Being a migrant the Polish way

After an extensive national debate the people of Poland have voted in a referendum to join the European Union (EU). The decision carries great implications both for this large country in central Europe (at almost 40 million, by far the most populous of the accession countries) and for the future of the EU itself.

Joining the EU is commonly understood to mean freedom of travel across the member states, but for the Poles there is a caveat: part of the complex accession agreement negotiated with the EU stipulated that Poles would only be able freely to visit, work and settle in the rest of the EU a few years after their country joins.

In this interim period, many questions will arise about the implications of this agreement for ‘people flow’ as it impacts on individual Poles. In Britain, one of the favoured destinations for young Polish people especially, the question arises as to whether EU membership will increase the number of Polish immigrants living here.

Yet an assumption underlying this question is that when people travel from one country to another they tend to settle in some kind of long-term way. This may be the model on which much past immigration to this country took place and it is helpful for those in the business of designing policies and collating statistics. But (as Nigel Harris has indicated in his detailed analysis of the evolution of a global labour market) it may not be helpful in understanding the main types of movement which are now taking place from Poland, which seem to involve flexibility and continuing mobility.

Between worlds

In a research project in 2002-03 I interviewed several dozen Poles working in and around London. What emerges clearly is that few arrive in Britain with plans to stay in their new country of residence. Rather, they come here tentatively – for example as students taking a year off from university, or perhaps only for summer holidays – with plans of earning a little money to support themselves.

Some have the intention of learning English to improve their employment possibilities once they return to Poland; others have debts to pay off or houses to finish building, and see working in London as a temporary sojourn which can help this particular goal. While they stay in Britain, their circumstances may alter, and there are a range of personal and work factors which determine whether they return or stay.

Thus ‘migration’ happens only gradually, without a clear beginning or end, and often entails repeated movement to and from Poland. It is not about hard decisions; rather it is about exploring opportunities and increasing personal choice.

The Poles I interviewed have a number of features in common. The majority come from small towns in eastern Poland (mainly the north-east), where greater poverty and lack of industry may give them an impetus to leave.

Most of the women have degrees or further qualifications, which they are not able to use in the jobs they find here – usually as cleaners. They do this kind of work either while here as tourists or after they have obtained student visas (which allow them to work legally for twenty hours a week).

Most of the men have only technical school training, but are then able to use this by working in the building industry – for which many have obtained business visas. Just about everybody found their first work and accommodation through the help of friends. But while most of the women missed Poland, and were aware of themselves as part of a dense network of Poles living over here, the men did not articulate this sort of attachment.

Behind these similarities, though, there is great variation in the way that plans to stay here evolve. I will look briefly at some of the processes governing how original intentions change, and then illustrate them by looking at a few case studies.

One important set of factors affecting decisions to stay revolve around the evolution here of social networks and relationships. Language barriers, very long working hours and concentration of work in the low status sectors of the economy tend to mean that Poles integrate little with British people – though this can change as English-language skills improve.

By contrast, a Pole is often part of a chain of migration in which many former classmates or people from the same home town live around London. This compensates for being away from Poland, and encourages them to stay. As more of their friends are located ‘over here’, people also find that they have fewer friends when they go back to Poland, and come to have less in common with them.

The location of a person’s spouse or partner is also important. Men whose wives were in Poland found that their centre of gravity remained ‘over there’ – and some admitted that if they had not been married, and found girlfriends over here, they would be more likely to settle in Britain. Polish women are more likely to arrive single. If they stay unattached their relationship with Britain remains tenuous, and they may have conflicting feelings about their future. However once they have a partner they appear more ready to make a commitment to this country and see it as their home.

Moreover, economic factors are crucial. In Poland, the unemployment rate among young people is 40%. Work that provides sufficient income to live independently is not often available there; so if people can establish themselves in a job here, and acquire legal status allowing long-term residence, they may soon become used to a lifestyle that would be inaccessible to them at home. This often seems to be a factor leading to the decision to stay.

These key themes, and the diversity of situations they lead to, are illustrated in the life-experiences of five Poles I interviewed: Anya, Dorota, Jurek, Kasia and Grzegorz.

Anya: drifting

Anya came over for three months to learn English and visit London after she had finished her degree. Staying here was something she drifted into almost as a way of escaping responsibilities and the decisions she would have to make if she remained at home:

“I came here also because I really didn’t know what to do with myself. I finished studying and maybe if I had tried harder I could have worked in a museum or for the council but it didn’t suit me – I think it would have been too stable. I also did a tourist guide course because I thought that would suit me but I started to not like that and I really don’t know what to do with myself.”

“The time I spend here really doesn’t help me because I thought I would hatch some idea, I would know what to do with myself. But I really don’t have any idea. And there is a fear of beginning adult life because if I return to Poland I have to find a proper job but I still don’t feel ready for it. And my mother is expecting me to have a family…I don’t know what the future holds. Maybe some time it will change but at the moment I don’t want it to and that is scary because I just have no idea….”

Initially she found London very hard. She had grown up as an only child always having her own room. Even as a student she had lived independently. However in London she and three other Poles shared two bedrooms in a council flat where a Bangladeshi family also lived. She found her cleaning work very monotonous and physically tiring. However the advantages of living in London outweighed these disadvantages:

“I expect that, because I am still quite young, I am drawn to big towns and because there is so much going on in London it appealed to me straight away. At the beginning I couldn’t get enough of it; I would finish work and straight away go and see something….I had a tourist approach towards things.”

What seems to happen is that the difficulties and stresses which a Pole encounters when first here act as an initiation after which it is difficult to go back as quite the same person you were before. When people return to Poland, not only Anya but many others find that they start to see things in a different way:

“When I lived in Poland I didn’t notice it, it never entered my head it could be any other way, but when friends came back to visit they asked ‘what has happened to these people? Why don’t they smile?” Then, I started to look myself and it was true because they had so many problems – they were lacking so many things. That is really depressing. Here in Britain people really live more easily.”

Although she enjoys London, Anya does not want to try to put down roots by looking for better employment or getting a business visa because she feels absolutely sure that this is temporary. Eventually she will go back home:

“I don’t want to stay in England. I absolutely don’t want to stay here. This is my London time, a time to find myself, nothing comes of it because the longer I am here the more confused I become…But I decidedly don’t want to stay here which is why I never look for any other work. This is why I carry on cleaning because after some time I will go back to Poland. But I really don’t know. It’s like a vicious circle for me.”

In some senses Anya appears to be living in a kind of limbo suspended between the two countries.

Dorota: focusing

Dorota’s situation contrasts strikingly with that of Anya. For Dorota, the decision to come to England was a very difficult one to make. She was 21, and her family felt she was still too young. Where Anya came to this country following university, Dorota gave up a degree course; the prospect of not being able to work was the deciding factor here:

“What really bothered me was that it was part-time study so for five years I would sit at home and only study, and I wanted to work; I knew that here I could work.”

With considerable energy and focus this is precisely what she did. She spent the first weeks in Britain delivering leaflets to houses and from this obtained forty hours worth of cleaning work a week. When her permitted tourist period expired she applied for a business visa which required significant financial investment and signaled a greater permanence to her stay. One of her clients then asked if she would be interested in helping to run her translation service one day a week; this then increased to two and Dorota has now been offered a full-time job.

All this has made Dorota fairly sure that for the next few years she will stay. But this is only one side of the story. Dorota also mentioned her intention of saving up to buy a flat in Poland and has toyed with the idea of one day going into the tourist business there. She also finds that relations between Polish people in this country are not very good, and this has given a bitter taste to her stay.

Perhaps it will be meeting her future mate which will finally determine where she settles:

“For the moment I don’t have a partner. I could be here, I could go to Germany or the United States; it’s all the same to me. It depends on work….If I meet someone nice here and I can set life up here, then I would like to stay.”

Kasia: bonding

Personal relationships are of course a vital and unpredictable element in helping to determining people’s life-choices. It is often not until people are married and have children that staying somewhere long-term becomes important to them. So a person’s intimate other becomes a crucial part of the equation in their life.

The ways in which personal relationships influence movement are different with Kasia and (see below) Jurek. Kasia came to England before finishing her studies after losing her job. Like Anya, she had no clear plan but thought she would spend a year here to earn money to support herself back home. However, earning money without legal status proved to be more difficult than expected. Since the financial returns of living and working in London were not in themselves worthwhile, she applied herself to learning English. This would enable her to get a student visa – thus legitimising her status, and also be useful when she returned home.

While this was perhaps the first step towards something more long-term for Kasia, meeting her boyfriend may be of more consequence. In the early days this could have foundered because of the problems involved:

“It is difficult from the point of view of language – the language barrier is incredibly hard to break through. Also when I started to meet Christopher’s friends it was extremely tough for me. Even when I started to understand what they were saying I couldn’t understand their mentality and their customs and behaviour. I misunderstood things and it was really hard for me. It was like drowning in their atmosphere. They laughed at different jokes. I found it really difficult and I even said to Christopher I don’t know if I can go along with this.”

However, when Kasia went back to Poland she realised how attached to England she had become:

“After a week I found myself looking for my place and it just doesn’t suit me so well any more. Even my mother noticed. Perhaps it is because I have got to know Christopher. Maybe if I was still alone it would seem different. But now it is as if I have my own home here and we are together and we look after things together and when I go there I don’t feel it is my place anymore. Here everything is in its place. I know where everything is; I know it is mine and not my parents. My mother was a little bit sad last time. She said: ‘you know what, Kasia, I notice that you miss over there more than here.”

Although Kasia had been excited about her return to Poland she was disappointed by her friends:

“What really made an impression was that people didn’t have time for me. When I phone friends, everyone is really very busy and they are all sort of depressed and down and they don’t have time for anything. And people complain terribly. I can’t listen to it anymore. I was no longer used to that eternal complaining.”

Kasia attributes this to the difficulties of life in Poland:

“The environment has a big influence on the way one thinks. In Poland people think mainly about how to survive through the month on that money. Here even people who earn less live better. They don’t have to worry about the simplest things – how to pay for gas or water. In Poland what you have to pay for those things compared to what you earn is tragic.”

Despite this it is probably in the final analysis her boyfriend which keeps her here:

“Really I am not totally sure if I will stay or go, but I think I will stay because of Christopher. We are even planning to get married. I wonder if I hadn’t met him if after some time I would go back to Poland because it would be easier for me to be on my own there.”

Jurek: earning

For Jurek, having a wife and child has differently (and in a contradictory way) influenced his choices. He comes from an area of little employment and has to work elsewhere in order to be able to support his family, yet came over to Britain in what he saw as a half-hearted move. His first impressions of London shocked him:

“It was a tragedy. I thought London would be a beautiful town. Then I came in through Peckham and Camberwell. I thought it would be clean and well kept but I saw dirt on the streets and houses falling apart with wooden planks compared to which the poorest huts in Poland were more attractive than the houses in those neighbourhoods.”

Although he has since found aspects of this country he likes he wouldn’t want to stay here on a permanent basis:

“I don’t want to live permanently in London because of sentiment towards my country. Here I would never feel as relaxed, as comfortable and as sure of myself as I am in my own country. There I have the comfort of knowing that I am Polish and whatever happens I am in my own place and I have more rights than I do here. Maybe after a while I would have my citizenship and I would also have a lot of rights but I am not convinced about that.”

Jurek does not want to try for a business visa; as with Anya, this would signal something more permanent:

“Later I would like to find some work so I could be closer to the family, and be with my wife and child for longer. Like most of us Poles here I want to earn and go back there. I don’t plan to be here permanently. From time to time they suggest that I arrange a business visa but I don’t want that. I just want to earn and go home.”

It is home and family which give meaning to Jurek’s life. He returns twice a year for a few weeks. However there are few indications that he will return permanently. He has in fact been working outside Poland for over ten years and prefers a peripatetic existence. He explained that returning to his small home town on a permanent basis would be like having a prison sentence imposed. Other informants talked about the stresses on a relationship when couples are in two different countries. The extent to which his marriage can withstand those tensions may have an influence or where he will eventually live.

Grzegorz: saving

Grzegorz shows how the possibility of being able to move between countries creates opportunities which neither country could provide on its own. He started off washing dishes and as a result of his diligence and ability became a head chef within a few years. Yet he is aware that, as a Pole, he is taken advantage of and that in relation to the English he occupies second place:

“Poles work here on building sites for twelve years and I have the impression that English people could work there as well but they don’t want to. English people don’t do the work which Polish people (and others) do because it demands too much physical effort. The politics is that when they are in their own place they want to occupy the higher positions and the other types of work – building work, restaurant work – should be done by the foreign people who come here.”

For Grzegorz this situation is tolerable because in exchange for accepting a secondary position he has the possibility of exercising choice:

“It is a person’s choice to come and work here or to stay where they are. They have made a choice about things. It was my choice to work here till midnight and do washing up. Nobody forced me…sometimes people upset me but as I say if I don’t like something then I have the choice to leave the work and return to Poland.”

When his situation became unacceptable, Jurek did return. Risking hard-earned savings he set up a business in Poland, but this did not work out and he came back to London, working his way up to head chef. Having once again saved up to £20,000, Grzegorz now has to decide whether to consolidate his career through catering training in this country or perhaps giving Poland another try.

The European heart of Poland

Poland’s membership of the European Union will inaugurate a new stage in the country’s history, yet in migration terms it may also only intensify trends that are already occurring. It will certainly solve questions of legal status which have been a source of consternation to many Poles. Jurek explains that he didn’t anticipate how difficult it was to come here:

“That chat on the border…you have to have an invitation, someone available on the other end of the telephone and decide who is going to talk…you know how it is. You have to think up various stories.” Thus, when he comes to Britain – as opposed to Germany or Austria – he feels he must stay a long time.

Kasia makes a similar point: “For us it is uncomfortable to be illegal because I can’t see my family when I want, I can’t come and go as I like because maybe they might not let me re-enter Britain.” The fact that there do not appear to be obvious rules about who is and isn’t allowed through the border leaves many Poles feeling powerless and second-rate. The fabrication will now be eliminated and this will be a source of great relief.

Many of my interviewees spoke of the fear and discomfort they experienced when working without the correct visa. Dorota says:

“For me to be here legally is very much more important because I have heard of many unfortunate cases of people being stopped on the street and simply it is worth paying the money and having that psychological comfort that I am here legally. I prefer that than some funny business.”

However Grzegorz works for a restaurant which is unwilling to take the trouble to legalise his status and this causes him considerable stress:

“The hardest thing for me is the lack of freedom because I don’t have the papers. That shuts me in a kind of fortress…Here I have very responsible work but I don’t have papers for that work and for me that is some kind of pressure. Apart from that there isn’t really anything hard but that is a personal drama for me.”

It also means he has little bargaining power in terms of pay or hours worked. For him and others, Poland joining the EU will bring an end to those difficulties and only then will they feel at the same level as everyone else.

Poles have been travelling between Poland and Britain and other European countries in increasing numbers since a democratic system was introduced in 1989. Throughout this process they have unintentionally been strengthening the relationship between the rest of Europe and themselves. Poles have a deep-rooted and resilient national identity developed over centuries of resistance, but their identity includes other layers including the European.

As Poland officially enters the European Union in 2004, this European dimension may become more important. As this historic date approaches, the experience of Poles in movement between their own and other countries suggests that migration needs to be understood in more fluid and dynamic terms. Migration is not a definitive, linear journey but rather part of a general phenomenon of increasing human interaction within a complex, greater whole.