-racialised white group. These aspects are interrogated in relation to their children’s educational trajectories and children’s relative educational success. As will be shown here, such mechanisms may act as a form of a hidden privileging social and cultural capital.

Almost every mother, with a few exceptions among those who have been in the UK for a longer time, claimed that Catholic schools have a much more respectable reputation than other schools and wanted her children to attend Catholic schools. This myth, widespread among the Polish community, of Catholic schools being better, having stricter discipline and providing Polish children with adequate and moral upbringing but also more demanding scholarship, made Polish mothers to go to considerable lengths to secure a place in such schools. Klara, for instance, pointed to stricter discipline and said “they wanted a Catholic school because they heard that Catholic schools are better and the rigour is better”. She also added that “they were not practising Catholics” (Klara, 4, not in paid work, B). While there were more overt reasons (like those mentioned above) to make an effort to get a place for children in a religious school, there was nevertheless also, occasionally articulated,


concern about the presence of Muslim children in such schools. Catholic schools served as a measure to exclude other unwanted groups:

I think a lot of mums send their children to Catholic schools and this is because there is the notion of it having a high academic level but I think it is also the subconscious dislike of Muslims. (Irena, 2, not in paid work, C)

The distancing of oneself from other unfamiliar cultures also means

coming closer to familiar patterns of behaviour and upbringing. In this sense religiousness is linked to ethnicity; there is an assumption that Catholic schools will have more Polish children and hence there will be a more efficient and established system of helping Polish children integrate in the school’s life. Several mothers emphasised that they would be happier knowing that there were other Polish children at school. One participant expressed that she “wanted a Catholic school so that children could have religious classes” and that “she knew that children would have it easier as there are helpers and they [children] are picking the language quickly” (Justyna, 1, not in paid work, C).

The reputation of superiority of education in Catholic schools makes mothers (and parents in general) implement various strategies to be able to secure places for their children in such schools. Vera, when her older daughter was moving to a secondary school, only investigated Catholic schools, claiming “they were the best”. The family applied to three different Catholic schools and her daughter Viva was admitted to all of them:

We were particularly keen on one, which is among the 10% top schools in London. Catholicism was the only thing that was considered. Children have higher attainment than in other schools. (Vera, 4, not in paid work, B, 2nd int.)

Later in the interview, Vera made assumptions that Viva stood a good chance of obtaining a place in a Catholic school. She herself is Polish, brought up in the Catholic faith, her daughters were baptised and she provided a letter from the parish’s priest. Indeed, this is how many Polish parents manage to secure places in their first-choice Catholic schools. Twenty-six out of the forty mothers10 had at least one child in a Catholic

10 All samples (primary and secondary), including follow-up interviews, are taken into account in those statistics.

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school at certain point.11 There were numerous stories of travelling to Poland to baptise children for the sake of applying to Catholic schools, persuading Polish priests both in England and in Poland to provide them with appropriate letters confirming their participation in the church, or choosing the right bench in the church in order to be seen by the clergymen. There were a few respondents who openly rejected Catholic education, and one defined Catholic schools as “hypocritical cradles of parochiality and exclusionary mechanisms” (Ada, 4, media researcher, C, 1st int.). The mother having damaging memories from Poland, as a child brought up in an atheist family, wanted to spare her son Adam from any singling-out practices and rejected a Catholic upbringing for her children.

Even though opinions about religious schools were divided, thirty-seven mothers in the sample—though not all of the thirty-seven identified themselves strongly with the Catholic faith and Catholic practices—would send or would consider sending their children to a Catholic school. They used manifold justifications for such tactics. Only two participants were adamant that they would not want their children to attend any form of religious school (Ada and Nina). Five respondents mentioned in one way or another that they had moved away from the church after moving to the UK. Fomina explains this phenomenon by citing the fact that they could be relieved from family pressures and claiming that the Polish Church ceased to serve as a centre for the Polish community (2009). Four mothers in my sample, among them Urszula (2, waitress in pub, B), nonetheless validated their choice by being able to relate to familiar Christian values, which Catholic schools promote:

We are having a break from going to church (…) in Poland it was some sort of social pressure, I was brought up as a Catholic so we do look after it somehow today as well. (…) I chose a Catholic school because I thought that the upbringing, values would be similar to the one we were brought up with in Poland because English upbringing is so different. Maybe I am mistaken here but I have this impression that English children are more unruly. Here, at least they have Catholic upbringing. In community schools there are different cultures and of course different cultures have a distinct approach to bringing up children so I was worried that he wouldn’t adjust and could be isolated. I was very pleased that I could choose a Catholic school. (Urszula, 2, waitress in pub, B, 2nd int.)

One of the participants gave an account of how her fears of her child

becoming a victim of ethnic conflict and of being discriminated against 11 Catholic schools make up 10% of the national total of schools in England and Wales (http://www.catholiceducation.org.uk/).


made the parents decide to search for another (Catholic) school, “where Witek would not be a minority” (Maria, 1, not in paid work, C). She noted: “It was a shock that there were only two or three white children in the class. I am not racist but I was afraid that Witek would be bullied as he was in the minority”. This story of victimisation was a valid argument for the parents to move their son to an allegedly white Catholic school. In this sense religion is linked to ethnicity since Polish parents frequently associate Catholic schools with white European intake. Their migrant insecurity triggers in them the act of nurturing the belief that they are bringing their children up in the native English setting, giving them, for instance, the chance “to learn real English from the English” (Maria, 1, not in paid work, C).

Loury (2005) maintains that many social actors hold schemes of racial categorisation in their minds and act accordingly. Once people know that others in society will classify them on the basis of certain designated markers, such as skin colour, hair texture or facial bone structure, they will ascribe themselves in racial terms. Such an act of classification might affect their material and psychological well-being. The importance of keeping in mind the wider social context within which migrants and their resources are embedded cannot be forgotten, and one needs to consider the simultaneous functioning of different social processes, including those of racialisation and “othering” (Cederberg 2015). In my study, racialisation or ethnicisation through descriptions of visual aspects was repeatedly taking place, and the most striking feature of my dialogue with the mothers around the themes of ethnic relations and cohabiting was their perception of humans in the shades of black and white. The lack of acknowledgment of the diversity of Polish society means that children arriving in the UK have hardly had any exposure to other cultures or religions. This can be a source of misunderstanding and may give rise to xenophobic behaviour from parents and children. The parental awe and admiration for their children’s non-racialised perspective of people of other skin colours gives evidence as to the role that the experience of sharing spaces plays in the process of learning to celebrate diversity. The explicitly racist remarks quoted below show how mothers emphasise their whiteness as a way to seek supremacy and distinction toward the often racialised families at their children’s schools by using racist ascriptions of boundary demarcation. The following comments come from the mothers in the less educated categories, but this does not mean that highly educated mothers do not discriminate on the basis of colour; their remarks maybe more coded and less explicit but equally prejudiced.

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Even recently we scared away her black friends, a boy and a girl. (…) I am not a racist but I think it is a different culture and I would never allow Basia to bring a boy from Pakistan, India or Negro home. (Weronika, 1, hairdresser working from home, C) In her class everyone is from a different country, there are maybe two or three typical English so I think there won’t be any racist attacks in a school like this as it is not dominated by one race or a nation. Pola for example doesn’t see any differences of skin colour. We never talk about blacks or skin colour at home but we were worried how she would take it and if she would be coming home asking why other children have black skin but not at all; she took it as a part of her reality, as something natural. (Irena, 2, not in paid work, C)

Although frequently experiencing subtle forms of discrimination, my

respondents evidently perceived the concept of racism as remote to them because they understood it in terms of black and white. The notorious emphasis on Polish whiteness is associated with opportunities, which the “superior” status of “being one of their own” (Dorota, 4, medical doctor, C) lays ahead of them. Twelve mothers, though not asked directly, have spoken about their whiteness as an advantageous trait securing favourable treatment from the indigenous English. This self-notion of their colour is a factor that may play a part in “feeling good” and aiming high. Poles sense that their children may be favoured at schools and use this accordingly. Weronika brought to light the aspect of whiteness as insiderness, as opposed to racialised outsiderness: “Here we have more chances (…) I feel very good here; it is, I think, because I have white skin, I don’t feel an outsider at all—in banks, in offices they are nice” (Weronika, 1, hairdresser working from home, C).

It has been suggested that the way migrant and minority ethnic communities look at their positioning impacts their attitudes and behaviours, including in education (Ogbu and Simons 1998). Polish children were predominantly described by the mothers as setting a good example to other children and as disciplined and well brought up according to Polish, usually Christian, values. Urszula (2, waitress in pub, B, 2nd int.) mentioned that teachers like Polish children because they are more disciplined than other children in England. Another mother noted the fact that when her daughter “learnt English she was always the best at everything” and that she “thinks it is so characteristic of Polish children” (Lidia, 4, university lecturer, B, 2nd int.). This self-ascription as ambitious, disciplined, hard-working and well-educated is being reemphasised by popular media (see Bingham 2012) as well as school staff (see, e.g., Tereschenko and Archer 2014, where parents valued “perceptions of their


children’s ‘good standing in school’ with reference to Eastern European children; or Sales et al. 2008, with reference specifically to Polish children). Conversely, a seemingly positive stereotype of Eastern European migrants as being “hard workers” can also have negative consequences, such as characterising them as predominantly destined for working-class jobs (Tereschenko and Archer 2014).

Racism among my respondents has features of institutional racism, which powerfully discriminates the victims but at the same time lacks the “personal” private aspect of this interaction. In a parallel fashion, racism in my study largely functioned on a collective level, but, privately, friendships and fond interactions abounded. Incidentally, in her interview Anna (1, casual jobs, B, 1st int.) claimed she would prefer to live in a white area because she thought that “white people were cleaner”. One of Anna’s closest friends, her neighbour, was a frequent visitor in her house and had a warm relationship with her two daughters, helping them with homework. This is how Anna reacted to the new school of her daughters when she moved to a white middle-class area outside London:

Being frank, when I went to this school and I saw that there were no black or Hindu children, I was rather pleased, even though my neighbours were Hindu and we got along OK. But it is because when we were in the other school and there were plenty of Hindu children, they had Divali, they had this and that, holidays all the time … (Anna, 1, casual jobs, B, 2nd int.)

The narrative of Roza, who on several occasions in our conversation

referred to “blacks” in various capacities, gives evidence that there is a sharp difference between a collective racial discourse and a private dynamic of interaction. Her daughter Jola was allegedly very upset that she “had to go to England and was saying she would not be friends with Negroes”. Roza concluded, however, that “here she is and has many black girlfriends who are really nice” (2, not in paid work, C). As Garapich (2016, 250) aptly noted, “it is perfectly conceivable for people to discursively delineate clear boundaries and at the same time communicate across them”, and this was also the case with my respondents in the context of their children’s schooling.

Ethnicity has often been understood by the mothers as their children’s ability to speak Polish and maintaining identity through knowledge of Polish history and Polish traditions. Mothers had various motives for putting emphasis on maintaining their children’s Polish identity by linguistic acquisition. First, there was always a potential chance of returning to Poland, where the children would have to rejoin the Polish educational system, and without the knowledge of Polish, success in it

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would be almost unattainable. Second, in the era of globalisation, when various forms of communication and exchange are far more feasible than in the past, children have more opportunities to revisit their country and culture and thus to interact with their relatives. While a (good) Polish upbringing was continuously juxtaposed to a (bad) English upbringing, mothers insisted that preservation of language, traditions and general Polish values and demeanour at home may inoculate their children against the negative influences. The strongly moralistic message of Polish nationalism gains specific meanings in the context of migration and can be treated as a dominant symbolic structure of Polish emigration culture (Garapich 2016).

Catholic upbringing has been a fundamental common thread interwoven into narratives exposing differences in children’s behaviour and moral attitudes to schooling and life in general. Although occasionally viewed favourably, because they are more multicultural, non-religious schools are commonly seen by Polish mothers as disorderly and lacking discipline, with little rigorous scholarship. Conversely, religious and particularly Catholic schools produce well-mannered, disciplined and moral citizens—a notion forcefully reproduced within the Polish community in the UK. Sonia (4, catering manager, B), following her daughter’s hard-won move to an oversubscribed religious school in a distant affluent area, explains her reasons: “I am happy Hanna is in a religious school—it gives her moral backbone, it is disciplined (…) I want her to be brought up with the same kind of tradition that I was brought up with; I am so Polish myself”.

Further, the mother highlights the otherness of her immediate high-rise council block neighbours by pinpointing their linguistic incongruity, different employment status, non-whiteness and dissimilar children’s behaviour. As Bourdieu (1992, 37) noted, the ability to speak “the legitimate language” entails more than linguistic skills. Certain forms of language, particularly if associated with black youth or local London accents, are strongly rejected, and mothers who aspire to have their children speaking “decent English” (Alicja, 3, admin work, B) will go to great lengths to secure adequate conditions for it. Social language codes (Bernstein 1977) are swiftly observed, even by mothers with very limited knowledge of English, and have pejorative (typically black) or positive (white educated English) connotations. Linguistic class aspiration may be so heightened that it can serve as a sufficient ground for changing schools if the potential environment secures a more desirable sociolect. This is very well illustrated in Sonia’s (4, catering manager, B) account of transformations related to the change of school:


I don’t socialise with my neighbours. It is a large block with maybe five white families (…) Most of the people here are unemployed. I prefer Hanna to socialise with children from her school or with the children of my friends… I found the kids here (on the estate) too loud, too pushy. They talk differently; they use different language from the kids in her school. Now I don’t need to say to her all the time “don’t say this, don’t use this word”. In her new school kids are not using this kind of language and of course she doesn’t want to be different. (Sonia, 4, catering manager, B)

This section explored how religion and ethnicity impact on the mothers’

conduct in relation to their children’s educational and social trajectories. In work devoted specifically to mothers and to their engagement with children’s education, it would be remiss not to mention the role of gender (important but unexplored here) when we deal with capital.12

Conclusions: ethnic capital as an asset

In the new global economic system, with the rapid spread of information and increasingly efficient transport and communication, migrants acquired a strong cultural ability to form transnational networks and diasporas, which frequently are the core source of mobilisation, resources and inspiration for capitalising on opportunities. Deploying such opportunities sometimes happens as a conscious process and as an intentional strategy, but sometimes it is simply an inadvertent act of exploiting the qualities and the capital that the mothers possess. I am inclined to suggest that deploying their ethnicity and religion (both from the legacy of their Polish upbringing) is an act of unmediated desire to outshine other migrant groups in the competition for resources. The mothers emphasise their whiteness as a way to seek superiority, distinction or privileges at the expense of their children’s often racialised, working-class schoolmates. This can contain, as demonstrated in the text, racist ascriptions and racist conduct of boundary drawing. The performed subtle or open racism seems to be a strategy of seeking to establish their status and of attempting to make their children climb the educational ladder in the UK. Fundamentally, they claim an identity as racially privileged, namely white. Whiteness and Christianity are commonly associated with insiderness,

12 Gender has not been analysed in my doctoral research, but it constitutes an important form of capital as affecting strategies. It is worth noting that only mothers are the subjects of this study; although this was not an initial intention, it was soon established that mothers played a crucial role in interactions with schools as well as in the education of the children.

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pure English language, autochthonous superior culture and a higher status in society, and represent features that need to be accentuated and striven for. There is a common assumption (fallacious or not, and this has not been discussed here) that in a social as well as educational and professional arena it is easier to function being Christian and having non-racialised status; such stereotyping is produced and reproduced by Polish migrant mothers. What is more, ethnicity and whiteness are constantly being restructured and, in effect, transcend their own former meanings in order for the individuals in question to become powerful agents of change and to secure adaptability.

The majority of new Poles (notably, this does not apply to the sample in this study) come from lower, though not marginal, social classes, which could potentially preclude them from being academically and professionally successful. Elsewhere I demonstrated that UK class positionality is not greatly significant for Polish migrant mothers with regard to the perspectives on the education of children (Lopez Rodriguez 2010) and that Polish parents, not being aware of the constraints of class structure and its potential setbacks, tend to follow their own ambitions with regard to the future of their children rather than the paths ascribed to them by the structural conditions of social positioning (Lopez Rodriguez 2016). The above-mentioned report on Eastern European children in the UK (Tereschenko and Archer 2014) found that the attainment gaps between free school meal (FSM)/non-FSM13 children are far smaller than national FSM/non-FSM gaps. In some language groups, pupils taking FSMs exceed the attainment of those who are not taking FSMs. Consequently, it is argued here that a focus on children’s academic fulfilment and gratification may in fact prevent working-class migrants and those with underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds from potential precarious educational trajectories, deprivation and exclusion.

A view that the widespread anti-immigration discourses in the UK are pertinent to the fact that most young people from Eastern Europe are seen as a new “other” in English schools, both by the white majority and more established minority ethnic groups has been highlighted by Tereschenko and Archer (2014). It is claimed that this undermines Eastern European students’ ability to “belong”. By contrast, this study found that Polish pupils carry the attributes (namely Catholicism and whiteness) which may facilitate their settlement and acculturation and, at times, serve as an advantageous resource in this process. Those self-perceptions as a non-

13 Carers are entitled to apply for FSMs for their children if they receive certain benefits.


racialised group on one hand act for Polish families as a trigger to flourish and, on the other, highlight existing unequal power relations in the religious, racial and educational arenas in the UK. My participants’ children were almost always (with the exception of children who had some form of learning difficulties) presented to me in the interviews as very able, highly knowledgeable and ready to compete in the educational arena with native children. The mothers were alluding incessantly, for instance, to the fact that their children were in top sets, and this may, for a migrant whose children arrive in the UK with limited or no knowledge of English, serve as a reward and an illusion of catching up with the “regular”—the academic “norm”—or even outperforming it. This indicates for them that as migrants they cease to be a marginalised, lagging-behind entity but instead they constitute part of the natives’ game. The dynamic force to seize the opportunities that meritocracy offers them, as was also highlighted in the Institute for Public Policy Research report (Pollard, Latorre, and Sriskandarajah 2008), is additionally triggered by the above-mentioned and attested-to weak class self-ascription among Polish migrants.

The experiences of Polish migrants actually reflect a distinct scenario from the one which is frequently assigned to migrants and minorities generally, that of a vulnerable and disadvantaged group. I demonstrate forms of capital which help Polish migrants fit into the niches which they consider desirable. Their whiteness and religion are considered here as constituting this advantageous capital; they are used by migrants as social anchors established in order “to enable successful adaptation to, and integration in, new settings, and possibly also in rejecting anchors that hinder adaptation and integration” (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2015). I made attempts here to show that this capital may act as a privilege drawn from the perceptions of society, as well as from their own ascriptions of Poles as white, and hence may be gratified and rewarded in the schooling and professional worlds.

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Portes, A. 1999. “Immigration Theory for a New Century: Some Problems and Opportunities.” In The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, edited by Ch. Hirschman, P. Kasinitz, and J. DeWind, 21–33. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Portes, A., R. Aparicio, and W. Haller. 2016. Spanish Legacies: The Coming of Age of the Second Generation. Oakland, California: University of California Press.

Reay, D. 2004. “‘It’s All Becoming a Habitus’: Beyond the Habitual Use of Habitus in Educational Research.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 25 (4): 431–44.

Reynolds, T. 2013. “‘Them and Us’: ‘Black Neighbourhoods’ as a Social Capital Resource among Black Youths Living in Inner-City London, U.K.” Journal of Urban Studies 50 (3): 484–98.

—. 2015. “The Role of Care in Developing Capitals among Caribbean Migrant Families.” In Migrant Capital: Networks, Identities and Strategies, edited by L. Ryan, U. Erel and A. D’Angelo, 64–79. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ryan, L. 2011. “Migrants’ Social Networks and Weak Ties: Accessing Resources and Constructing Relationships Post-Migration.” Sociological Review 59 (4): 707–24.

Ryan, L., and J. Mulholland. 2014. “French Connections: The networking strategies of French highly skilled migrants in London.” Global Networks 14 (2): 148–66.

Sales, R., M. Lopez Rodriguez, A. D’Angelo, and L. Ryan. 2010. A guide to schooling in England for BME and newly arrived migrant parents. SPRC, Middlesex University.

Sales, R., L. Ryan, M. Lopez Rodriguez, and A. D’Angelo. 2008. Polish Pupils in London Schools: opportunities and challenges. Multiverse project report, December 2008.

Scherger, S., and M. Savage. 2010. “Cultural transmission, educational attainment and social mobility.” Sociological Review 58 (3): 406–28.

Szewczyk, A. 2014. “Continuation or Switching? Career Patterns of Polish Graduate Migrants in England.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40 (5): 847–64.

Tereschenko, A., and L. Archer. 2014. New migration, new challenges: East European migrant pupils in English schools. London: King’s College London.

Trevena, P. 2010. “Degradacja? Koncepcje socjologiczne, percepcja społeczna, a postrzeganie własnego położenia przez wykształconych migrantów pracujących za granicą poniżej kwalifikacji.” In Drogi i rozdroża. Migracje Polaków w Unii Europejskiej po 1 maja 2004 roku.


Analiza psychologiczno-socjologiczna, edited by H. Grzymała-Moszczyńska, A. Kwiatkowska, and J. Roszak, 146–60. Kraków: Nomos.

—. 2012, February. Polish migrants and schooling: experiences and perceptions of the English education system and migration decisions. Paper presented at Southampton Education School seminar series, University of Southampton, date unavailable.

Vallejo, J. A. 2016. “The Mexican American Middle Class: How Heterogeneity in Class Backgrounds Affects Integration Experiences.” Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy 2 (1): 59–69.

Vershinina, N., R. Barrett, and M. Meyer. 2011. “Forms of Capital, Intra-Ethnic Variation and Polish Entrepreneurs in Leicester.” Work, Employment and Society 25 (1): 101–17.

White, A. 2011. Polish Families and Migration Since EU Accession. Bristol: Policy Press.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE BREADWINNER AND THE HOUSEKEEPER: CONSTRUCTIONS OF GENDER IDENTITIES

IN POST-2004 POLISH MIGRATION TO IRELAND

NATALIA MAZURKIEWICZ

Introduction

In this chapter I demonstrate how the apparently conventional and normative model of family works in migration and allows the migrants to achieve security, stability and happiness. I identify the ways in which the migrant women’s investments in the heteronormative family model and motherhood are made in order to make them feel “normal” and to fulfil the aspiration of a “good life”, while a “proper” Polish migrant masculinity is forged through the notion of “hard work”. Via a focus on habitual reproduction, on the one hand, and the accrual and conversion of gender (feminine and masculine) capital, on the other, I identify the values generated by the gender habitus and examine the ways in which migrants generate symbolically meaningful forms of cultural capital in order to fit in the community and feel good about themselves. I also demonstrate how these values and the capitals that the migrants accumulate are consistently denigrated by the local stakeholders and via the dominant discourse emphasising (im)migrant participation in the national economy.

The Polish are the largest ethnic minority in Ireland, constituting approximately 3% of the total Irish population (CSO 2012). After 2004, the Irish government immigration policy was to target low-skilled workers from within the EU 25, who were needed to fill increasing labour shortages (NESC 2005). In 2006, over 84% of Polish migrants in Ireland were employed, and the top hiring industries included construction (22%) and manufacturing (22%). Generally speaking, the migrant occupations were mainly in low socio-economic groups. In 2011, over 26% of all non-Irish workers in Ireland were Polish. The majority of them worked in non-

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manual, manual-skilled and semi-skilled occupations. Polish women looking after the home were under-represented at 11.2%, compared with 18.1% for Irish women (CSO 2012).

The topic of the post-2004 Polish migration has been well-researched and theorised to date; however, the migration waves to the UK have gained more academic attention than the Polish migration to Ireland. The “family” emerged as an important analytical unit in studying this phenomenon (see Ryan et al. 2009; White 2011). Social stratification of migrants is mentioned in research (e.g., Gill and Bialski 2011) claiming that the migrants of lower socio-economic status tend to be more reliant on social networks and associations. White and Ryan (2008), Gill (2010), Stenning and Dawley (2009), Krings et al. (2009, 2013) and Irek (2011) refer to many of their participants as the “low-skilled”, “low-status” or “lower class” migrants. Garapich (2008) and Eade (2007) produced one of the few studies that developed the notion of social stratification with regard to migrants by examining the inclusion of migrants in the social and economic structure of the UK. There is a well-developed body of research which focuses on gender (see Ryan et al. 2009; Pustułka 2012). Of relevance to this study, Lopez Rodriguez (2010) speaks about the quest for “normalcy” among Polish migrant mothers, primarily with regard to their children’s education and future. In this study I examine the working-class migrants’ aspirations and the exchanges of capital which they make in order to live a self-projected “normal life”. Also, pertinently, Pustułka (2015) conceptualises migrant maternal identities of Polish women and examines the notion of “Mother-Pole”. I put all this into the context of social geography by examining the effects of mobility between two specific non-city locales in Ireland and Poland.

In the analysis presented herein I focus on the socio-cultural and economic processes taking place within migrant families, as well as their political framing and perceptions by the receiving society. The chapter is based on a larger research project funded by the Irish Research Council in 2011–15. The study was focused on the lived experience of migration in and between two non-city locales in Ireland (Newcastle West, Co. Limerick) and Poland (villages of Tczew poviat, pomorskie voivodeship). The three main analytical facets of this bi-located study revolved around class, gender and the rural-to-rural character of the researched migration phenomenon; as such, the emphasis was on the experience of the working-class migrants—people coming from economically disadvantaged places in Poland, those who are never free from financial constraints. The participants’ lives were relatively mobile as they moved back and forth between the receiving locale and their Polish “home”. In their mobilities

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the participating migrants (re)created a very specific socio-cultural milieu in which they positioned themselves accordingly to their habitus and levels of capitals which they accrued and exchanged.

Methodology

A total of forty individual adult participants took part in the study; twenty-eight migrant participants (both those who were active migrants and those who stayed behind but were connected to migrants—i.e., extended family members and friends—and can thus be seen as agents in migrant mobile lifestyles) and twelve stakeholder participants including, inter alia, representatives of employers, the Catholic Church, the education and health sector, social welfare offices and the political parties. The participant cohort included twenty-one women and nineteen men; thirty-two Polish and eight Irish informants. In this paper I draw explicitly on the accounts of ten migrant women (Liliana, Kasia, Marta, Julia, Ania, Angelika, Żaneta, Karolina, Danuta, Mariola) and five migrant men (Kacper, Marcin, Damian, Jarek, Max) whose experiences are the most representative of the whole sample.

An integrated methods approach based on observation, interviews and photography was undertaken. The data set consists of sixteen formal interviews (eleven with migrant families and five with individual migrants) and twelve stakeholder interviews; twenty-eight interviews in total. The interview method was supplemented by ongoing participant observation of migrant practices in private (migrants’ homes, families and communities), public (for example, labour offices, social welfare offices or doctors’ practices) and virtual spheres (social networking websites, particularly Facebook and other Internet portals). I used the photographs in my study to: (1) enrich the depth of the observation method and document the research; and (2) deepen and expand on themes emerging in the interviews with participants (interviews with images). As such, the photography method was enmeshed in both the interview and observation method.

Outline of the theory

I utilise Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice (1977; 1984; 1986) to unpick the formations of Polish migrant femininities and masculinities, conceptualised as embodied dispositions and as a form of capital. Gender is thereby understood simultaneously as a form of regulation based on doxic models


of femininity and masculinity but also as a resource that enables the participants to achieve desirable lifestyles and feel like “fish in the water”.

Bourdieu did not position gender as an explicit subject of his research, apart from in one of his latest books, Masculine Domination (2001), in which he discussed gender as class, positioning women as bearers of a feminine habitus which signified subjection and documenting the forms of symbolic violence that women suffer. The ways in which his theory might be applied to gender, however, have received significant academic attention (see Adkins and Skeggs 2004). Generally speaking, gender can be perceived in terms of a gender habitus (as disposition) produced in the dialectic of objectification and embodiment, but it can also be theorised as a form of capital.

As a habitus gender is theorised as a socially constructed category which becomes embodied and internalised. These processes, for Bourdieu, take place primarily within the family (Bourdieu 1990). The gendered social body is made up of “meanings and values, gestures, postures, physical bearing, speech and language” (Skeggs 2004, 21). According to McNay (1999, 100), “hierarchical gender relations are embedded in bodily hexis, that is to say arbitrary power relations are inculcated upon the body in the naturalized form of gender identity”. Gender is therefore constructed as a pervasive, naturalised and deeply structuring principle according to which agents live their lives.

Like the class habitus, the gender habitus (re)produces distinctions and inequalities. McNay (1999, 99) argues that “masculine domination assumes a natural, self-evident status through its inscription in the objective structure of the social world which is then incorporated and reproduced in the habitus of individuals”. The habitus is thus gendered insofar as doxic forms of perception are deeply related to the dominant gender norms. The concept of “doxa”1 refers to the reproduction of common assumptions and understandings of what appears “normal”; it is “accepting without knowing” (Bourdieu and Eagleton 1992). We can speak of doxa when there is a “quasi perfect correspondence between the objective order and the subjective principles of organisation [where] the natural and social world appears as self-evident” (Bourdieu 1977, 164). Doxa is, therefore, a classificatory system in which the “world of tradition is experienced as a ‘natural world’” (Bourdieu 1977, 164); as such, it refers to what “goes without saying because it comes without saying” (Bourdieu 1977, 169)—the unconscious beliefs which are taken as

1 “Doxa” is a word derived from ancient Greek, literally meaning “to expect” or “to seem” and referring to common belief or popular opinion.

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universal and, thus, go unchallenged, unquestioned and undisputed. Social actors act in accordance with certain established logics which shape their perceptions of the (un)thinkable and the (un)sayable, which Bourdieu (1977, 164) describes as “the universe of possible discourse”. Doxa produces certain agents who have a clear sense of “their place” in the taken-for-granted social world. These agents reproduce doxic modes of living as they become subjects of these inculcated mental structures.

In this chapter I am concerned with the doxic modes of perception linked with traditional gender norms; for example, working-class masculinity and working-class femininity are based on investment in conventional perceptions of masculinity and femininity. McNay (1999, 99) argued that a “mythico-ritual system” reinscribes traditional and stereotypical gender roles, namely women as confined to the domestic sphere and men as active agents in the labour market; as such, gender is conceptualised as a form of symbolic violence (see McNay 2004; Skeggs 2004). Symbolic violence takes place when a social agent holding the unspoken symbolic capital uses the power it confers against an agent who possesses less symbolic capital in order to appropriate their actions. It is a system of meaning which agents experience and perceive as legitimate, so they do not see why they should question it (Bourdieu 1989, 14). To avoid the reproduction and reinstating of conventional gender relations as simply oppressive for migrant women, however, I examine the ways in which the women migrants invest in specific forms of femininity and the gains (or losses) made from these investments. I therefore perceive gender as a form of capital which generates value and can be exchanged for other forms of capital.

The “proper” family

The “breadwinner and housekeeper” is a traditional model of family in which the man is the main provider and the woman’s task is to make “home” and raise the children. It is especially linked with industrial capitalism, which constructed women in relation to the domestic sphere and as inferior agents in the labour market (Hart 1996).

In Ireland, the Celtic Tiger economy of the 1990s created many job positions in the construction sector filled by Polish male labourers. Other employment sectors filled by working-class Polish men included manual, semi-skilled or non-skilled jobs in the motor industry as drivers or mechanics. These labour market niches drove migration initiated by men (indeed, for the participants in this study, in most cases family migration was launched by men who were later joined by their families). In cases


where the whole family migrated, there was an assumption that the men would find work easily:

Liliana: We had a week to decide whether to come [to Ireland], because there was work for Kacper, some job as a car mechanic, which his brother told him about. Natalia: Oh so your brother found a job for you? Kacper: Well, not exactly, but he said that there are jobs and that I would find something. Natalia: How about you, Liliana? Liliana: I sit at home. I used to do some cleaning in the office but it was only for a few months. Now I am at home with the girls all the time.

Liliana accompanied Kacper to Ireland, but her main task was to take

care of their daughter and there was no expectation that she would participate in paid employment. Generally speaking, migrant women who migrated with their husbands and children remained responsible for home-making and child-rearing while it was the primary responsibility of migrant men to find employment and “bring money home”. The perception of women as “naturally” better suited for childcare was repeatedly articulated in the fieldwork, while it was seen as “normal” for men to work and provide for the family:

If there are children, it is the husband who goes to look for employment, when children go to school parents try not to dislocate them. And men are more mobile, really. Women are traditionally responsible for childcare. I haven’t come across marriage from which a wife would be emigrating, maybe in the case when a man cannot find work and someone is needed to look after elderly people, but these are often women who have grown-up children or something like that. But in a normal mode it is a man who goes. Among my friends there are a lot of wives whose husbands emigrated and they stayed with the kids. (Kasia)

Caring for children and the elderly emerged as a normative expectation of women within the researched migrant community. The majority of female participants either have never been in paid employment in Ireland or have had only episodes of paid work, often unofficial, which they quit as a result of the pressures of mothering and home-making responsibilities. They did not see options for work outside of these sectors and perceived informal, part-time and odd cleaning jobs as the only available and accessible employment. Looking after children, usually children of other Polish migrants, was another means of earning “an extra penny”. Importantly, women’s jobs in paid employment are usually seen as an

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addition to the family budget, which is maintained predominantly by the male breadwinner; thus, despite instances of women’s participation in the Irish labour force, their employment does not constitute a basis for the generation of significant levels of economic capital and associated value. On the contrary, having to go to work was often linked with complications and dilemmas; for example, in terms of organising childcare or stress resulting from the need to communicate in English.

For the migrant men, migration constituted a kind of relief because it enabled them to provide for their families—something which was often very much impeded, or simply impossible, in Poland:

[In Poland] I was in college, I had two years done… I had to quit my studies. To continue I would have to keep working as a driver and it was very [emphasis original] hard to reconcile. Irregular hours, you’re not at home on weekdays and often at weekends, and on top of that you have to go to school. It was difficult. [pause] It was a constant pursuit of money. I can feel the difference here. A normal employee like me, working in a normal job can provide stable, decent life for the whole family. And doing the same thing in Poland, or even more, because our standards always had to be above any other standards, I was not able to provide even half of such a standard of living as here. (Kacper)

Kacper emphasises the sense of satisfaction he experienced in migration, where as a “normal employee” he can fulfil his role as a main provider. Migration enabled him to generate the economic capital needed to achieve a desirable “standard of living”. Kacper’s wife, Liliana, is happy to stay at home with the children, and in the following excerpt she talks about their livelihood in Ireland:

All I want from life is health, happiness and I don’t need anything else. Now, I don’t have to worry whether I have something to cook for the children because Kacper has a good job, he is a loving, hard-working and helpful husband. (Liliana)

A “normal life” for Liliana is based on a division of labour in which each is happy doing their gendered tasks (Kacper provides financially and she looks after the home). Migration, as such, allows not just for a pre-reflexive take-up of conventional gender norms but for the realisation of a certain vision of family based on specific visions of femininity and masculinity. By investing in this version of gender identity happiness can be reached by achieving a “good” or “normal” life:


[Good life] is a life where you have a normal job, a job that allows for a decent life for the whole family and simultaneously it does not consume all your privacy, it doesn’t require sacrifices, sacrifices of your whole life and it gives you a free time to spend in a nice different way. (Marcin)

A normal living is when you have money and you don’t spend all your time at work. It is also related with the peace of mind. When the money is not there, there are arguments, rows, additional stress. (Kacper)

The accumulation of economic capital is therefore rationalised as a form of investment in the family. Migration is often described in relation to achieving a “peace of mind” so that the migrants no longer have to juggle or choose between working (earning) and being with their loved ones. In Poland, the urge to earn money came at the expense of family life and career prospects. Kacper had to leave college, which meant he was prevented from generating legitimate forms of cultural and symbolic capitals in the form of education and qualifications and instead had to invest in generation of economic capital needed for the family survival. Work time pressures meant that the “natural” and the only possible solution was to drop his studies, as the livelihood of his family relied on his employment. In Ireland Kacper has more time for his wife and daughters because he has to work less than in Poland to earn an adequate income. Life did not change so much for Liliana as she still stays at home with the children. What changed were the housing conditions and general family arrangement:

[In Poland] we lived with my parents, squeezed in a small room, maybe half of that [indicates the area of the living room where we sit], our bed, baby cot, dresser, there was almost no room for anything else. Kacper worked from 4–5am to 8pm, from Monday to Saturday. He was getting up, going to work, coming back, straight to sleep and same again the next day…That wasn’t a nice life. (Liliana)

Indeed, the notion of the “absent husband and father” in Poland is a recurring theme in the data. It is a schema in which the husband and father was notoriously missing from the family life due to employment responsibilities:

Damian: In Poland I was self-employed and it was going great. But we decided to leave to change everything in our lives. Marta: My husband was working all the time, he was never at home, I was working too. [Our son] had to be with my mother all the time, he was being raised by his grandmother…

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Damian: He was at my mother-in-law’s and we were not seeing each other, practically.

The participants place great emphasis on “proper” family-making. The responsibility of men is to be gainfully employed so that they can cater for their families and simultaneously participate in family-making on daily basis. In most cases, migration allowed for a transition from the figure of the absent (working) husband/father to the “participating” husband and father. The presence of the (working) husband at home has a significant impact on the lives of women who see the companionship of the husband as a kind of luxury and source of psychological support. Moreover, the absence of the husband and father from the home in Poland was perceived as compromising the institutions of family and marriage.

Aspirations to achieve the desirable heteronormative family model are generated and reinforced by the Catholic habitus. There is a special emphasis on the ritual of marriage among all participants, where getting married in church is not only seen as a normative but also a desirable practice. Every married couple participating in this study got married in a church, an event which they recall as a memorable and spiritual ceremony. Angelika and Jarek feel the urge to get married, but the fact that Angelika is divorced prevents her from marrying Jarek in church. She sees this as an unfortunate circumstance as she perceives “vowing before God” as an ultimate “confirmation of love”. Jarek and Angelika also want to get married in order to have the same surname and confirm their status as a “normal family”; they jokingly describe their current situation as a “pathology” (Angelika uses her maiden name, her older son has his father’s surname and their newborn child carries Jarek’s second name).

It can be argued that by embracing heteronormativity in the form of marriage, migrants can achieve emotional compensation for economic and social discrimination experienced by the working class (Hennessy 2000). For migrant women and men, marriage is constructed as a central concern of life, an institution worth the heavy investment as it ultimately generates a sense of psychological fulfilment or even achievement, especially taking into account the participants’ marginal social standing. Having a “good” or “proper” marriage is, thus, seen in terms of achieving “normalcy” (Hennessy 2000). Angelika explicitly articulates the importance of having a man in her life and the importance of the “family” in the traditional and heterosexual meaning of this term. She says:

I came here to be with a man whom I love. Right? [pause] When I was on my own for two years, I wasn’t in relationship and I didn’t want to be. I thought, I could be a single woman with a child, and I would be living the


same as I was living, and life was good for me, I was happy, right? I wasn’t looking for anything. But, at the end of the day, you want to have a partner. I am 35 years old, you want to make plans for your life and be with someone. Whether it’s going to work out or not—we’ll see. But this is my approach to life. (Angelika)

For Angelika “being with someone”, that is, being in a heterosexual relationship, is a crucial aspect of life. She invested a lot in her current relationship—she left her previous work and life and brought her son to Ireland to be with Jarek. In her case, the transnational investment in a “normal” family constituted the fulfilment of a “life plan” and a means to achieve happiness.

Similar ways of thinking, emphasising the insistent heteronormative family-oriented femininities and masculinities, were enacted and displayed by other participants in the study. “Proper” family-making was very often a defining factor in migrant decision-making; for example, separation resulting from the husband’s work in Ireland constituted an obstacle which made them strive for reunion. Indeed, Danuta said: “I wanted to come to Ireland to join Mirek, in the long run, what kind of life it would be at a distance?” She felt the urge to reunite with her husband in Ireland after he had been gone for a year. The situation worked in reverse for her younger sister, Karolina, who lived in Ireland for fifteen months during which her husband, Max, worked very long hours in the hatchery. Karolina clearly articulates the reason for her and her husband’s return to Poland when she was pregnant with their daughter:

Max didn’t want to have that kind of a job where he worked seven days a week, when we had the baby. The truth is that the way he was working [in Ireland], it wouldn’t be a real marriage. (Karolina)

A “real marriage” is therefore seen as encompassing the mutual presence of spouses and “proper family-making”. For Karolina and Max, the fulfilment of this lifestyle aspiration, that is, the accrual of symbolic cultural capital via investments in particular values associated with family-making and bonding, was possible in Poland. For many other participants the normative family arrangement also frequently emerges as an important factor shaping their lifestyle decisions; however, the take-up and reproduction of conventional gender norms, although it can be read in terms of pre-reflexive and habitual practice, also involves significant levels of migrant agency. The very act of emigration and desire to change the family’s life required a kind of resistance to the status quo in Poland,

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where the parachuted Polish capitalist system2 forced migrants to commit to paid employment responsibilities resulting in neglecting the family life. The participants did not simply accept the role of passive money-making subjects without time for family; therefore, while the primary gender habitus still operates in migration (via apparent submission to conventional gender norms), the associated dispositions and inclinations must be perceived as complex and ambivalent negotiations practiced in order to pursue happiness and a particular vision of the good life.

Domesticated Femininities

Migrant femininities tended to be lived and performed very much in relation to the home, kitchen, cooking, children and the marital relationships. Generally, the lack of necessity to be in paid employment was seen as a luxury enabling the women to fully inhabit the roles of wives and mothers:

I can’t imagine going back to work and leaving my daughter. (Danuta)

Now I am happy and the children are being raised by their mother. (Marta)

Most of those migrant women who engaged in paid employment in Ireland quit their jobs when a feasible option arose to have a family. Karolina rationalised her decision as follows:

I didn’t want to go back to [the cleaning job in] the Manor. It is different when you have a child, we knew I wasn’t going to go back to work.

There were several other stories like this one among the participants; for instance, Iwona, who worked as a care assistant in a nursing home, quit her job immediately after finding out that she was pregnant. She said she did not want to risk losing her pregnancy for which she and her husband had been trying for over two years. Magda, who worked in Lidl, quit and returned to Poland when she was five months pregnant with her first son, thus prioritising her and her baby’s well-being over the job. Danuta, who used to work at the deli counter in a local shop, did not return to work after she had her second daughter—she did not see the point in leaving her baby and paying for childcare. Her husband was earning well in his job as a bricklayer, and therefore she perceived it as the most logical option to stay at home and look after her child, which she wanted to do in any case. 2 Parachuted as newly launched, started quickly.


Much respect toward the figure of the mother was articulated by the participants, with migrant women seeing their duty as mothers as most distinguished and honourable. The male participants also frequently expressed recognition and appreciation for their mothers.

Jarek: When I talk about my mum I do not talk about my old one [o mojej starej] because I talk about a woman from whom I got everything, and the comment “Only losers name their mother ‘the old one’ in front of their mates”. Żaneta: I have never liked it, when somebody said “your old one” I always wanted to punch them, you have to have respect for your mother because she sacrificed her whole life for you and she will take care of you till the rest of her days.

The figure of the mother is celebrated and presented within a certain ethos. Many of the female participants became mothers at a very young age, before they were twenty-five years old. Being a good mother is seen as an unquestionable and absolute duty and responsibility for women, which they take very seriously, and their ambition is to be a “good” mother and housewife. A baby is often referred to as “God’s gift”, and when asked directly about their mothering responsibilities the women usually reply, “this is what we do”; “we all know why we do this”; or “it’s our thing”. In migration, the women can dedicate themselves to these lifestyle projects because they have enough financial resources and time for them. These outlooks are shared by all of the female participants in the sample, both those who decided to commit themselves fully to motherhood and home-making and those who decided to return to paid employment when they felt the time was right and they had options for satisfactory childcare. Motherhood consequently constitutes a form of cultural capital (the accrual of which is closely associated with the generation of economic capital by migrant men) which becomes symbolic as it contributes to achieving a “meaning of life” (sens życia, Angelika). This helps explain why being a mother constitutes a paramount aspiration in their lives and why the majority of migrant women joyfully undertook the full-time role of the mother and housewife while those who stay in paid employment do not rule out that option for the future. A job outside the home is rarely seen as a potential source of satisfaction or achievement, as this is reserved for motherhood and the domestic work.

Apart from being “good mothers”, the women also feel compelled to be “good (house)wives”; an example of this comes from Mariola, who works as a waitress in a local bar. Her working hours break up her day and evening; she starts work at 11am every day, six days per week, and

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finishes at 3pm. She goes home for three hours and then she comes back to the bar and works from 6pm to 10pm. Her husband is a car mechanic and works long hours, sometimes twelve to thirteen hours per day, and therefore they only see each other in the late evening before they go to sleep. When she talks about her family livelihood, Mariola reflects on her double burden of remaining in paid employment and responsibility for the home:

I have this thing in my head, this duty and feeling, that when [my husband] comes back from work he has to have a freshly-made dinner served, he has to eat well. So no matter how tired I might be, I cook this dinner, every day. (Mariola)

The obligation to be a good wife and look after her husband well (they do not have children at present) is a gendered expectation that Mariola finds hard to escape. She often talks about her job in the bar in negative terms (she does not get on well with her boss, she is fed up with the customers, she does not like the job in general and every time she has to go to work she feels depressed) and thinks it prevents her from running her home in the way she wishes (spotlessly clean household, a two-course dinner every day, cake for the weekend and time to relax with her husband when he comes back home). Although Mariola’s gender identity is undoubtedly shaped by conventional expectations, she stays in paid employment in order to generate and accumulate economic capital in the form of savings for the future.

Domestic life and home-making are, for the most part, embraced, and the women take pride in this work, which is not seen as a burden but something they are good at:

I know how to run my own house. I clean up and I know it is cleaned up [properly], I cook and I know how much he [my husband] is going to eat, how much I am going to eat, and the kids. I clean the bathrooms and I know that they are clean. (Żaneta)

In her narrative Żaneta articulates a sense of control over her work in the home. Almost all the women participants prepare elaborate two-course dinners every day and bake complicated and sophisticated cakes; their home-making is represented as an art rather than a chore. Most take pride in being meticulous cleaners; every migrant household that I visited was spotlessly clean. They put a lot of effort into the decorating (flowers, figures, net curtains, etc.). All strive to be loving mothers and wives,


which means having time and patience for their children and looking after their husbands.

In general, migrant femininity, as performed by the participants in this study, is shaped by gendered breadwinner and housekeeper scripts which construct motherhood as a pre-reflexive and unconscious disposition generated via women’s habitus, which cannot be easily reshaped (McNay 1999). These entrenched aspects of migrant femininities are nonetheless also characterised by ambivalence. The women perform their domesticated femininities (linked with motherhood and home-making) against the dominant late-capitalist discourses of paid work as a paramount value and the emphasis on women’s entry into the workforce. These values, augmented by the Polish post-communist and post-transition emphasis on being a worker and current trends of the detraditionalisation of gender,3 are resisted via migration, which gives these women the opportunity to invest in their own (conventional) visions of femininity.

Perceptions of the stakeholders

Migrant women’s constructions of femininity very often clash with what is expected of them as migrants by members of the receiving community who see migration in terms of contribution to the productive economy. During my interview with Frank, a GP based in Newcastle West, he suggested that the only “negative aspect” linked with Polish migrants in the town was the problem with the “non-working mums”:

Here, generally, most of the working Polish speak English, because they have to, to work. (…) I would find the biggest problem the non-working mums. At home. And I think that, if we were again to think about the negative, I would have found, over the years, that some of the non-working, as home care, home-based mums, their language skills are the poorest, I would get a sense that they are almost ghettoised into the small collections, communities, that they only mix with Polish, they don’t seem to have a huge interest in advancing from an English speaking point of view, and that [emphasis original] can be difficult.

As clearly stated, Frank sees migrant women’s investments in home and motherhood as “non-work” and does not legitimate these investments

3 For example, the phrase “Mother-Pole” [Matka Polka] functions in the Polish language with a slightly derogatory connotation, especially as used by the radical Polish feminists who support emancipation from such traditional perceptions of femininity.

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as valuable. Instead, his perception of the “valuable immigrant” (whether male or female) is rationalised through contribution to the national economy. This is reflected in the accounts of the majority of the Ireland-based stakeholders. In my interview with Niall, the Honorary Consul, he pathologises Polish migrant women’s prioritisation of familial relationships and access to the income to achieve this:

[The Polish women] seem to take ownership completely of the children. And I would have quite a few husbands coming in here, or partners, absolutely devastated that they cannot get access to their children. And all the Polish women want is the money, “all I want is the money”, the maintenance, they would go through the courts, chase them for maintenance but would (…) make it as difficult as possible to give access.

Although none of the families participating in this study were separated, Niall’s narrative is significant as it illuminates certain strategies linked with “the rules of the game”. In particular, it confirms that Polish gender identities are constructed on the basis of traditional and normative visions of femininity and masculinity (women are responsible for the children and men are responsible for money); however, as a Consul and an Irish man, Niall speaks from a position of authority and constructs Polish femininity as possessive and centred around economic incentives. In this narrative, he does not reflect on the individual life trajectories which might have impacted these migrant women’s particular cases but instead makes generalisations and questions the values (providing care and safety for their children) which, as argued earlier, often constitute the meaning of these women’s lives. Another example of such devaluation is Tom, the TD (Teachta Dála – member of the Irish Parliament), who sarcastically comments on how migrant houses are marked out from Irish homes:

You can identify Eastern European houses no problem. The shoes are outside the door. [smiles] (…) Or another one in the window—silk flowers. Imitation flowers. Definitely an Eastern European house. Or the net curtains and the silk flowers—definitely an Eastern European house.

While canvassing, Tom makes a cultural distinction on the basis of gendered symbols: hard physical work represented by dirty boots on the doorstep and culturally identifiable investments in the home (cleanliness, net curtains, silk flowers). As such, the symbolic capital and values so heavily invested in and embraced by migrant women and men are problematised/pathologised by the Irish stakeholders—people who are “capable of making distinction” (Bourdieu 1998, 9), that is, those who “by


virtue of their habitus, are able to pass judgment, implicitly or explicitly, on others, and to make that judgment count” (Lawler 2004, 113).

A symbolic violence takes place, as migrant women often express the sense of internalised inadequacy (see Skeggs 1997, who demonstrates the working-class British women’s awareness of denigratory judgments made against them by the middle class); for instance, the women often refer to themselves as “sitting at home”, which implies the perception of their work in the domestic as “non-work”—“sitting” instead of “working”—and often feel guilty that they do not have a job. The combined and often conflicting norms for Polish women of being a perfect wife and mother and engagement in paid employment naturalises and reproduces certain ways of thinking and acting, insofar as the women feel compelled to contribute to the family budget whenever possible (see also Titkow 2007; Pustułka 2012). Home-making and caring are consequently not perceived as a sufficient contribution to the family livelihood; they remain the sole responsibility of women who also experience pressure to contribute money to the family accounts. The value of the cultural capital that they generate and accumulate is thus belittled as the women inhabit a disposition that sees domestic tasks as inferior to paid employment and, as a consequence, construct themselves as secondary members of the household and illegitimate immigrants. They also experience the pressure to gain language competency:

I have to start learning [English]. (Danuta) It’s a shame we are here six years, I should have learned perfect English by now. (Liliana) It’s time to do something with my [lack of] English. (Julia)

These women want to learn English and attend classes and courses, which requires a lot of energy and sacrifices, as they perform full-time domestic work. Speaking English is generally, though, not perceived as an essential skill in their lives, and the pressure to learn is often rationalised as means of gaining better access to the labour market (“if I spoke some English I could find a job”).

McRobbie (2004, 101) argues that the detraditionalisation of gender via, for example, the emphasis on women’s more active participation in the workforce associated with neoliberalism and modern societies is a “social process bringing into being new social divisions through the denigration of low class or poor disadvantaged women by means of symbolic violence”. In my study, the “modalities of symbolic violence”

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(ibid.) include the internalisation of a disposition which obliges migrant women to see themselves as potential workers in the first place, as constructed via Polish post-communist and post-transition discourses invoked, reified and reinforced in migration. Simultaneously, however, these women construct their gender identities in opposition to this imperative and strive for a desirable lifestyle through active negotiation between what is expected from them and their investments in particular forms of value-generating capital. Bourdieu describes this ambivalence as the paradox of resistance and submission. He asks whether it is resistance when the dominated affirm what distinguishes them (here the migrant women’s investments in the domestic sphere despite the dominant neo-liberal discourses of work) or whether it is submission when the dominated work at abolishing and appropriating what marks them out (here the women’s compliance with conventional gender norms)? It is, in Bourdieu’s words “an insoluble contradiction (…) inscribed into the very logic of symbolic domination (…). Resistance may be alienating and submission may be liberating. Such is the paradox of the dominated, and there is no way out of it” (1990, 155). The experiences of migrant women invoked above confirm this thesis. Their gender habitus and their investments in gender capital, although they might be viewed as oppressing from the point of view of liberal feminists, enable them to feel like “fish in the water” and give them a sense of security, happiness and control over their lives.

Conclusion

As demonstrated in this chapter, the migrant habitus is gendered in ways that are ambivalent and, thus, it should by no means be perceived as a determining structure. The migrants indeed live gender via conventional constructions of femininity and masculinity (and in close relation to their class identities), but they invest a lot of effort in order to achieve the intended lifestyles, to find happiness and to feel good about themselves. Their stories are, generally, success stories, despite marginal socio-economic standing and denigratory judgments made against them by those who hold the power. For these agents, migration constituted the way to realise their visions of a “good life”, centred on the family, marriage and children. While the constructions of migrant masculinity do not require male participants to occupy ambivalent gender positions (as migrants they are expected to be workers, which fits into their gender habitus, similarly to their investments in embodied cultural capital), the migrant femininity constitutes a particularly ambivalent category. In this study, the migrant


women strive to accrue symbolic value in their devalued and vulnerable social positions by making strong investments in motherhood and home-making practices. Through these investments the women struggle to establish themselves as valuable and respectable subjects, but their positions are not always legitimated by the dominant symbolic relations (Irish, middle-class).

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Krings, T., A. Bobek, E. Moriarty, J. Salamońska, and J. Wickam. 2009. “Migration and Recession: Polish Migrants in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.” Sociological Research Online 12 (2): 9–25.

—. 2013. “Polish Migration to Ireland: ‘Free Movers’ in the New European Mobility Space.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (1): 87–103.

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CHAPTER NINE

“I JUST CAN’T IMAGINE IF MY KIDS WILL NOT SPEAK, WILL NOT WRITE

AND READ IN POLISH”: HERITAGE LANGUAGE TRANSMISSION

AMONG POLISH FAMILIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

MICHELLE SHARE, LIZ KERRINS AND CAYLA WILLIAMS

Introduction Historically a country of emigration, Ireland is now a host country for inward migration. Increased European Union (EU) immigration following the 2004 enlargement, combined with immigration of third-country nationals (people not citizens of Ireland or another EU country), has resulted in dramatic changes to the demographic and socio-linguistic landscape (Carson and Extra 2010; Frese, Röder, and Ward 2015; La Morgia 2011; Moskal 2011; Röder et al. 2014).

This chapter concerns heritage language transmission among Polish families in Ireland. While Poles now make up Ireland’s largest immigrant group, there has, to date, been no published research that focuses on language transmission within this group. “Heritage language” refers to the mother tongue of first-generation migrants (Souza 2015, 2) and “transmission” to the transference of comprehension and fluency in the parents’ heritage language to their children.

The chapter draws on a study of the caregiving practices of thirty-five Polish parents of young children (three months to twelve years). The study focuses on parents’ strategies for maintaining family relationships where

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second and third generations live in Ireland while grandparents and extended family remain in Poland. One facet of the research explored parents’ motivations for transmission of the Polish language to their second-generation immigrant children, their methods for doing so, the challenges they faced, and the role of the host country in the transmission process. We adopt the definition of “second-generation immigrants” used in previous Irish research (Röder et al. 2014, 5) as native-born residents who have at least one foreign-born parent.

We outline contextual data on Polish families in Ireland and the theoretical framework (Spolsky 2004) that has informed the study. We review Irish migration and language research and the background for heritage language policy in Ireland. The study approach and methods are described. The role and influence of the family, school and national domains are discussed through themes of transmission, motivations, strategies and challenges. Finally, we consider the implications of our study for language education policy.

Background

Polish families in Ireland

The open labour market facilitated by the 2004 EU enlargement enabled mobility of citizens throughout Europe. Of the countries in the EU, initially only Ireland, the UK and Sweden offered citizens of the EU accession countries unrestricted access to their labour markets. Ireland thus became a popular destination among labour migrants from the new EU states (Moskal 2011).1

In 2002, the number of Poles resident in Ireland was 2,200; by 2006 this had increased to 63,090 (CSO 2007). By 2011, 122,000 Polish nationals lived in Ireland, a 94% increase from 2006, making this the population with the largest increase in the inter-censal period (CSO 2011). Between Censuses 2011 and 2016 the number stabilised at 122,000; Polish people now constitute Ireland’s largest immigrant population (CSO 2016). Despite the onset in 2008 of a major economic recession, there has been limited return migration among Polish nationals resident in Ireland. Possible factors for this include higher Irish social welfare benefits, an unfavourable economic climate in Poland and the social networks developed in Ireland (Krings et al. 2009, 2013).

1 The work restrictions placed by the other EU states were subsequently relaxed.

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Limited return migration may also reflect demographic shifts in the Polish community in terms of age, housing status and children’s entry into the formal school system. The average age of Polish nationals rose from 27.9 in 2011 to 31.4 in 2016, indicating settlement in Ireland (CSO 2017). Polish nationals had the largest percentage increase in home ownership of any nationality between Censuses 2011 and 2016. In 2011, 1,932 Polish households were owner-occupiers; by 2016 this figure had risen to 5,113, a 164% increase. Children’s attendance at primary and secondary schools also limits families’ geographical mobility. The number of children in the Polish community enrolled in primary school increased from 16,779 in 2011 to 22,450 in 2016 (CSO 2017). There are now 6,767 Polish children in Irish secondary schools, up from 4,666 in 2011.

Theoretical framework: family language policy and management

The term “mother tongue” commonly refers to one’s heritage language and implies “that one’s first language is learned from one’s mother, highlighting the role of [parents] in language acquisition” (Souza 2015, 6). To understand how Polish parents in Ireland transmit the Polish language to their children, and their motivations, strategies and challenges, we draw on Spolsky’s (2004) theory of family language policy and management (hereafter “FLP”).

The FLP framework allows us to account for the choices made by individuals “on the basis of patterns established in their speech communities” (Spolsky 2007, 2). Though Spolsky references the term “speech community”, he considers it vague—it may be “a family or a group of people who regularly use the same coffee shop or work in an office or live in a village or a city or a region or even a nation” (Spolsky 2007, 1). He prefers, citing Fishman (1972; see Spolsky 2007, 4), to use “domain” to capture the idea of a speech community as it embraces the social spaces where language is used, such as in the family, school and workplace. In such domains participants are defined by their roles; for example, in the family domain as mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons or daughters. In the national domain participants include legislative bodies and civil servants who develop official regulations and language policy at both macro and micro levels (Berardi-Wiltshire 2017; Spolsky 2004, 2012). The FLP framework takes an ecological stance and emphasises the interconnectivity between what happens in the family and other domains. As Berardi-Wiltshire (2017, 333) notes, FLP “does not happen in a


vacuum and family language practices and children’s language acquisition are necessarily influenced by larger societal ideologies and discourse”.

In the FLP framework Spolsky identifies three components within each domain: the community’s language practices; the ideologies and beliefs about language that have a bearing on language practices; and language management—the specific strategies that influence or modify language practices (Berardi-Wiltshire 2017).

The role of the family in the transmission of heritage language is well established in migration research (Faas 2009; Sime and Pietka-Nykaza 2015; Souza 2015). The family “occupies a special place as a domain whose significance has been long been acknowledged as a site for the loss or gain of intergenerational language transmission” (Berardi-Wiltshire 2017, 332). While the family domain remains an important influencer of second-generation migrant children’s heritage language acquisition, families operate in the socio-cultural context of the host country (Spolsky 2004). Through the school domain, for example, families engage with the national domain of the host society, which may or may not recognise and support the family heritage language (Moskal and Sime 2016).

Heritage language research in Ireland

The 2011 national Census reported that 514,068 residents speak a foreign language other than Irish or English in the home, with Polish reported as the most commonly spoken foreign language (CSO 2011, 27). Census 2016 (CSO 2017, 54) shows a 19% increase since 2011, with 612,018 Irish residents (c. 13% of the population) speaking a foreign language at home. Polish is still by far the most common language (n=135,895) with 27,197 speakers born in Ireland.

Of the 22,221 preschool children who spoke a foreign language at home, 1,710 (8%) could not speak English at all, while a further 5,989 could not speak English well. Ability improves rapidly once children start primary school, with only 386 children unable to speak English in primary school-going years. Children of secondary school age were the cohort with the best English-speaking ability (CSO 2017, 55). The Census data suggests the importance of the educational system—from early education to secondary school—in altering language use and behaviours.

Despite such large-scale transformation in the Irish linguistic landscape, there is limited research attention given to heritage language use among the second generation (Carson and Extra 2010; Darmody, Tyrrell, and Song 2011; Frese, Röder, and Ward 2015; La Morgia 2011; Röder et al. 2014). Studies by La Morgia (2011) and Röder et al. (2014)

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provide some insights into processes and key issues relating to heritage language transmission among migrant families living in Ireland.

Röder et al. (2014) profiled and analysed a cohort of second-generation immigrant children from the thirteen EU accession countries (not differentiated by nationality)—African, Asian, “Other” and the UK—using data from the state-funded longitudinal study of children Growing Up in Ireland. They observed a trend of language attrition among Polish children born in Ireland versus those born abroad. Among second-generation Polish children born in Ireland, use of the Polish language at home was most prevalent between birth and four years of age before they enter the primary school system, after which their use of Polish at home dramatically decreases (Röder et al. 2014).

Building on these findings, Frese, Röder, and Ward’s (2015) study of twenty “new Irish families”, three of whom migrated from EU accession countries, found that the majority of respondents whose native language was not English spoke English to their young children in the home. This was not the case among the three families from EU accession states where heritage languages (Polish, Lithuanian, Russian and Romanian) were the main languages used in the home. While families did not receive support for their heritage language in the school system, those who experienced the greatest success in heritage language transmission had the most resources and access to multiple avenues of transmission, including heritage community language playgroups and weekend language schools run by community churches (Frese, Röder, and Ward 2015).

La Morgia’s (2011, 3) overview of the development of multilingualism within the family and schools among Italian-speaking families in Ireland constructs a phased, linear process whereby the domains within which a young child develops influence the “linguistic development of a plurilingual child”. The first stage involves the decision made by the parents regarding FLP; the second stage begins once languages are established by the parents and children in the home; and the third stage occurs when the child is integrated into the education system and exposed to the host country language (La Morgia 2011, 5). This taxonomy echoes the findings of the Census in relation to children’s trajectory in learning and using English as they move from home and community domains through the Irish educational system.

Heritage languages policy in Ireland

It is estimated that about 200 languages are used every day in Ireland. These include the indigenous languages of Irish (Gaelic), English, Irish


and British Sign Languages, Cant/Shelta (spoken by the Traveller community), and Ulster Scots (Department of Education and Skills 2014, 4). The most common spoken non-indigenous language is Polish (CSO 2017).

The issue of language in Ireland, and of language-teaching in schools, is complex. Irish Gaelic is the official first language of Ireland, while English is also an official language and is the language of instruction in the majority of schools and early childhood education and care services, although there has been significant growth in all-Irish instruction schools, from preschool to secondary. The children whose parents participated in this research are integrating within a society that uses English day-to-day but allows the Irish language an important symbolic role. Children in English-speaking primary and secondary schools will also learn and/or communicate in Irish in line with government policy following the foundation of the Irish State in 1922.

At EU level Ireland has endorsed policy development aimed at the support of multilingualism across its education system (European Commission 2008). As part of this commitment the Irish government has outlined a proposed strategy for foreign language education (DES 2017). This strategy is underpinned by a desire to increase global competitiveness through the enhancement of foreign language education in the curriculum. Support for some heritage languages is mentioned at secondary school level through the provision of an examinable curriculum at secondary school level in languages such as Polish, Romanian and Portuguese. To date the state has not focused on support for heritage languages at primary school level; however, the Intercultural Education Strategy 2010-2015 (Department of Education and Skills and Office of the Minister for Integration 2010, 61) makes mention of teaching immigrant children in the “language of instruction” in schools while also “(giving) due cognisance to the importance of mother tongue by encouraging migrant students to maintain a connection with their mother tongue and culture…”.

Responsibility for implementation is given to educators in schools, but the Strategy provides no support for them in this task. This lack of attention to heritage languages can be contrasted with the national strategy on the Irish language (Department of the Taoiseach 2010, 2), whose key focus is to strengthen the position of the language in the education system and to transmit Irish as a living language within the family and between the generations.

It is only in the early childhood care and education system (largely privately run, though increasingly state-regulated) that much attention has been paid to heritage languages and issues of diversity. The early

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childhood care and education national curriculum framework Aistear (NCCA 2015) is strong on diversity and includes guidance on heritage language support and multilingualism in preschool children.

The study

This chapter is based on a broader qualitative research study of Polish parents in Ireland that explored their child-rearing and transnational caregiving experiences. Participants in the study suggested that transmission and maintenance of the Polish language to their children was very important to them; parents wanted to talk about language transmission and their reasons for it, often without prompt. We thus explored the following research questions:

(1) What motivates Polish parents living in Ireland to facilitate the transmission of the Polish language to their children?

(2) How do parents transmit the Polish language to and for their children?

(3) What are the challenges they face in the process? Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Ethics Research

Committee of the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College, Dublin. Participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling techniques using the following selection criteria:

• Polish migrant parents • English-speaking • Living in Ireland for at least six months • With children (infant to twelve years old). The study focused on families with children under twelve years old, as

early childhood is the period in which parents have the most agency and influence over children’s language use (La Morgia 2011). A substantial number of literature sources argue that, for both monolingual and bilingual children, oral language skills acquired in the first five years of life are strong predictors of subsequent academic outcomes. Learning their heritage language and the language of their host country affects children’s rate of acquiring both languages (Hoff and Core 2013).

Thirty-five qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Polish parents living in Dublin City and County (n=31) and Counties Leitrim and Kildare (n=4). Mothers’ ages ranged from thirty-two to forty-


two, and their children were aged three months to twelve years old. At the time of the interviews, participants had lived in Ireland for periods ranging from seven to fourteen years—all immigrated to Ireland post-2004. Their employment statuses are classified as full-time (n=12), part-time (n=9), unemployed and looking for work (n=4), stay-at-home mothers (SAHM) (n=9), and student (n=1). Nearly all (n=33) were in two-parent households and parenting with another Polish person; four were parenting with a partner from a non-Irish background; two were single parents.

Participants were all Polish natives for whom English was a second language. Eligibility criteria stipulated that they should speak English, and data collection was approached with the intent of terminating the interview if there were any doubts about the comprehension or fluency of a participant at any stage. Participants also had a different native language from that of the researchers; thus, interview responses were limited to participants’ ability to express themselves in English, and this is one of the limitations of this study.

Another limitation is that only parents were interviewed, primarily mothers. In order to more fully explore language transmission to children in Ireland’s Polish community, participation of the other parent in two-parent families, the children themselves and grandparents should be included; therefore, this study should be viewed as exploratory research.

We draw on Spolsky’s FLP framework to elucidate the language practices, beliefs and ideologies, and management that occur in the family and school domains that influence Polish immigrant parents as they negotiate the transmission of their heritage language to their Irish-born children. Notwithstanding the fact that heritage language transmission is influenced by other domains—for example, neighbourhood, church, workplace and national (Spolsky 2004)—our findings are confined to parent reports of the influence of the family and school domains for the transmission of the Polish language.

Polish parents’ motivation for Polish language transmission to their children

Parents were asked about their rationales for transmitting the Polish language to their children. Their responses revealed beliefs about the importance of intergenerational relations with extended family in Poland—grandparents in particular, the need for language capacity in case of return migration to Poland and of not “losing Polishness”. In order to accomplish any or all of these aims they felt that their children needed to be able to communicate in Polish.

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The importance of grandparents: beliefs about intergenerational solidarity

All participants considered it important that their children spoke Polish well, and, apart from those families where one parent’s native language was other than Polish, they only spoke Polish at home. As well as the benefits of growing up bilingual, or possibly trilingual, parents pointed out that they wanted their children to be able to communicate with their grandparents. They reported that their children learned about everyday life in Poland and engaged in Polish songs and storytelling in Polish with their non-English-speaking Polish grandparents through communications technologies such as Skype or FaceTime. For parents, such activities were underpinned by their beliefs about the need to instil intergenerational solidarity between the second and third generations (Share, Williams, and Kerrins 2017).

Stasia, formerly a primary school teacher in Poland, was caring for her eighteen-month-old son full-time out of concern not only for his rearing but for the successful transmission of the Polish language during his formative years and so that he could communicate with his grandmother in Poland. She explained the importance of this with the example of her adult cousin who was raised in Germany and was unable to communicate with their Polish grandmother:

I: And is it important to you that he speaks Polish fluently as he grows up? R: Very. I can’t imagine anything else (author emphasis). Because I have a cousin [who] lives in Germany for about 30 years and she can’t speak with my grandma. Because she speaks only German. (Stasia: 34yo; Polish partner; 1 child: 2yo; SAHM).

Keeping the door open: beliefs about return migration

Whereas some parents expressed a lack of desire to return to Poland, for others a strong motivation to transmit the Polish language to their children stemmed from beliefs about “going home to Poland”. These parents wanted to ensure that their children had the ability to speak, read and write in Polish, and so their investment in Polish language transmission also functioned as a type of insurance policy:

We never say that we stay [in Ireland] for the whole life […] and that will be a big shock for them if they come to Poland without written or with just spoken Polish. [My children] have to be able to read and write because that


can make [the difference]. (Frania: 37yo; Polish partner; 2 children: 5–7yo; SAHM) After eleven years in Ireland, Frania was still preparing for a potential

return to Poland, citing this as the reason her seven-year-old daughter was enrolled in a local Polish weekend school. Although Henryka did not necessarily see herself returning to Poland, she felt it was important to keep her daughter fluent in Polish through formal online Polish lessons provided for free by the Polish government so that her daughter would have the option of returning to Poland to live or to study. Henryka emphasised that she wanted her daughter to be able to speak Polish as if she had lived there, “without an Irish accent” (Henryka: 40yo; Polish partner; 1 child: 5yo; employed part-time).

Natalia had not ruled out her family’s return to Poland and wanted to ensure that her son would not be held back in the Polish school system because of his lack of ability in Polish. Even if they did not return, she was also investing in her son’s possible future in Poland:

Just in case—not to kind of close him to not to be able to come back to Poland later on so when he’s ever go to college he might pick some university in Poland and go back to live in Poland. There’s studying in Poland, that’s the one thing, the other thing is that you never know what’s gonna happen and we might decide to go back to Poland and we don’t want to bring him then to school and they’re gonna say to him, okay, he was in the 6th class here but because his Polish is very low, we’re gonna kind of downgrade him to the fifth class. (Natalia: 34yo; Polish partner; 3 children: 3–12yo; employed full-time)

Fears of losing Polishness

For most parents a strong motivation to ensure that their children growing up in Ireland could speak Polish aligned with concerns about losing Polish cultural heritage. While this was particularly the case in families where both parents did not share the same heritage language, as in the case of Brygida below, it also applied in families where both parents spoke Polish. Parents described their fears of “losing Polishness” through anecdotes about family members outside of Poland in other European countries where children had to learn the language of the host country. Natalia explained their family language policy of speaking only Polish at home for strong Polish language development and identity through the example of another family member with young children growing up in Germany. Her

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nephew in Germany had been introduced to Polish and German from birth, which, according to Natalia, resulted in language struggles:

He started really late but he started in both languages, Polish and German, but the parents were mixing the languages at home so that’s why we took the lesson from that and we decided not to mix the languages, get them the Polish first because we knew it’s gonna be harder for them, when they go to school it’s gonna be harder for them with Polish anyways. (Natalia: 34yo; Polish partner; 3 children: 3–12yo; employed full-time) Danka emphasised her concern over maintaining the Polish language

and identity within her children. She described her fear that, by raising her children in Ireland, the Polish identity and heritage of her family will disappear altogether down the generations if the language is not preserved. When discussing the developing identities of her five children, Danka explained that her eldest daughter “thinks she is Irish”, equating it with her place of birth and where she is living her life:

I: Is it important to you that as they get older they identify with Poland? R: Yes. (emphasis in original)That’s, for me, very much important. […] maybe it’s more because I feel like if we will stay here [my children] will have less, less, less contact with the family in Poland and one day, one generation, it will just disappear. I feel that in [my children’s] families the kids won’t speak Polish or something like that. (Danka: 37; Polish partner; 5 children: 2–10yo; SAHM) Brygida had been living in Ireland for eleven years and was raising her

two-year-old son with her Irish partner. She related the importance of ensuring her child could speak Polish through an explanation of her fear of him losing Polishness. In this case her beliefs and motivations are contextualised by the daily challenges she experienced in Polish language transmission to children when parents did not share the same heritage language:

I love Ireland—I could stay here forever—but for me it’s important that [my children] know who mommy is because their names and surnames are not Polish. Nobody would recognise them on a list that they’re Polish. I can only make them know and aware that they’re half Polish. [It’s] very important for me. Sometimes I have regrets that I let their first names be not Polish. (Brygida: 37yo; Irish partner; 2 children: 1–3yo; SAHM) Brygida went on to explain that, without the support and participation

of both parents, she felt that she was “fighting herself” for her son’s Polish


language. Solidarity and consistency in the family domain emerged as crucial to Polish transmission.

Fitting in and getting on in Ireland and beyond: beliefs about bilingualism, integration and globalisation

Equally important to participants was their children’s acquisition of, and fluency in, the English language and their integration into Irish society. This was viewed as essential for children’s progression in the Irish education system and could maximise their future opportunities. After thirteen years in Ireland, Kamila emphasised the importance of her five-year-old daughter’s ability to integrate into Irish society: “It’s really important for her to be connected with Irish society […] because [my daughter] is living here and we are a part of society (emphasis in original) so it’s really important for me” (Kamila: 36yo; Polish partner; 1 child: 5yo; employed).

Beyond English comprehension and social integration, Janina spoke of the future opportunities English fluency—and, to an even greater degree, bilingualism—would offer her two children locally and globally:

We want to be staying [in Ireland] because if [my son’s] going to school and then to college here—we think there will be better future for him when he will have the two languages and the English is very important now everywhere. (Janina: 42yo; Polish partner; 2 children: 5–7yo; employed) Like Janina, many participants acknowledged the value of English

fluency. The edge in global competitiveness gained by bilingualism was an additional motivation to promote their children’s fluency and literacy in both Polish and English.

While they valued the importance of bilingualism, they nonetheless recognised that their children’s acquisition of English occurred naturally through the school domain with integration and did not require facilitation within the family domain. Their concern therefore lay not with their children’s comprehension of or fluency in English but in the support offered for Polish once their children entered the Irish school system.

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How parents transmit the Polish language to and for their children

Language practice and management

Except in cases where one parent’s native language was other than Polish, all families spoke Polish exclusively in the home. Parents keenly recognised their management role in enforcing Polish language use in the home to maintain consistent exposure and, to some degree, immersion for their children. This was paramount during the early years and before they became exposed to education and care settings outside of the family domain. Stasia related that the Polish migrant community assumes that children “pick up” English once they enter school and, thus, that emphasis should be placed on Polish language at home. Parents also acknowledged that their family language policy reflected the advice received from the national public health nursing service. In this way the family domain that supported Polish language transmission was connected to the national domain by the endorsement of the heritage language by the public health nursing service, whereas the school domain was separate and concerned English exposure.

Within the family domain parents’ management strategies for their children’s heritage language included informal methods of Polish transmission such as employing a Polish child-minder or having a grandparent involved in child-minding during their visits to Ireland, Skype video calls with grandparents or visits to Poland during school holidays.

Some parents availed themselves of Polish child-minders to care for their children. For this group, the family’s language policy of speaking only Polish in the home was strengthened in the family domain of the Polish child-minder’s home. Furthermore, as found in other transnational family research (Baldassar, Baldock, and Wilding 2007), most parents reported visits of Polish grandparents, particularly around the birth of a grandchild. Some extended their visit for several months and were involved in caring for other children in the family. Such practices also supported children’s Polish language development.

While use of Skype between children and their Polish grandparents supported intergenerational solidarity, it was also a parental management strategy for children’s Polish language development. For Klaudia, whose son was growing up in a trilingual environment of Polish, English and Chinese languages, Skyping and text messaging with his Polish grandparents and aunties also strengthened his Polish language:


He wants to text his auntie, his Polish grandparents, so he likes sitting and then he asks me, “oh, mum, how to write these certain sounds in Polish?” You know, he doesn’t know they’re different from English so then he asks me and he writes something in Polish and sometimes when I see it it’s so funny, I can’t figure out what he means! (Klaudia: Chinese partner; 35yo; 2 children: 2–6 yo; employed) For transnational families, physical visits to extended family in their

country of origin are common and support intergenerational solidarity and heritage language acquisition (Baldassar 2001; Mason 2004). Visits to relatives based in Poland were common among all families during the school holidays. Though Brygida, a participant with an Irish partner, described such visits as a “Polish brainwash”, she saw this as an important strategy for children’s immersion in the Polish language. For her, such a strategy was particularly important as the family domain involved her English-speaking partner. While such visits were rewarding in terms of children’s language immersion and supported intergenerational solidarity, they were also effortful and expensive, as explained by Marianka, who described herself as a daily “Ryanair checker”. Not all parents could spend the entire school holiday period in Poland, and so visiting often resulted in a series of relay visits among relatives.

Parents’ language management strategies were also formal, and this involved the domain of Polish weekend schools operated by the Polish Embassy in Dublin and the quasi-school domain of online Polish schools, scout groups and playgroups. Participants who entertained the prospect of return migration to Poland were more likely to employ such formal methods to maintain literacy in Polish than those whose primary concern was to enable communication with Polish family members. For Janina, Polish language was important, and she saw advantages for her children in being able to speak and write “correct Polish”. She was satisfied that the Polish weekend school was the best strategy for accomplishing this as she did not have the time to do it herself. She also considered that enrolment in the Polish weekend school supported children’s cultural heritage as it connected them to a wider Polish community.

Other parents supported their children’s Polish language through their enrolment in online Polish schools. Henryka and Natalia related the need for their children to be competent in written and spoken Polish but preferred the flexibility of the free online Polish lessons provided by the Polish government that could be done at home. For Henryka, such a service was useful, allowing her to manage her daughter’s Polish language transmission in the family domain as she could “hear and see what she is learning”.

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It was clear that informal methods of Polish language transmission were intentionally managed within the family domain, primarily by the parents but also by those connected to the family through the work domain of childcare or grandparents involved in childcare during visits to Ireland. Polish language transmission practices also took place in the Polish weekend school domain, however, where children attended and participated in a full Polish educational curriculum, and in the virtual Polish school, which provided opportunities for parental involvement in the family domain.

Challenges to Polish language transmission

Parents held strong beliefs about the importance of raising their second-generation children growing up in Ireland with the ability to speak Polish well. Parents facilitated informal and formal methods in the family and school domains of supporting their children’s Polish language development. Notwithstanding the challenges of trilingual language acquisition, even when parents have a firm FLP in which each parent consistently speaks their own language (Chevalier 2015), all parents reported on the challenges of supporting their children’s Polish language acquisition. In particular, challenges arose as children transitioned into the school domain of early years and/or primary school. Parents who availed themselves of formal language support through the Polish school domain also reported challenges.

The “shift” toward English

We know that some parents contracted Polish child-minders and/or involved Polish grandparents in child-minding. These activities occurred in the family domain and—because of the participants involved (Polish native speakers) and location (family home)—supported heritage language acquisition. Other children were cared for in early years childcare settings and primary schools. Parents’ accounts of their children’s transition to, and involvement in, these settings illustrated their challenges, as they described the “shift” toward English in their child’s language preference or use.

Kamila, whose five-year-old daughter was regularly exposed to English under the care of an Irish child-minder, described the challenge of continuously enforcing the exclusive use of Polish at home:


There was a moment when she was with [child-minder] when she was coming back home during the speech development time and she was more into English. But when she was passing our doorway I was saying, “Polish only.” […] She was kind of preferring English. (Kamila: 36yo; Polish partner; 1 child: 5yo; employed) Kasia and her husband maintained a Polish-only FLP as they raised

their children. As she reflected on her children’s shift toward English, Kasia considered contextual precursors that included her return to work following maternity leave and employment of English-speaking child-minders. For Kasia, it appeared that both parents speaking Polish at home was insufficient now that they were integrated in the domain of the Irish school system:

We only speak Polish at home but it’s too little, you know? They are at school and they are speaking English with their friends, with the teachers, with everybody else—and, obviously, if they have a playdate and somebody comes over for a playdate from their class, you know, I speak to their parents in English so they’re listening to me speaking English, they know their dad can speak English so they, you know, they’re smart in the sense that you won’t tell them, “listen, I won’t speak English with you because I can’t, it just—it won’t fly”. (Kasia: 36yo; Polish partner; 2 children: 6yo; employed)

Others spoke about their children’s shift toward English in terms of

their greater ability to express themselves in English: “Sometimes [my daughter will] say, ‘I’ll tell you in English because I don’t know how to say it in Polish’” (Danka: 37yo; Polish partner; 5 children: 2–10yo; SAHM); “Now it’s hard because [my eldest daughter] started to ask me, ‘How is it in Polish?’ It used to be, ‘How is it in English?’” (Beata: 33yo; Indian partner; 3 children: 3mo–4yo; self-employed part-time).

Whereas Danka and Beata expressed dissatisfaction with this shift, Natalia was more accepting and had a strategy for dealing with her children’s slippages in Polish language use:

We see that he’s struggling with Polish sometimes and he’s the oldest. And with the middle one we’re saying sometimes, if you don’t know how to express yourself just say it in English and we’ll answer you then. For example, simple tasks like, you know, if I need them to say the months of the year in Polish or the days of the week in Polish they’d be struggling, you know, so they know it no problem in English but in Polish they are mixing the, order you know? (Natalia: 34yo; Polish partner; 3 children: 3–12yo; employed full-time)

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While this “shift” toward favouring English was experienced by most of the participants with children in the school system, parents like Natalia, Kasia, Danka and Beata illustrate the complexity and the challenges of managing children’s heritage language in the family domain.

In the case of Beata, three languages were spoken in the home: Polish, Punjabi and English. This required the intentional management of her child’s Polish language through exposure to his grandparents across Skype, reflecting the complex reality faced by families who attempt trilingualism. While both Danka and her partner were Polish, their eldest son had autism, so they chose to prioritise English and social integration when it came to language learning. While she strove to exclusively speak Polish with her other four children, English permeated the family domain, arguably reducing Polish transmission to the wider family.

Challenges to heritage language in the Polish weekend school domain

To support their children’s Polish language acquisition, some parents enrolled them in Polish weekend schools. Klaudia, for example, did so due to a desire for her children to have “correct” Polish, but several parents expressed dissatisfaction with the approach taken by Polish weekend schools. Frania described the programme as burdensome for her children: “[Polish weekend school is] loads of sacrifice. […] It started to be really difficult to keep going. It’s only few hours on Saturday or Sunday but there’s loads of homework. Sometimes [my children] are complaining” (Frania: 37yo; Polish partner; 2 children: 5–7yo; SAHM).

As illustrated above, many parents who persevered with their children’s enrolment in a Polish weekend school did so to prepare their children for a potential return migration to Poland. For parents who had no intention of returning to Poland, there was often less motivation to endure what they perceived as the additional burden of Polish weekend schools.

Amelia, for instance, explained her decision to withdraw her two eldest children from the programme:

So what they do is they take the exact same books that the kids use over five days a week and they try to squeeze it in over one Saturday. What happens is that you end up doing everything with your children over the next week. They hate it because it’s on top of their activities, their schools. […] I’d say the aim should be to make them interested and like the language. (Amelia: 35yo; Polish partner; 3 children: 5–12yo; SAHM)


Amelia expressed an opinion shared by the majority of parents: that the Polish weekend school is not tailored to permanent migrants and fails to meet the full range of needs among Polish families in Ireland. Rather than supporting parents and reducing the strain on families to maintain the Polish language, many felt that the school contributed to the burden with an unnecessary course load that had to be completed by families at home in addition to Irish schoolwork. Enrolment in Polish weekend school was often considered a sacrifice and failed to meet the needs of families that planned to stay in Ireland; thus, for families in circumstances similar to Amelia’s, the linguistic and cultural tutelage of Polish migrant children rested in the family domain.

Discussion

Polish people have chosen Ireland as a destination in which to work and to raise their families. This is evidenced by the fact that Poles are the second largest nationality (after the Irish) living in Ireland, the growth in Polish-headed households and their low level of return migration during the Irish economic recession. Against this background, the study upon which this chapter is based arose from an interest in understanding the caregiving strategies among Polish parents with young children living in Ireland, a country with a relatively poorly developed childcare infrastructure and a strong reliance on informal care by relatives, particularly grandparents (Share and Kerrins 2009).

The study focused on how Polish parents coped with childcare responsibilities when separated geographically from their families in Poland. It became clear they placed great importance on their children’s heritage language development in the family domain. This intertwined with their child-caring experiences in the formal domain of school and early years settings. Framed by Spolsky’s research on language policy development (Spolsky 2004), we uncovered the role and influence of the family and school domains to illustrate how parents negotiated the transmission of the heritage language to their second-generation children growing up in Ireland.

Parents indicated the importance of transmitting the Polish language to their children growing up in Ireland, and for those households where both parents were Polish it was natural to do so. Although some had reservations about their children’s acquisition of English, apart from families where parents did not share the same heritage language all were confident about their role in the family domain to nurture their child’s heritage language.

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Berardi-Wiltshire (2017) notes that loss of natural intergenerational transmission is a precursor of language shift. Parents in this study observed this phenomenon with other family members who had migrated to elsewhere in Europe and who did not have a firm FLP in the family domain. They were motivated to transmit their heritage language by beliefs in the importance of maintaining intergenerational relationships between Polish-speaking grandparents and their grandchildren, fears of their children losing their cultural heritage, and the possible return to living in Poland as a family, or for future educational and employment prospects for their children.

Notwithstanding the challenges of Polish language transmission for families where parents did not share the same heritage language and where children were growing up in a trilingual environment, all families adopted a FLP of “one parent, one language”. In these instances, English was used for parent-to-parent communication. For all families, the situation changes when the family domain intertwines with the school domain. Echoing other Irish research on heritage language acquisition in migrant families (Frese, Röder, and Ward 2015), even when there is an agreed language strategy between parents in the family domain, over the longer term parents find it difficult to maintain the heritage language. As children transitioned to the Irish school/childcare domain, where they began to learn English, parents referred to the struggle to influence their children’s heritage language use in the home domain. They noted a “shift” toward English language use among their children, highlighting the influence of the school domain in the transmission of English. Parents’ accounts of their support for their children’s heritage language align with La Morgia’s (2011) description of the stages of language learning, in which parents direct language use in the first and second stages, but a shift may occur in the third stage whereby children increase their use of English or refuse to speak one language or demonstrate a lack of enthusiasm for activities in the minority language (ibid., 10).

Frese, Röder, and Ward (2015) argue that parental input alone is insufficient to prevent attrition of heritage language, as English holds a dominant position in the Irish education system. Where children were enrolled in Irish primary schools there was no extra support for heritage language tuition. English (or Irish) is the medium of instruction, and all children learn Irish.2 Support for migrant children is aimed at English acquisition through the educational intervention of English as an Additional Language (DES 2012). For parents who desired to bolster their

2 Some exemptions apply.


heritage language transmission efforts in the family domain, there was a need to find and use other avenues. These included Polish-speaking child-minders, playgroups and weekend schools. Through these opportunities to receive heritage language exposure there are greater possibilities for children to develop lexical, grammatical and phonological language skills (La Morgia 2011). Migrant families with resources to access additional supports for their children’s heritage language use report more success with transmission than those without (Frese, Röder, and Ward 2015); nevertheless, our findings suggest that access to such additional resources is not straightforward. It requires the financial capacity of the family to employ private Polish child-minders and/or time to organise Polish-oriented extracurricular activities, and there is potential for conflict over allocation of these resources to the transmission of Polish in families of mixed nationality.

We found that when children had reached compulsory school attendance age use of Polish weekend schools was the main additional support used by parents for heritage language transmission. Such schools were established to promote the “Polish language, culture and heritage within [the] Polish community living in Ireland and to teach Polish to children from Polish-Irish families” (Polska Szkola Dublin 2015). For some parents the importance of the Polish weekend school was for heritage language transmission and maintenance of “proper” or “correct” Polish speaking and writing skills, for others it had become a burden on children and on family life. Many parents reflected on the limitations of the programme: the additional homework, the need to study the entire Polish school curriculum rather than just language, and how the programme curtailed family and recreation time during the weekend. All of this occurred within the context of children already engaged in the Irish school curriculum that also included a new language: Irish.

Participants’ reflections on the Polish weekend school system suggest that it is better suited to migrants who intend to return to Poland rather than those who had migrated to Ireland permanently. Families who do not wish to place their children under the additional pressure of enrolment in the Polish weekend school are left to either tend to their heritage language learning via supplementary courses at the expense of their time for other activities, or risk the attrition of their heritage language.

Conclusion

International migration research has established the significance of the family and national domains for the facilitation of heritage language

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transmission (Ersanilli and Saharso 2011; Faas 2009; Sime and Pietka-Nykaza 2015; Souza 2015). Ireland’s changed profile as a country of inward migration has inspired significant migration research, focused on integration, education and care. Though the Irish longitudinal study of children Growing up in Ireland has generated some data on the heritage language transmission strategies of migrant families, to date there has been no research on language transmission exclusively among Ireland’s largest immigrant community: the Polish. The research on which this chapter is based provides a platform from which language education policy can be developed and areas where further research is needed.

Among Polish transnational families living in Ireland, our findings highlight the burden placed on the family domain for the transmission and maintenance of their heritage language. Neither school nor national policy domains provide direct support for heritage languages. Although primary school teachers are encouraged to integrate migrant children’s heritage language into the classroom (DES 2012), in the school domain efforts to support migrant children’s language skills are geared to English language acquisition.

At the European level, the European Commission has identified two main approaches to the maintenance of heritage languages through the school system: bilateral agreements and tuition funded by the national education system. While half of EU states provided heritage language tuition funded by the national education system, Ireland is not represented in either category. The Commission notes, however, that in Ireland “a working group set up by the Department of Education and Science is looking into the possibility of implementing the Council of Europe recommendations for a plurilingual approach to education” (EACEA 2009, 26). Ireland’s response thus far has been an outline of its proposed foreign languages strategy (DES 2017). The strategy aims to enhance foreign language acquisition for global competitiveness through actions such as increased availability and choice of foreign languages in the secondary school curriculum, and the possibility for their inclusion in the primary curriculum. While heritage languages are mentioned, these appear in the context of the addition of curricular programmes at secondary school level. No detailed measures are outlined for heritage language support at primary school level despite the national research and census data that affirms heritage language attrition among migrant communities in Ireland (CSO 2017; Röder et al. 2014).

We suggest that, in order to facilitate the transmission and preservation of heritage languages in Ireland, there is a need for the national and school domains to work with families to support heritage languages. Such a


strategy would also acknowledge Ireland’s changed socio-linguistic landscape. The possible incorporation of main heritage languages into the primary school curriculum, and/or financial support for provision of after-school programmes, would endorse the use and value of main heritage languages in the educational setting. It could also reinforce Ireland’s espoused commitment to multiculturalism and national objectives of promoting multilingualism (Royal Irish Academy 2011; DES 2017). In addition to developing a language education policy that supports heritage language maintenance among migrant families, the provision of relevant training for educators and information for multilingual migrant families is necessary (La Morgia 2011).

Historically a country of emigration, Ireland is a newcomer as a migrant receiving country. The challenge now is for Ireland to wholeheartedly embrace the opportunities that immigration brings through supporting families like Beata’s; she is raising her three children with Punjabi, Polish and English and sees the wonder and importance of interculturalism:

I think I’m bringing up very interesting people, you know? With the multicultures, many languages—I hope I won’t make much mess in their heads. No one ever tells you what is wrong, what is right. I hope this family will make them open. [To other] People and cultures […] and maybe they will go to India—I don’t know! (Beata: 33yo; Indian partner; 3 children: 3mo–4yo; self-employed part-time)

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A Profile of Second Generation Children and their Families. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin.

Royal Irish Academy. 2011. National Languages Strategy. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy National Committee for Modern Language, Literary and Cultural Studies.

Share, M., and L. Kerrins. 2009. “The Role of Grandparents in Childcare in Ireland.” Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies 9 (1): 33–48.

Share, M., C. Williams, and L. Kerrins. 2017. “Displaying and Performing: Polish Transnational Families in Ireland Skyping Grandparents in Poland.” New Media & Society. http://doi.org/doi:10.1177/1461444817739272.

Sime, D., and E. Pietka-Nykaza. 2015. “Transnational Intergenerationalities: Cultural Learning in Polish Migrant Families and Its Implications for Pedagogy.” Language and Intercultural Communication 15 (2): 208–23.

Souza, A. 2015. “Motherhood in Migration: A Focus on Family Language Planning.” Women’s Studies International Forum 52:92–98.

Spolsky, B. 2004. Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

—. 2007. “Towards a Theory of Language Policy.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 22 (1): 1–14.

—. 2012. “Family Language Policy: The Critical Domain.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 33 (1): 3–11.

CHAPTER TEN

TRANSMISSION OF THE CULTURE OF MIGRATION:

GROWING UP TO TRANSNATIONALISM

BARTŁOMIEJ WALCZAK Today’s students of primary, junior high and high schools represent a generation that has grown up during a period of significant mobility of Poles. Both pre- and post- EU-accession migration involved a large share of their parents, siblings, relatives and members of local communities (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski 2009). Widespread experience of transnationalism raises a question about the strength of the culture of migration in Poland. In this article I would like to focus on migration readiness and its determinants, basing conclusions on a nationwide survey of a random sample of over 4,000 students. I treat migration readiness as an indicator of the sustainability of the migration culture. I would like to test a number of factors that shape migration readiness on the level of individual and primary group characteristics. The key question is: What are the most important determinants of migratory readiness at the micro level? Measurement of the importance of growing up in a transnational family, among others factors, should let us see whether the experience of transnationalism in childhood increases the probability of the child’s future mobility.

The first part of this article contains a description of the term “culture of migration”, followed by a review of the research on factors shaping migration readiness. In the second part, the methodology and sampling are described. The third and fourth parts are devoted to the migratory readiness scale and analysis of its determinants.

Chapter Ten 208

The culture(s) of migration and migration readiness

The main argument for the introduction of the culture of migration into migratory studies is the need to widen the scope of analysis beyond the framework of economical push-out/push-in factors (Garapich 2013, 18). As argued by Cohen and Sirkeci, cultural dimensions of mobility are crucial for grasping a comprehensive picture of contemporary migration (Cohen and Sirkeci 2011, IX; Cohen 2004, VII-VIII).

The term “culture of migration” was introduced by Massey et al. (1998) as a link between wider social processes determining migration’s characteristics. Further elaboration by Massey and Kandel (2002) started from a description of a community in which migration has become a key way to satisfy basic needs and therefore had a strong influence on the next generations’ migration readiness. Kandel and Massey focused on high migratory outflow communities, where knowledge about migration and attitudes toward mobility are transferred between generations. Culture of migration becomes a part of daily life and gives individuals particular knowledge about culturally defined goals and means. Moreover, Kandel and Massey (2002, 981–83) emphasise the role of a community’s acceptance of mobility (see Silver 2006).

Cohen proposes the following indicators of culture of migration: mobility is common throughout the region, belongs to the daily-life routine and forms a long-run tradition. The community accepts labour migration as a way to satisfy economical needs (Cohen 2004, 5). Migratory culture is not global, is being distributed on a local level. In order to emphasise its multiplicity, White (2011) uses the plural form “migration cultures”. She defines “migration cultures” as “convictions about why and how people should migrate, which people should migrate and where they should go, as well as views about whether or not migration is a normal and sensible way of making a living” (White 2011, 61), thus proposing a kind of normative definition.

A culture of migration is crucial to understanding the transnational family and its relationships with its local community. A strong, well-established culture of migration should stop the process of stigmatisation of transnational parents and help solve daily challenges caused by the absence of mobile mothers or fathers at the same time. It should be noted, however, that even in countries with well-developed migratory traditions, a symbolic “punishment” is imposed on non-resident parents in public discourse (Parreñas 2005; Urbańska 2010).

There are many other cultural constructs that influence migration’s characteristics. I will review studies on migration readiness in transnational

Transmission of the Culture of Migration 209

families; however, due to cultural differences they should not be treated as material for comparison but rather as a justification for a model presented in following sections. The influence of culture of migration on migratory patterns lies in delivering common assumptions about migration. It can be strengthened by rituals, when mobility is a kind of rite de passage from childhood to adulthood (Suárez–Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2002, 22; Madianou and Miller 2012, 45; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994, 84; Pribilsky 2004). Rituals are particularly important from the point of view of non-mobile members of the community (Cohen and Sirkeci 2011, 89). The culture of migration is reproduced through social networks. Returning migrants bring stories about the “better world”, increasing knowledge about mobility among the younger generation. As was clearly exemplified by Dreby (2010, 19):

even young children have clear ideas about the United States. I asked children in three primary schools to draw pictures of their families and of the United States: many drawings depicted el norte as the place of tall buildings, elaborate roads, snow, and Christmas trees and presents. (See also Chavez 1992; Hoganson, 1998) These images of the receiving country are supplied not only by

returning non-residents but also by the media (White 2009). How does a culture of migration influence migratory readiness on a

micro level, through socialisation in a primary group? Does being a child in a transnational family change one’s attitude toward mobility? Most studies show that experiences of transnationalism enlarge migration readiness (Czerniejewska 2013, 149; Hirszfeld and Kaczmarczyk 2000, 56). “The greater the involvement of a student’s family in international migration, the more likely he or she is to express a desire to live and work in the U.S.” (Kandel and Massey 2002, 996). Additionally, Cohen’s study in Mexico shows a positive correlation between a child’s migration readiness and a number of mobile members in their household (Cohen 2004, 98). Górny and Stola (2001, 170, 180) argue that mobility of close relatives is a significant predictor of resident next of kins’ probability of migration. The influence of this variable increases when there are no migratory traditions within the community. Quantitative studies conducted in the Philippines lead to a similar outcome. Transnational migration of one parent is the strongest predictor of a family’s mobility (Davis Root and De Jong 1991, 231). Conclusions based on qualitative studies are different. Parreñas (2008) shows that even less intensive successful strategies of migration do not increase migration readiness among children from transnational families. Good contact with a non-resident parent and

Chapter Ten 210

positive emotions are key factors here. Similar conclusions may be drawn from Dreby’s qualitative study in Mexico (Dreby 2010, 215).

Another culture-driven sphere that has an impact on the dynamics of mobility is gender. Quantitative studies conducted in Ecuador and Mexico show that young males’ migration readiness is generally lower that girls’; however, the mobility of adult males is, at least in these two countries, higher than that of females. As was stated by Pribilsky and other researchers (Pribilsky 2004; Cohen 2004; Kandel and Massey 2002, 984), based on former qualitative studies (for instance, Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994), for boys a migration plays the role of a rite de passage from childhood to adulthood, while for girls it is a necessity forced on them by economic circumstances. It should be noted, however, that this statement cannot be directly derived from quantitative research.

Most of the researchers are focused on mobility of parents as a determinant of children’s migration readiness; however, some authors widen the scope of analysis, including peers’ and siblings’ mobility. Kandel (2003) argues that culture of migration is reproduced not only between generations but also inside them. His research in Mexico shows that the influence of the siblings’ mobility is higher than that of the parents. In their Filipino research, Madianou and Miller (2012, 45) show the positive influence of peers’ mobility on migration readiness. We can conclude that intragenerational networking, both in kin and non-kin groups, is one of the underestimated factors.

Methods and sampling

All the data presented in the following part of this chapter were collected in May–June 2014 thanks to the support of the Ombudsman for Children’s Office. This project was a continuation of similar research conducted in 2008. The decision to use a random sample from all over Poland, instead of qualitative strategy, was motivated by the need for nationwide diagnosis and the possibility of evaluation of the factors influencing children’s experiences of migratory separation (Cohen 2004, VII–VIII). An anonymous questionnaire allows respondents to feel safer, which is particularly important when the research touches on a subject considered sensitive and stereotypically pejoratively reflected in public discourse (Przybycień and Przybycień 2011, 74).

The survey was addressed to students of primary, junior high and high schools. The sampling procedure contained two steps. For the first step, 100 schools were sampled on the basis of a nationwide sample framework, stratified by school type and localisation (voivodeship); thus, proportional


representation of particular school types on three educational levels and of each of sixteen voivodeships was secured. Of the sampled schools, 19% were located in urban areas, 42.5% in rural areas and 38.5% in mixed rural-urban communities. Both public and non-public schools were included, while schools for students with special needs, schools for adults, and schools located in hospitals and prisons were excluded. The level of parental migration in sampled locations differed from individual cases up to 40%.

For the second step in the sampling procedure, three years in each of the schools were selected: the three oldest in the primary schools (K4–K6), and all the years (K1–K3) in the junior high and high schools. The classes from which students were invited to fill out the questionnaire were simple random sampled (SRS) one per year. Only students whose parents or legal caregivers expressed their acceptance were surveyed with self-administered PAPI (Personality and Preference Inventory) questionnaires. In total, 4,168 questionnaires from 10- to 19-year-old students were collected. The maximum confidence interval for 95% level of confidence was +/- 1.5%. Sampling procedures allowed for getting a representative picture at countrywide level (control variables compared with Polish Statistical Office data did not show significant differences) and enlarging the sample size to enable analysis of relatively small fractions.

There are, however, some important limitations of the applied methodology. It does not allow for getting feedback from mobile children migrating with their parents. A simple comparison of the level of parental migration between the 2008 and 2014 surveys reveals a significant (7 percentage points) decrement in the migration scale. This may be caused by the global financial crisis that started just after the first wave of the research, but it also may reflect a growing amount of whole-family migration (see Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski 2009, 151, 179; White 2011, 1; Slany, Ślusarczyk, and Pustułka 2016). The second limitation is a lack of dropout students. The third limitation (or group of limitations) was caused by the procedure itself; during the first step of the sampling, 20% of school principals refused to participate, which forced additional sampling. Additionally, only the students with permission from their parents or caregivers could answer the questionnaire, and—obviously—they had to be present on the day when the survey was conducted in their school. These two factors caused a decrement in the response rate that was out of the researchers’ control. Moreover, cluster sampling with stable probability creates systematic bias due to the differences in cluster sizes.

Chapter Ten 212

Migration readiness: the scale and characteristics

The level of migration readiness among Polish students is high. According to Cieślińska’s (2008) survey conducted among junior high and high school students, it exceeded the level of over 46%. Later this share increased even more: in the 2014 wave of migration discussed in this article, 46.8% of students representing all the educational levels declared that they wanted to live outside Poland as adults, while among junior high and high school students this share amounted to 51.25%. It is noteworthy that the level of migration readiness is the highest among the oldest students, whose declarations are probably more mature than those of their younger colleagues.

Table 10-1 Migration readiness

Migration readiness Migration readiness No yes

Educational level

Primary Count 1033 734 1767 % 58.5% 41.5% 100.0%

Junior High Count 479 475 954 % 50.2% 49.8% 100.0%

High Count 505 562 1067 % 47.3% 52.7% 100.0%

Total Count 2017 1771 3788* % 53.2% 46.8% 100.0%

*Number of valid answers. Source: own research

The choice of destination partially reflects the real structure of countries receiving migrants from Poland (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski 2008; Wołkonowski 2015). The first choice—United Kingdom—has become a symbol of post-accession emigration in Poland. It is worth adding that 3.5% of students specifically declared in an open-ended question that they plan to live in London, which shows the strength of culture of migration. Germany, the third choice of the respondents and the second biggest receiver of Polish migrants, was chosen by almost 8 % of the oldest students. More than one in ten wants to live in the USA among this group. The role of this destination has diminished since Poland joined the EU, but on a symbolic level it apparently still represents a receiving


country, due to its long migratory tradition, social networks and influence of popular culture. About 8% of the youngest students indicated Spain, which also seems to be more understandable from a symbolic than an economic point of view. Among their oldest colleagues this share is less than 4%, which reflects the maturity of these students’ declarations.

Figure 10-1 Destination countries

Source: own research

What influences migration readiness?

I would like to start this section with an analysis of individual characteristics, then move to the household and social network level. As was mentioned above, research conducted in Mexico and Ecuador shows a higher level of migration readiness among girls than boys. The responses of Polish students reflect a similar pattern; 50.2% of females and 42.9% of males declared migration readiness. This difference is statistically significant (χ2

(1)=19.93, p<0.001). The significance is valid (p<0.05) also when the genders are compared

on three educational levels separately. It may be noted, however, that while the general level of migration readiness is growing when students become older and women still declare higher levels of readiness than men, the gap between males and females is changing nonlinearly. It is similar

12.7010.40%

7.70%4.90%

3.90%3.80%

3.40%2.30%

1.70%1.60%

1.20%0.60%

0.20%

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14%

UKUSA

Germanyother non-European countries

SpainNorwayHolland

ItalyOther EU countries

FranceSwedenIreland

Belgium

Chapter Ten 214

(up to 6%) in primary and high schools, while in the secondary schools it exceeds 10%. Table 10-2 Migratory readiness and gender

Educational level

Migration readiness

Total No Yes Primary gender Female Count 514 410 924

% 55.6% 44.4% 100.0%

Male Count 506 315 821

% 61.6% 38.4% 100.0%

Total Count 1020 725 1745

% 58.5% 41.5% 100.0%

Junior High gender Female Count 213 265 478 % 44.6% 55.4% 100.0%


% 55.5% 44.5% 100.0%


% 49.9% 50.1% 100.0% High gender Female Count 267 326 593

% 45.0% 55.0% 100.0%


% 50.7% 49.3% 100.0%


% 47.5% 52.5% 100.0% Total gender Female Count 994 1001 1995

% 49.8% 50.2% 100.0%

Male Count 988 741 1729

% 57.1% 42.9% 100.0%

Total Count 1982 1742 3724*

% 53.2% 46.8% 100.0%

*Number of valid answers. Source: own research

As was mentioned above, quantitative studies show an increment of

migration readiness in transnational families. The same can be also said with reference to Poland. Among students from transnational families, 10.3 percentage points more of those students declared their willingness to live outside Poland, compared to their peers from local families. The


difference is statistically significant (χ2(2)=33.9, p<0,001) and valid

independently from migratory strategy and migration length. This seems particularly important, as the number of transnational families in Poland is relatively high. Studies on local samples, usually at the level of voivodeship, show ratios from 15% in the Świętokrzyskie voivodeship (Dąbrowska 2011, 128) up to 66% among autochthonic inhabitants of the Silesia region (Rauziński 1999, 23). My own research on random samples from all over Poland shows 27.6 % (+/-1.7% of confidence interval) in 2008 and 20.4% (+/-1.2%) of students who had experienced migration of at least one parent within the three years before the research (Walczak 2016, 60).

Children from families with two non-resident parents declare higher migration readiness than their peers from local and other types of transnational families. The share of these students who want to leave Poland exceeds 50%. It may be assumed that the level of reproduction of migratory culture in families with two mobile parents is higher because this particular kind of mobility makes contact with transnationality an everyday experience. This hypothesis is not valid, however, as there is one exception: when parents migrate simultaneously, their children’s migration readiness becomes similar (statistically undifferentiated, χ2

(2)=3.4, p=0.18) to that of the students from local families. The most intensive parental migratory strategy changes the attitudes of their children toward mobility and decreases students’ migration readiness.

Figure 10-2 Migration readiness and parents’ migration strategies

Source: own research

51.2%

58.1%

59.1%

60.5%

63.4%

53.3%

0.0%10.0%20.0%30.0%40.0%50.0%60.0%70.0%

local family

single migration up to 2 months

single migration over 2 months

single migration over 12 months

alternating migration

simultaneous migration

level of migration readiness

Chapter Ten 216

So far, we have seen that migration readiness is influenced by gender and by social networks, and in particular by experiences of mobility among the closest relatives. Abrego’s (2006) qualitative study of eighty-three young Salvadorians from transnational families shows that migration readiness is lower when a household’s economic status and children’s educational achievements are higher. Abrego argues that migration is recognised as a threat to social and employment status, and therefore individuals reduce migration readiness (2006, 7–8, 10). Data obtained in Poland do not support these conclusions. Neither subjective and objective indicators of the household economic situation nor school achievements are significant predictors (p>0.05) of migration readiness. Children of transnational parents perceive their families’ economic situations as more favourable than those of their peers from local families (p<0.05). It seems that significantly more migrants from Poland than from El Salvador achieve economic success. The relationship between parental mobility and educational achievements is more complicated. Generally speaking, students from transnational families get worse grades than their peers from resident ones; however, this influence is mediated by age, gender and class allocation (Walczak 2016). There is no evidence, however, that better achievements reduce migration readiness. I will try to sum up all the factors described above in one analysis.

The model of logistic regression contains the following predictors: student’s gender, average grades (mean calculated on the basis of midterm and final term grades in maths, Polish language, history and science), number of minor children in the household, class allocation (father’s education level),1 self-estimation of the household well-being, experience of mother’s or father’s transnational mobility, and peers’ migration readiness. The latter variable was calculated on the basis of the share of migration readiness among other students in the class. The dependent variable is the student’s migration readiness. The model fits well: the significance of the omnibus test of model coefficients is below 0.001, while the Hosmer-Lemeshow test has an insignificant result. The percentage of correct classification is 64.4%, which is 14.3 percentage points more than the zero model. The quality of the model is mediocre (R2

N=0.143), which means that the model explains only 14% of the differentiation of the dependent variable.

The values of b-coefficient indicate that migration readiness among the peers is the most significant predictor. It increases the probability of a student’s migration readiness over sixty-seven times. Being a child from a

1 Which turned out to be the strongest of the listed indicators.


transnational family increases migration readiness by 54%. Gender is a weaker predictor. The probability of declaration of migration readiness was lower by 32% among male students compared to females. The values of Wald’s statistic for the other predictors reveal insignificant influence (p>0.05); however, all of them—with the exception of average grades—rank only slightly higher than 0.05. The number of parent-dependent children pass significance level only 1.3% above the 95% level. This factor reduces the probability of migration by 9.8%—bigger families have lower tendencies toward mobility (see Szczygielska 2013, 67). A student’s individual perception of their household well-being yields Wald’s value 1.4% above 95% confidence level. A positive opinion on the family’s financial situation decreases the probability of future migration by 43%. The last factor, the highest level of education reached by respondents’ fathers, skips confidence level by 2.5%. Children of men with university degrees declare higher levels of mobility than their peers. The lack of influence of educational achievements should be noted.

Table 10-2 Determinants of migration readiness: Logistic regression

Sig. Exp(B)

Gender (0 – F, 1 – M) 0.001 0.679

Average grades 0.388 0.942

Number of minor children in household 0.063 0.902

Father’s education level (1 – university level, 0 – lower)

0.075 1.250

Evaluation of household’s financial situation (1 – positive, 0 – negative)

0.064 0.579

Child from transnational family (1 – yes, 0 – no) 0.002 1.536

Peers’ migration readiness 0.000 67.311

Constant 0.027 0.351 Dependent variable: student’s migration readiness (0 – no, 1 – yes) Source: own research

Chapter Ten 218

As was noted in the analysis of destination countries, the maturity of the declaration changes when students become older. I would therefore like to propose a deeper elaboration of the model introduced above by splitting it into three models for each of the educational levels.

All the models are well fitted. Their quality is mediocre and diminishes from primary school level (R2

N=0.17) to high school level (R2N=0.1). As

we can see, the importance of peers’ migratory readiness is more than two times higher among the youngest respondents. Growing up in a transnational family yields significant values of Wald’s statistic only among students of primary schools, where it doubles the probability of declaration of migration readiness. Its significance for older students is significantly higher than 0.05. Gender starts to play a role at the junior high school level. The impact (circa 38%) is stable among junior high and high school students. We can see that Wald’s statistics for other predictors significantly exceed the 5% level; this means that situation of the household—its class allocation and economic well-being—do not mean a thing when we analyse homogenous age cohorts.

Tran

smiss

ion

of th

e Cu

lture

of M

igra

tion

219

Tab

le 1

0-3

Det

erm

inan

ts o

f mig

ratio

n re

adin

ess:

Log

istic

reg

ress

ion

mod

el fo

r th

ree

educ

atio

nal l

evel

s

Prim

ary

Juni

or h

igh

Hig

h

Si

g.

Exp(

B)

Sig.

Ex

p(B

) Si

g.

Exp(

B)

Gen

der (

0 –

F, 1

– M

) 0.

160

0.76

7 0.

015

0.61

6 0.

020

0.62

3

Ave

rage

gra

des

0.37

9 0.

897

0.67

5 0.

952

0.47

9 0.

906

Num

ber o

f min

or c

hild

ren

in h

ouse

hold

0.

240

0.90

5 0.

156

0.87

2 0.

428

0.90

8

Fath

er’s

edu

catio

n le

vel (

1 –

univ

ersi

ty le

vel,

0 –

low

er)

0.70

2 1.

081

0.09

2 1.

491

0.34

2 1.

236

Eval

uatio

n of

hou

seho

ld’s

fina

ncia

l situ

atio

n (1

– p

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ve, 0

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egat

ive)

0.

897

0.90

3 0.

113

0.49

9 0.

187

0.53

4 C

hild

from

tran

snat

iona

l fam

ily (1

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es, 0

– n

o)

0.00

1 2.

117

0.28

8 1.

288

0.40

4 1.

228

Peer

s’ m

igra

tion

read

ines

s 0.

000

135.

513

0.00

0 51

.669

0.

000

59.7

37

Con

stan

t 0.

130

0.20

5 0.

337

0.47

5 0.

365

0.48

3

R2 N

0.

170

0.13

8 0.

103

Dep

ende

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aria

ble:

stud

ent’s

mig

ratio

n re

adin

ess (

0 –

no, 1

– y

es)

Sour

ce: o

wn

rese

arch

Chapter Ten

220

Summary

The culture of migration is influenced by many factors: gender ideologies, family and parenting patterns, migratory traditions and networks, politics and economy. In this paper I tried to use migration readiness as an indicator of the strength of migratory culture and to analyse its determinants.

Available data show a high level of migratory readiness among young people. It exceeds 50% among the oldest groups. Moreover, an analysis of destinations indicated by the students reveals maturity and consciousness in their choices. Although two out of the three top destinations—UK and Germany—reflect the real structure of the migratory stream, the third one—USA—can be interpreted as a mixture of the real outflow and culturally created myth of a receiving country.

The main research question referred to the role of socialisation in transnational families in reproduction of the culture of migration. Several researchers argued that this is one of key transmission channels for the reproduction of migration readiness; however, research on the influence of sibling and peer mobility revealed another important factor. In the analysis presented above, I argued that both intergenerational and intragenerational transmission channels play a significant role, but the influence of peers’ attitudes toward the mobility is stronger than that of experiences of mobility in the student’s own family. The role of peers is still significant in all the age cohorts, but it decreases when students become older. It is possible that other social networks start to play a role here. Moreover, being raised in a transnational family influences migratory readiness in the lowest age cohort only.

Migratory readiness is also affected by other factors. Researchers from South American countries argue that there are cultural patterns stimulating higher levels of declarative mobility among girls. This is also true in reference to Poland; however, its determinants require further investigation. It is likely that discrimination of women in the labour market plays a key role here. Interestingly, gender differentiates migratory readiness at junior high and high school levels only. Other factors—educational achievements, number of minors in a household, perception of family well-being and parents’ education level—likely act as suppressors.

What is the role of growing up in a transnational family? Being a child of non-resident parent(s) increases migration readiness, but influence of peers’ attitudes toward the mobility is more important. Readiness is also mediated by other factors, in particular gender. The overall high level of migration readiness shows that mobility is not an exceptional, deviant


strategy. On the contrary, we can talk about a well-established culture of migration even in the most radical, Massey-and-Kandel sense of the notion. This raises a question about the consequences of such a strong, pro-mobile attitude among the young generation of Poles, whether declared mobility will lead to real mobility in the future or not.

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