Alfie Dennen/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc)
Cross-national movements – as we are all too aware these days – come in different forms and categories, reflected in the various designations we use for those who leave one country for another. There are immigrants and guest workers, refugees and exiles, émigrés and expatriates – terms that point to distinct kinds of social, but also perhaps socio-psychological experience. The different circumstances surrounding individual migration and the wider political or cultural contexts within which it takes place can have enormous practical and psychic repercussions. It matters greatly, for starters, whether you choose to leave or were forced to; it matters whether you're coming to a new land unprotected and unprovided for, or whether you can expect, or transport, some kind of safety net. For the countries of intake, it matters how many come and what they are able to bring with them, what they need and what they can potentially contribute.
Among all these genres of movement, the European migrations which have been gaining momentum since the EU enlargement in 2004 are a new and hard to define phenomenon. As someone who emigrated from Poland in a very different era, I have watched the new kinds of journeys undertaken by eastern Europeans across the new Europe with close interest, and sometimes – it must be confessed – some bafflement.
