LONDON�S POLISH BORDERS Class and Ethnicity of Global City

							LONDON’S POLISH BORDERS
Class and Ethnicity of Global City Migrants


                   ****

    Embassy of the Republic of Poland
         London, 17 May 2006



                                              Michał P. Garapich
            CRONEM University of Surrey/Roehampton University
                                 Jagiellonian University, Kraków
          The arguments

 Accelerating non-linear migration
  chain – more to come
 Breaking through class
 Fragmentation of the community
 Whiteness as resource
      Word on methodology
 Qualitative research – complementary to
  quantitative
 Participant observation
 Multi-local ethnography
 50 in-depth interviews with Polish
  migrants in London
 14 interviews with family and friends of
  migrants in 5 locations in Poland
  (urban/rural areas)
               Sample
 23 F, 27 M
 28% below 25
 58% 25-40
 10% 40 up
 22% high edu, 68% sec’y edu, 10%
  students
 28% rural, 40% below 50k town, 32%
  50k up
           Transnational Europeans –
               looking both ways
   Circular, temporal, open-ended migrations

   80% make frequent (sometimes up to 10 times a year)
    visits to Poland checking out the situation

   70% of respondents maintain strong economic and life
    interest in their home community

   24% have bought or are just about to buy a flat or
    house in Poland from money earned in London
          Chain migration
 60% have arranged
  employment/accommodation or useful tips
  for newcomers (migration chain brokers)
 40% have received such help at the
  beginning
 Polish end of the research – growing
  readiness to migrate
  Should I stay or should I go….?

 20% say that they are definitely
 going to come back soon to live in
 Poland

 14%say that they will definitely not
 come back to Poland

           And the rest?
Intentional unpredictability
               most common statements:

   “Hard to answer that question. Being there [in
    Poland] last time for the first time I felt that I
    would like to stay there… so I don’t know…”
    (INT9Lon.Laura)
   “I don’t know. No clue. Maybe yes, maybe not;
    maybe in three months maybe in ten years. I
    don’t know…” (INT30Lon.Kordian)
   “I don’t know…I’m not able to say now…”
    (INT4Lon.Pawel)
   “I want to come back… but don’t know when”
    (INT20Lon.Wojciech)
How long do you think you will stay in the
 UK? (WRS question)

   50% – NOT STATED!

(total answers: 175,507 between May 2004 and
  Dec 2005)
   Intentional unpredictability

                adapted to:

 Deregulated, flexible, contractual London
  service economy and UK labour market in
  general
 Socio-economic situation in Poland
 Allows to shift their plans accordingly
 Helps to keep the best of both worlds
        Breaking through class

   Class? What class?

   Individualism and the myth of meritocracy

   Moving out = moving up

   Two reference points in constructing a
    class position
Ethnicity – double edged sword


   Competition on the same market

   Risk of being exploited by co-ethnics –
    national sentiment trap

   Fear of association with the wrong
    crowd, shame, fear of loss of reputation
   Q: “You travel on the LU and there are
    some drunken Poles loudly swearing.
    What do you feel?”

   A: “What I feel? Disgust. Disgust because I’m
    also a Pole and simply I… automatically think
    that people who were looking kindly at me
    before may change their mind because they will
    associate them with me… and that once I get a
    drink I would behave like them… “
                                (INT21Lon.Waldemar)
             End of community
     K. Sword – “community is in decline” (1994)

   Fragmentation of the community; rise of
    complex set of sub-groups, formal and informal
    transnational networks

   London’s Superdiversity (Stephen Vertovec
    2005) – not only ethnic, cultural but also shaped
    by migration patterns, diversity of transnational
    migrants’ strategies
Multiculturalism through Polish eyes


 Enthusiastic approach – educational value
 Pragmatic approach – “everyone can make
  it here”, “I got used to it”
 Racist approach – colour coded
 Self-criticism - 80% say that Poles are
  intolerant and that they could not imagine
  London’s multiculturalism in Poland
     Whiteness as resource:


 Construction   of European identity

 Attitudesof British society towards
 Polish migrants
   “ The New Europeans are hard-working,
  presentable, well educated, and integrate so
  perfectly that they will disappear within a
  generation”
(Anthony Browne, The Spectator, Jan 26 2006)


   “ We have no problem with immigration from
  Poland, which is valuable to all sides… The
  government must make a reduction in numbers
  from elsewhere. What they could do is reduce the
  number of work permits for the rest of the
  world.”
(Sir Andrew Green, BBC Today, Nov 20 2005)
                 Conclusions
   More to come – sustainable migration
    system

   Social advancement – intentional
    unpredictability, double reference

   Fragmentation of community

   Pragmatic approach to ethnicity –
    whiteness as resource
 Preliminary report will be available on:
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Arts/CRONEM/

  Funding from the ESRC is gratefully
            acknowledged