Rethinking settlement and integration: Migrants' anchoring in an age of insecurity 9781526136848

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Rethinking settlement and integration

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Rethinking settlement and integration Migrants’ anchoring in an age of insecurity ALEKSANDRA GRZYMALA-KAZLOWSKA

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Aleksandra Grzymala-Kazlowska 2020 The right of Aleksandra Grzymala-Kazlowska to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 3683 1 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd

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For Hanna and Andrzej connecting me to the past, and for Antoni and Stefan linking me to the future.

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Contents

List of figures

page viii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

1 Rethinking settlement and integration: a critical and integrative literature review

10

a metaphor through a sensitising concept to an empirically grounded concept

24

in Poland

44

2 Developing the concept of anchoring: from

3 Researching migrants’ anchoring 4 From mobility to anchoring: Ukrainian migrants 5 Anchored not rooted: Polish migrants in the UK 6 Towards a general model of migrants’ anchoring 7 Insecurities, constraints and inequalities in anchoring Conclusions: from theory to practical applications? Appendix: characteristics of interviewees

34

73

101 134 149 153

References 163

Index 185

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Figures

1 Different types of anchors of Ukrainians in Poland (author’s elaboration)

2 Different types of anchors of Poles in the United Kingdom (author’s elaboration)

page 70 100

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Acknowledgements

The data used in this book was gathered within the project ‘Social Anchoring in Superdiverse Transnational Social Spaces’ (SAST), funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement No 331421. I am extremely grateful to all my interviewees and those who facilitated my research, such as the Polish Expats Association, the Midlands Polish Business Club, the Polish School in Sutton Coldfield, Polish Millennium House, St Michael’s Church, SIFA Fireside as well as Anna Cielecka-Gibson and Maureen Smojkis. I want to thank the Institute for Research into Superdiversity for hosting the project and all the support of its director at that time, Professor Jenny Phillimore, as well as other friends and colleagues from the University of Birmingham and University of Warsaw, including my collaborators Anita Brzozowska, Natalia Tymoszuk and Iryna Kolodiychyk, who helped me to gather the data in Poland and conduct the analysis of migrants’ blogs and forums. Many thanks to all those who provided me with their comments – the reviewers of this monograph and previous articles, co-participants of the conferences and seminars where my research was presented, particularly: Dr Kamila Fijalkowska, Dr Michal Garapich, Dr Lisa Goodson, Professor Agata Gorny, Dr Marta Kindler, Professor Slawomir Lodzinski, Dr Aleksandra Lompart, Professor Marek Okolski, Dr Konrad Pedziwiatr, Dr Agnieszka Radziwinowiczowna, Professor Louise Ryan, Professor Nando Sigona, Dr Alison Strang,

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x AC KN OW LED G EM EN T S Monika Szulecka and Professor Renata Wloch. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to those involved in the preparation and production of this monograph such as Renata Stefanska, Margaret Okole, Manchester University Press, especially Tom Dark and Jessica Cuthbert-Smith. Some early findings and analysis developed in this book can be found in my published articles, including ‘Social anchoring: immigrant identity, adaptation and integration reconnected?’, Sociology 2016:50(6); ‘From drifting to anchoring: capturing the experience of Ukrainian migrants in Poland’ (co-author A. Brzozowska), Central and Eastern European Migration 2017:6(2); ‘From connecting to social anchoring: adaptation and “settlement” of the UK’s Polish community’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 2018:44(2); and ‘Capturing the flexibility of adaptation and settlement: anchoring in a mobile society’, Mobilities 2018:13(5).

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Introduction

Migrant adaptation and settlement constitute a key research topic today, when spatial mobility is a global feature and migrants and their descendants represent a substantial share of European and other industrialised societies (Castles and Miller 2009; Massey et al. 1998). The United Nations (UN) figures – even if treated with the particular caution required in the case of migration data – estimate that in 2017 the global stock of international migrants officially residing outside their countries of birth was over 257.7 million, with 77.9 million living in Western Europe, mainly in Germany (12.2), the United Kingdom (UK) (8.8) and France (7.9) (UN 2017). Although since 2015 public opinion across Europe has mainly focused on the influx of migrants and refugees into Europe, problematised as a ‘refugee crisis’, migration processes within Europe have also attracted attention, giving rise to animated debates and being used to influence voters. An example is the 2016 referendum in the UK on membership of the European Union (also referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum) and its aftermath, where the topic of migration into the UK from the European Union (EU) was a major feature of the debate in the run-up to the referendum. In the twenty-first century, migration has become one of the most salient issues on the political agenda of the EU (Castles et al. 2002). The growing diversity of Europe, the issue of migrant inclusion and concerns over the social cohesion of receiving societies, as well as threats of terrorist attacks from extremists associated with populations

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with a migrant background, have come to be seen as challenges. In response, the EU’s Europe 2020 Strategy aimed to address these questions through such objectives as creating sustainable growth, enhancing the rights and security of EU residents, and promoting social cohesion (European Commission 2010) and through commitments outlined in the Global Compact for Migration (UN 2018: 6) including, among others, the goal to ‘empower migrants and societies to realise full inclusion and social cohesion’. Central in debates over the presence of migrants in Europe is the concept of integration. As Bommes and Morawska (2009: 44) indicate: ‘Looking across Western Europe in the broadest possible way, it is clear that integration has emerged as the most widely used general concept for describing the target of post-immigration policies.’ According to the European Commission’s Common Basic Principles for Immigrant Integration Policy, integration has been presented as a two-way process of mutual accommodation by immigrants and host societies that should be facilitated by member states (Council of European Union 2004). The principles stress a need for migrants’ basic knowledge of the receiving society’s language and institutions; for host countries’ efforts in education to be aimed at both migrants and receiving societies; for guaranteed access for migrants to state services as well as their interaction with established residents; and for migrants to participate in different areas of life in the host countries – for example, not only through employment, but also through civic and political engagement (e.g. in the democratic process). However, instead of developing and implementing the relevant policies, EU member states rather focus on strengthening migration regulations (particularly pertaining to non-EU migrants) (de Haas et al. 2018), reinforcing different types of borders (Yuval-Davis et al. 2019) and cutting support for integration. This in the context of the decline of the welfare state and the prevalence of the neoliberal paradigm that focuses on deregulating markets and reducing state influence on economies, accompanied by a shift from multiculturalism towards an assimilationist and individualist approach, a growing anti-immigrant backlash and increasing popularity of conservative and nationalist political narratives. Although migration and integration studies have been developing intensively both in Europe and the United States (US) (Morawska 2008), gaps still remain in knowledge about the pathways of adaptation

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and processes of accommodation between migrants and receiving societies, including the lack of comprehensive, multidimensional, cross-disciplinary analyses. An in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of adaptation and settling requires more advanced and comprehensive frameworks as well as further empirical investigation, especially in the context of increasingly diverse migrant populations and their migration pathways, and the ongoing wider cultural and societal changes in European societies, with the aim of linking adaptation and settling to the wider processes and to contribute to policy development and a broader social theory. Along with the migratory processes, all forms of diversity have been intensifying, and growing multiculturalism has begun to take the form of superdiversity in some places (Vertovec 2007), leading to new forms of coexistence but also conflicts, tensions and inequalities. These socio-demographic changes are accompanied by transnational flows, reinforced by the media and cultural transmission (Appadurai 1996). Advances in transport and communication contribute to growing transnational processes, including everyday practices and social ties which span national borders and increase interconnectedness between societies (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004), while at an individual level resulting in migrants’ multiple links with different spaces and more multidimensional identities. European societies are undergoing processes of individualisation, fragmentation, growing complexity and accelerating socio-cultural and institutional transformation (Fenger and Bekkers 2012; Luhmann 2006), captured by Bauman’s metaphor of ‘liquid’ reality (2000) where individuals are prone to experience uncertainty and instability. Previously more coherent cultural systems and traditional social institutions, such as lifelong marriage and the conventional patriarchal family (Popenoe 1993) or institutional religion (Dobbelaere 1999), are becoming less significant, while the shrinking of the welfare state (which earlier provided certainty and security) is coupled with growing economic precariousness and job instability (Kingfisher 2002). In the context of contemporary neoliberal doctrine and flexible capitalism, jobs no longer provide a sense of identity and life stability (Sennett 1998). Thus, individuals have become more prone to experiencing ontological insecurity (Giddens 1991) and face challenges to the preservation of their integrity (Lifton 1993). In a similar vein, Gergen (2001) notes that the entanglement of individuals in extended networks of multiple

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but predominantly superficial and temporary social relations is overwhelming and does not help to sustain a coherent identity. This may contribute to a crisis of the individual substantial self that could have provided relatively stable reference points in the complex and changing world. Cohen and Kennedy (2013) also point out that instabilities arising from the nexus of inequalities and globalisation lead to a wider prolonged condition of chronic uncertainty and insecurity permeating all geographical regions and dimensions of human life. Individuals have become increasingly aware of unavoidable uncertainty and various types of risks, including new risks produced by late modernity (Beck 2006). The decline of the cosmopolitan, pacifist and modernist narratives and welfarist ideologies, accompanied by growing social divisions and conflicts, lead to contemporary anxieties and discourses of insecurity that link the lack of safety to ‘otherness’. This is reinforced by politicians and perpetuated by the media (Lianos 2013) with the ‘new politics of fear’, concentrated on the others, particularly immigrants (Massey 2015). Lianos (2013) argues that competition between atomised individuals, together with the erosion of social bonds in neoliberal capitalism and the vulnerability that ensues, produce a politics of fear where insecurity becomes a kind of mobilising and cementing notion, providing a substitute for social bonds and exploited by leaders and politicians. Vail, Wheelock, and Hill (1999) indicate that this rise in insecurity, contrasted with wellbeing and safety, is damaging for individuals and communities because it impacts their lives and self-esteem, and generates high levels of anxiety, hopelessness and passivism. Von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann (1994) stress that in contemporary societies the main counterpoint to order and stability may be not conflict or disruption but indeterminacy, uncertainty and insecurity, only partially lessened by formal organisations, informal institutions and norms. Insecurities concern not only basic needs such as: food, shelter, health and care but also moral questions, social relations, formal institutions and feelings. In response to this uncertainty, different mechanisms are mobilised through individual activity, informal networks, formal organisations or cultural and religious beliefs. Insecurity thus has become a central focus for various scholars who analyse individuals’ quest for ontological security (Giddens 1991), the dilemma between security and freedom (Bauman 2001a),

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I N T RO D U C T I O N 5

(in)security as a mode of political governance (Lianos 2013), or a sense of security and belonging as a foundation for a society (Donzelot 2013). However, surprisingly, a need for security seems to be overlooked in migration research despite the fact that migrants face changes, new conditions and challenges to which they need to adapt to recover the feeling of safety and stability in their lives. Adaptation challenges and coping mechanisms are particularly visible in the case of recent international migrants who have to adjust and establish themselves in host countries. Not only do they encounter a new social, cultural, political and material environment, but they must also deal with changes in their lives and navigate in an unpredictable and complex world where ongoing transformations and ‘diversifications of diversity’ are taking place (Vertovec 2007). Thus the psychological perspective should be brought into migration studies more, while the issues of identity and integration – which to date have been predominantly researched in parallel – should be integrated. This monograph, therefore, examines the efforts of contemporary migrants to establish safety and stability by presenting a new conceptual framework grounded in empirical research for analysing the processes of migrant adaptation and settling. The main goal of the book is to theorise complex, multidimensional and flexible adaptation processes and settling practices among migrants through the lens of the original concept of anchoring (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2013a, 2016). My working definition of anchoring refers to the process of establishing significant footholds which allow migrants to satisfy their need for safety and restore their socio-psychological stability in new life settings. I claim that the established categories employed in migration studies such as ‘integration’ and ‘settlement’ are not sufficient to understand and examine the ways of accommodation, functioning and experience of contemporary migrants. I argue that my concept of anchoring, developed through research with Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland, might provide a more integrative and comprehensive transdisciplinary approach to analysing the processes of migrants’ adaptation and settling. It does this by linking the existing notions while overcoming their limitations, as well as by underlining the psychological needs for safety and stability and with the additional value of capturing the processuality and multilayeredness of the analysed processes. It allows us to explore people’s attempts to recover their

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sense of relative stability and safety in different settings: while involved in ‘incomplete migration’, engaged in ‘fluid’ mobility, operating in transnational spaces or settling in new societies. My argument will be substantiated against a critical review of existing migration studies literature, combined with relevant sociological and psychological inputs as well as the diverse data from my fieldwork research. The empirical analyses presented in the book are based on the material gathered in my research conducted in 2014–2015 within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship ‘Social Anchoring in Superdiverse Transnational Social Spaces’ (SAST) at the University of Birmingham. The processes of anchoring were examined and theorised through my research with post-2004 Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian citizens residing in Poland. The two case studies represented the major recent migrant groups respectively in the UK and Poland. Citizens of Ukraine were the most numerous migrants that came to Poland between the end of communist rule in 1989 and 2015, despite generally low levels of immigration to Poland in this period being coupled with substantial emigration (Gorny et al. 2010; Kaczmarczyk 2015a). On 1 January 2015, according to the Office for Foreigners data of the number of officially registered migrants in Poland, 40,979 Ukrainian citizens had the right to reside in Poland out of a total of 175,065 foreigners officially living there. The next most numerous foreigners were migrants from: Germany (20,200), the Russian Federation (10,739), Belarus (9,924) and Vietnam (9,042). In 2015 the vast majority of Ukrainian citizens officially residing in Poland were granted either a temporary residence permit (19,323) or a permanent residence permit (18,637). In addition, 2,761 held a long-term EU residence permit, 97 had a right of residence or right of permanent residence as family members of EU citizens and 161 remained under protection (Office for Foreigners 2015a). However, the number of Ukrainians registered in Poland in more recent years has increased significantly, reaching 179,154 (out of 372,239 all foreigners) on 1 January 2019 (Office for Foreigners 2019). According to this data, the stock of Ukrainian residents in Poland included: 138,657 holders of a temporary residence permit; 35,169 migrants with a permanent residence permit; 7,172 with an EU long-term residence permit; 239 with a right of residence or right of permanent residence as family members of EU citizens, and 917 foreigners under protection (99 conventional refugees, 387 granted supplementary

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I N T RO D U C T I O N 7

protection, 6 with tolerated stay and 425 with stay due to humanitarian reasons). This data reflects the fact that in recent years, circular economic migrants have been joined not only by long-term and settlement migrants, professionals operating in transnational spaces and numerous students (sometimes partly of Polish origin) but lately also by Ukrainian asylum-seekers fleeing military conflicts in Ukraine. According to the Office for Foreigners, while in 2013 Ukrainian residents filed only 46 applications for refugee status, these numbers increased to 2,318 in 2014 and 2,305 in 2015 (Office for Foreigners 2015b, 2016). The turbulence in Ukraine, which started with the Euromaidan demonstrations in 2013, followed by the 2014 revolution, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass, has contributed to the changes in motivations and characteristics of Ukrainian migrants in Poland as well as shifts in their migration strategies. This has also led to the growth of patriotism and nationalism among Ukrainians in Poland and the development of institutions such as ethnic associations. Despite introducing visas for Ukrainians as citizens of a third country to comply with the Schengen Agreement, over the years preferential arrangements for migrants from Ukraine have been adopted in Poland, including special opportunities to enter Poland for work and study such as offering a simplified employment procedure and special visas for employment in Poland. According to Ministry of Family, Work and Social Policy statistics (2013a, 2015a, 2015b), Ukrainian migrants received 50,465 work permits out of 65,786 issued in 2015 (20,416 in 2013), while in the same year there were registered 762,700 employers’ declarations of intent to hire a Ukrainian (out of 782,222). Overall, the number of these registered documents regarding Ukrainians rose from 217,571 in 2013 to 1,262,845 in 2016 (Ministry of Family, Work and Social Policy 2013b, 2016). Another special provision allowing Ukrainian citizens to come and reside in Poland is the Karta Polaka (officially translated as the Card of the Pole), which has been granted since 2007 to people of Polish origin who are familiar with Polish culture or/and are involved in promoting it. According to data from the Statistics Poland (2018), up to the end of 2017 234,350 people received the Karta Polaka, mainly inhabitants of Ukraine (44 per cent) and Belarus (48 per cent). In the particular years Ukrainian citizens were the largest or the second largest group (interchangeably with Belarusians) to receive

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the Karta Polaka (compared to the total numbers of the cards issued), for example: 2010 – 8,720 (out of 19,365), 2015 – 9,533 (24,105) and 2016 – 13,007 (27,464). Ukrainians constituted the largest group of migrants who acquired Polish citizenship (for instance 1,667 in 2013, 1,918 in 2014, 2,012 in 2015 and 1,432 in 2016) as well as the most numerous foreign female spouses of Polish citizens; for example in 2015 there were 573 (with respective Ukrainian husbands of Polish citizens – 142) (Central Statistical Office 2016). The second case study considered the numerous and diverse population of post-accession Polish migrants in the UK. The accession of Poland to the EU in 2004 and the subsequent unrestricted access for migrants from the newly joined countries to the UK labour market led to the movement of Poles to the UK that was unprecedented in scale and speed, which ‘may well have been the largest voluntary migration between two countries’ over a short time span (Okolski and Salt 2014: 11). As a result, according to the data from the British national census of 2011, migrants born in Poland counted for 579,121 out of all 7,505,010 residents born outside England and Wales (Office for National Statistics 2014). Notwithstanding the difficulty of measuring migration, Poland’s Central Statistical Office estimates suggest that the number of Polish citizens staying in the UK for longer than three months reached 690,000 on 1 January 2008 (Kaczmarczyk and Okolski 2008). Later estimates showed the stock of Polish citizens in the UK growing as follows: 2010 – 580,000, 2011 – 625,000, 2013 – 637,000, 2014 – 642,000, 2015 – 685,000, 2016 – 720,000, 2017 – 788,000 (Statistics Poland 2018). Since 2004 the post-war migrants, political refugees from communist Poland and post-1989 pioneers have been joined by numerous postaccession Polish migrants. Unlike the previous waves of Poles in the UK, who were fewer and predominantly aimed to integrate, many post-accession migrants tended to maintain a strong ethnic identity and networks, to cluster in certain areas and sectors and to develop ethnic institutions and services. Although to some extent both Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in the UK mainly performed similar jobs, substantial socio-political, economic and structural differences between them could also be observed. This included a greater cultural and geographical distance between Poles and British society than between Ukrainian migrants and Polish society. While geographical distance could be overcome

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by modern means of fast and inexpensive transport, cultural distance had a large effect on migrants’ acculturation, particularly hindering Polish migrants’ acquisition of English, and contributing to social distance between Poles and the host society and an ambivalent perception of Polish migrants which surfaced in the context of the EU referendum and its aftermath. However, this was counterbalanced at the time of the SAST research by the fact that, thanks to free movement of citizens within the EU, Polish migrants had full rights to reside in the UK, participate in its labour market and benefit from welfare state provision, while Ukrainian migrants in Poland needed to comply with a stricter migration regime with their rights limited and position unsettled. This monograph will analyse in what way these differences might have implications for the processes of adaptation and settling undergone by Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland, while also allowing a more general analytical framework to be developed. The book outlines my key arguments and findings in seven chapters. After this introduction explaining the overall goals of the monograph, outlining the context of the research, presenting the main arguments and providing an overview of the whole book, Chapter 1 includes a critical review of the theoretical field and the established concepts in migration studies such as integration, identity and settlement, arguing that on their own they are insufficient to conceptualise adaptation and settling processes among contemporary migrants. This chapter will cross disciplines in order to better understand the studied processes, particularly highlighting previously underestimated psychological contributions that strongly informed the approach presented in the monograph. Chapter 2 shows the development of the concept of anchoring: from a metaphor and sensitising term to an analytical concept, followed by Chapter 3 explaining the methodology of my research. Chapter 4 focuses on the adaptation of Ukrainian migrants in Poland captured as a process from drifting to anchoring, while Chapter 5 analyses the processes of adaptation and settling among Polish migrants in the UK conceptualised as more anchoring than putting down roots. Chapter 6 outlines the foundations of a general model of migrant anchoring, followed by Chapter 7, which discusses the differences, inequalities and exclusions in the processes examined. The book’s conclusion explores new directions of research and the possibility of using the theory of anchoring for practical applications.

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1 Rethinking settlement and integration: a critical and integrative literature review The concept of integration, predominantly understood as migrants’ participation in the life of the receiving society, stimulated by special policies, remains a central category in migration studies in Europe. I have argued that, in spite of its prominence, integration is a highly problematic concept with substantial limitations (see, for example, Grzymala-Kazlowska 2008a, 2013a; Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore 2018). Its drawback is linked to its politicisation as well as its structural and functionalist provenance (Favell 2001; Spencer and Cooper 2006). As Baubock (1994) indicates, integration is an elusive concept which may refer to the internal cohesion of a system or aggregate composed of a multitude of units or elements; it can designate the entry into the system of elements which had been parts of the environment before; or it may mean the extension of the system to incorporate new elements or units in a way which contributes to the self-sustaining operations of the enlarged system. The concept of integration not only constructs groups or individuals vis-à-vis receiving societies portrayed as internally coherent and unified, but also implies the progression of integration over time (or failure to progress), nonreversible or linear and invariable processes, and focuses on some aspects such as social ties, cultural competencies or relations with institutions while overlooking others, such as the issues of individuals’ feelings of stability, security or identity. Leaving aside this vagueness and ambiguity, ‘integration’ has become a popular and handy term denoting a broad sphere of problems related

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to the presence of the others. In general, analyses of integration have concentrated on policy development and narrow empirical research into specific challenges, determinants and outcomes of integration. This, combined with the prevailing focus on practical and normative aspects of integration, has led to its ‘under-theorisation’ and limited (also academic) scrutiny. The notion of integration has been largely determined by a political debate over the existence of migrants in Europe and their inclusion in host societies in a way that maintains the socio-cultural order. Favell (2016: 5) points out that, although less nationalistic than ‘assimilation models (which are simply blind to their patently methodological nationalist assumptions about the bounding unit of “society” providing the aggregate norms), “integration” in Europe is fairly explicitly an exercise in self-conscious top-down nation-building’. The assimilationist perspective, fitting better in the experience of the US and older post-colonial migrant populations, is less adequate for capturing the complex differentiations involved in the diversity of recent ‘new’ migrations within and to Europe (Favell 2016). Nevertheless, as Favell (2013) notes, nation-building processes in Europe are still based on the nineteenth-century approach which imposes unified ideas of national ‘culture’ and conditions of citizenship, particularly on the most vulnerable, whereas in reality European societies should be rather seen as increasingly fragmented, un-Durkheimian porous and multi-levelled, with individuals who, to a varied degree, are flexible and mobile, and who are agents making choices about their rights and benefits, duties and obligations. In spite of this complexity and changeability, up till now the relations between migrants, their descendants, native populations and the state have been predominantly depicted in terms of oversimplified binary oppositions – minority/majority, them/us and dominant/non-dominant – as can also be seen in the Casey Review (Casey 2016), which stressed the need for migrants to integrate into what is believed to be a culturally and socially coherent society. As the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration (Bell et al. 2017) noted, a fundamental reframing of the national debate on immigration in the UK in terms of both policy and rhetorical shift is needed in order to deconstruct migrants as a security risk or the ‘other’ and present them rather as Britonsin-waiting. Instead, as Heath and Richards (2016) point out, in many European countries citizens consider immigration to be one of the

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most pressing challenges to be dealt with, which helps conservative and right-wing political parties opposing immigration to gain wide support. In spite of the return to traditionalist sentiments and conservative resurgence, receiving countries need to be rather reconceptualised as societies undergoing processes of growing fragmentation, complexity and transformations (Fenger and Bekkers 2012; Luhmann 2006), characterised by their fluidity and diversity, globally interconnected (Cohen and Kennedy 2013) and transnationally linked within dispersed networks of individuals and families (Glick Schiller 2003). The structural and functional integration of contemporary societies may be questioned. Instead of being seen as fixed and separate entities with coherent socio-cultural systems, as is often assumed in the integrationist perspective, today’s societies can be imagined as consisting of networks (Castells 1996) and flows and mobilities (Urry 2000). Faced with the gradual fragmentation and dilution of the nation-states by political and economic processes, both external and internal, top-down and bottomup, the previously prevailing ‘nation-state–society’ paradigm (Favell 2010) and the nation-state centred methodology named ‘methodological nationalism’, which takes states for granted as the natural units of analysis in migration research (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), need to be rethought. The above-mentioned processes can be linked to transnational and global cultural flows reinforced by the media and the advancement of new communication and transport technologies (Appadurai 1996), with the latter allowing for the rise in everyday practices and social relations which span national borders and increase interconnectedness between societies (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). This coexists not only with growing diversities and societal transformation regarding such institutions as family (Popenoe 1993) or institutional religion (Dobbelaere 1999) but also with growing inequalities and new types of divisions, conflicts and anti-systemic movements (Giddens 2006). As a result, the adequacy of the concept of integration needs to be reconsidered, especially in the context of growing fluidity and diversity. The changes described encourage the reconceptualisation of the issue of integration, from the inclusion of different elements (migrants) into ‘a whole’ to the wider problem of cohesion in complex contemporary societies. However, according to Kearns and Forrest (2000), social cohesion is yet another vague concept which carries different

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meanings related to: 1) common values and civic culture, 2) social order and social control, 3) social solidarity and wealth disparities, 4) social networks and social capital, and 5) identity/place attachment. Although social cohesion redirects attention from the ‘other’ to society in its diversity, it may still be seen as relying on similar normative and political assumptions as integration, including the fact that it may be perceived as a hollow concept used in policy debates on social inclusion within complex and diverse societies. Lewis and Neal (2005: 437) highlight the hidden, coercive features of social cohesion: ‘What has been particularly apparent has been a partial shift away [from the beginning of this millennium] from affirmations of British multiculture towards a (re)embracing of older notions of assimilationism within a newer, de-racialised, language of social cohesion.’ An alternative approach may be provided by the concept of superdiversity, aiming to capture the unprecedented ‘diversification of diversity’, which in some places represents a socio-cultural and demographic complexity beyond anything previously experienced (Vertovec 2007). Grillo (2015) proposes considering the multidimensionality of superdiversity as occurring along a number of different axes including: ethnicity, socio-legal and political status, socio-cultural diversity (distinct from ethnicity and relating to, for example, language and religion) and economic and life opportunities. Superdiversity may not only be understood as a descriptive term capturing a changing demographic and socio-cultural reality. It can also be viewed as a wider analytical perspective highlighting contemporary complexity, sensitising to issues of difference and equality (Vertovec 2011), helping to overcome binary categorisation and a ‘groupism’ that is the oversimplified perception of society through the lens that sees groups as internally homogeneous and externally bounded (Brubaker 2006), and offering a new narrative which could replace the contested notion of multiculturalism (Vertovec 2007). Superdiversity can also have crucial implications for social policy (Vertovec 2010a). However, in spite of its stimulating value, superdiversity is not a broadly accepted concept and provokes various criticisms. Its vagueness, novelty (Blommaert 2013) and descriptiveness (Arnaut and Spotti 2014) are raised as well as its overemphasis on cultural and localised difference at the expense of structural inequalities, social conflicts and divisions, still existing racism and discrimination (Sepulveda et al. 2011). Hall (2017) urges that the notion of superdiversity

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should be more explicitly linked (‘moored’) to the structures and processes of power and inequality, whereas Back (2015) notes that the promotion of superdiversity may contribute to social anxieties and tensions. The concept of integration might be also challenged from the perspective of changing migration processes. In the face of contemporary mobility accompanied by the processes of globalisation and technological advancement, two classic models of migration – settlement and temporary, with the former particularly constituting conditions for integration – have proved to be insufficient (Castles et al. 2002). The divided and multiple attachments of contemporary migrants as well as the diversity and flexibility of current migration processes have been acknowledged in the above-mentioned transnational perspective aiming to capture migrants’ simultaneous relations with their countries of origin and their destination, as well as strategies for life in transnational social spaces, crossing geographical, cultural and political borders (Faist 2000) and the resulting ties (family, economic, social, organisational, religious, political) which span nation-state boundaries (Glick Schiller 2003). The concept of simultaneity has been employed to highlight that migrants’ lives may include daily activities, practices and social institutions located both in a destination country and transnationally. Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004: 1003) argue that ‘Migrant incorporation into a new land and transnational connections to a homeland or to dispersed networks of family, compatriots, or persons who share a religious or ethnic identity can occur at the same time and reinforce one another’. The concept of ‘liquid migration’ has also been proposed, to describe a new type of European migration where migrants choose individualised paths of multiple migrations, searching for a place for themselves in different countries, taking advantage of open borders and market opportunities in the EU (Engbersen 2011). This underlines that migrants may become detached from both their countries of origin and their current places of residence (Engbersen et al. 2013), living on the move and adopting the strategy of intentional unpredictability (Eade et al. 2006). In the context of new migration processes and changeable realities of receiving societies, the concept of ‘settlement’ also needs to be revised to acknowledge that migrants may be more focused on reaching

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a state of a relative stability rather than settling in a new country and putting down roots. As Schrooten, Salazar and Dias (2016) point out, whereas receiving societies tend to frame migration as a process from one state of fixity to another and a ‘threat’ that calls for social integration, control and the maintenance of national identity, migrants themselves can adopt a more mobile perspective, search for emerging opportunities and become used to ‘living in mobility’. This corresponds to the new direction of migration research to rethink the nature of contemporary mobilities and settlement beyond the traditional binary perspective. Moreover, as Hannam, Sheller and Urry (2006) highlight, mobilities cannot be understood without attention to spatial, infrastructural and institutional moorings that configure and enable mobility. These authors indicate that moorings and mobilities occur dialectically and this dyad is required in order to, on the one hand, problematise these notions and, on the other hand, combine both the ‘sedentarist’ perspective which treats place, stability and dwelling as a natural steady state, and the narratives of deterritorialisation, fluidity and liquidity (Bauman 2000). Hannam, Sheller and Urry’s idea of moorings (2006) is also beneficial to understand differentiated opportunities and constraints in the processes of adaptation and settling visible in the processes of anchoring (including their material, social or cognitive aspects). As Skeggs (2004) points out, mobility may be perceived as a resource to which not everyone has equal access. Although spatial mobility is sometimes portrayed as a catalyst for empowerment and the advancement of social justice in terms of more opportunities and more egalitarian access to resources, at the same time, mobility often reflects and reinforces inequalities (Kaufmann 2014; Kaufmann et al. 2004). New approaches to integration point to the role of transnational relations and the states of origin when presenting integration as a three-way process (Garcés-Mascareñas and Penninx 2016). Gidley and Feldman (2014) highlight that the notion of integration should be more comprehensive and refer to the whole society, not only to ‘problematic minorities’, to avoid reinforcing social divisions instead of increasing social cohesion. Drawing on survey data on the second generation in eight European countries, Schneider and Crul (2010) argue for the comparative integration context approach, underlining that participation in organisations and belonging to local community are strongly dependent on the integration context constituted by

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education, the labour market, housing, religion and legislation. In addition to showing that the social and political context is particularly significant for social and cultural participation and belonging, the above authors demonstrate the increasing local involvement of the second generation (that is, of the children born in the host state to migrant parents) alongside the decreasing centrality of their single ethnic origin (Schneider and Crul 2010), providing an argument for overcoming the established opposition between ‘migrants’ and ‘nonmigrants’. Scholten, Collett and Petrovic (2016) point to the idea of mainstreaming – that is, a shift in a migrant-integration policy focus (from specific to generic) and in governance (from state-centric to polycentric) as a response to the potentially degenerative effects of formalising target group approaches, which can be averted by proxy strategies that are area-defined or needs-based rather than group-based. Mainstreaming does not mean group-blindness, but it works better when combined with knowledge of and sensitivity to the difference in the context, which is a necessity in superdiverse cities, where group distinctions are difficult to draw (Scholten et al. 2016). This approach requires polycentric governance that allows for horizontal (interdepartmental, multi-actor) and vertical (multi-level) coordination mechanisms to avert policy decoupling. Comparative cross-national studies into integration and segregation are currently the dynamically developing direction of research, regardless of critique over the oversimplified usage of the established concepts and difficulties with the comparability of policies, official and survey data. Institution- and policy-focused analyses regarding migrant integration may be represented by the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), which measures policies in such areas as: the labour market, education, political participation, access to nationality, family reunion, health, permanent residence and anti-discrimination in all the EU states and other countries, including Australia, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the US. However, such national comparisons can obscure the interplay between de jure and de facto dimensions of policies and the nexus of migration and integration (Boucher and Gest 2014), while the aggregation of complex and often dispersed policies (beyond narrow regulations explicitly concerning non-citizens) into national models may impede a nuanced measurement and understanding of internal differences (Bader 2007; Finotelli and Michalowski 2012).

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Some more comprehensive analyses are represented by Alba and Foner’s (2014) cross-Atlantic comparative study of selected national ‘models’ of integration or these authors’ synthetic work on integration concerning labour markets, housing, religion, political participation, education and intermarriage (Alba and Foner 2015). Heath and Birnbaum’s research (2014) on educational inequality among the second generation in secondary schools and higher education in eight Western European countries, Canada and the US constitutes an example of more specific research. The recent sociological and anthropological research on integration also focuses on social networks and practices (e.g. Buhr 2018), social capital (e.g. Ryan et al. 2015), transnationalism (e.g. Faist et al. 2013), social remittances (e.g. Grabowska et al. 2017; Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011) and citizenship (e.g. Gonzales and Sigona 2017). Even if integration is employed in a broad sense as a sphere of issues rather than as a precise concept, it tends to concentrate on certain aspects such as social relations, economic activity and legal position while overlooking other important dimensions such as identity or the psychological needs of stability and safety. Despite the argument that identity plays a crucial role in mediating all human activity and social relations (Blumer 1969), constituting a fundamental and essential precondition (Elias 1998), and has become a crucial category to understand contemporary individuals and society (Castells 1996; Giddens 1991; Jenkins 2004). To date studies on integration and identity have been mainly developed in parallel. In the face of an increasingly complex and diverse world undergoing accelerating changes, identity may be perceived as a key area of search for basic meanings and the main point of reference where individuals can try to find in themselves relatively stable footholds in an unpredictable world, even as lived experiences and senses of ‘belonging’ are being increasingly conceptualised as dynamic, relational and situated (e.g. Yuval-Davis 2006). Even though it has significance and potential for complementing research into integration, the concept of identity itself brings varied ambiguities and controversies related to its vague, sometimes contradictory meanings; researchers’ difficulties with the separation of identity from cultural constructs, ideologies and political usage as well as its primary subjective and verbalised form, not including objective and external factors (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Hall 1996; Michael 1996). Therefore, in order to grasp identification processes occurring

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alongside the processes of adaptation and settling, alternative concepts such as belonging (e.g. Fortier 2000; Geddes and Favell 1999; Lovell 1998), attachment (Grzymala-Moszczynska and Trabka 2014), emplacement (e.g. Glick Schiller and Caglar 2016) or embedding (Ryan and Mulholland 2015) are being developed. ‘Belonging’ is usually used to signify being part of a community, which includes familiarity and closeness while also locating identity within a specific spatial context. It refers to mechanisms which make individuals feel safe and ‘at home’ – in line with this, Marcu (2012) points out that home is where individuals feel positive emotions and closeness. As Boccagni (2017) emphasises, home does not relate simply to a physical structure or material place but to a special relation between a person and a place, culturally and normatively oriented experience, based on security, familiarity and relative control. Similarly, Antonisch (2010) claims that belonging should be analysed as a personal, intimate feeling of being ‘at home’ in a place (placebelongingness) and goes on to distinguish five factors that contribute to individual feelings of belonging: autobiographical, relational, cultural, economic and legal. Antonisch (2010) stresses that belonging not only includes the feeling of being part of a whole but it also requires the acceptance of others, so it can be perceived as a “discursive resource which constructs, claims, justifies, or resists forms of socio-spatial inclusion/exclusion” (Antonisch 2010: 645). In a similar way, YuvalDavis (2006) emphasises the relationship between political and emotional dimensions of belonging when talking about the politics of belonging, to highlight how borders between identities and groups are constructed; how political processes may facilitate or destroy emotional attachments; what are the mechanisms of including or excluding and in what ways belonging is legitimated (e.g. through citizenship). However, despite its conceptual potential, the concept of belonging is also criticised because of its vagueness and subjectivity (Antonisch 2010; Isakjee 2016). Like belonging, emplacement highlights people’s bonds within certain places. Glick Schiller and Caglar (2013) connect emplacement to individuals’ attempts to settle and build their networks of connections within given limitations and opportunities in specific localities. These researchers see emplacement as a notion linking networks, place and power which ‘can be defined as the social processes through which a dispossessed individual builds or rebuilds networks of connection

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within the constraints and opportunities of a specific city’ (Glick Schiller and Caglar 2016: 5). Emplacement may be seen as an opposite process to displacement, which encompasses different forms of dispossession and precarity related, for example, to lack of employment, loss of social status and downward mobility or involuntary relocation. As Caglar (2016) argues, using the concepts of displacement/ emplacement is helpful to overcome the division between migrants versus non-migrants, offering instead a general analytical lens to capture experiences of individuals in increasingly diverse and dynamic communities. The concepts of emplacement, displacement and dispossession might be particularly beneficial in the study of interrelations between residents of the city (both migrants and non-migrants) and ongoing processes of restructuring and repositioning of places where they live (Glick Schiller and Caglar 2013). Glick Schiller and Caglar (2016) examine different types of emplacement sociabilities (proximally related to the sociability of neighbours, workplace-based social relations and institutional ones initiated in spaces such as at service providers, churches or schools) established by residents who, despite their differences, construct togetherness and try to transform their precarities into struggles against disparities and displacements. The affective load and emphasis on the issue of security link the concept of belonging to the concept of attachment. Place attachment embodies an emotional bond between individuals and space alongside cognitive and symbolic attachments (Goksenin and Finch 2004). Bowlby’s influential development theory (1988) can be used to highlight the security function of attachment, as is seen clearly among children under three, who form strong and lasting emotional attachments to parents/caregivers – especially if the latter are sufficiently sensitive and responsive to the children’s needs – and tend to seek proximity to those individuals, particularly in times of distress, and to treat the closest caregivers as a secure base. Thus attachment provides a feeling of well-being and security originating from closeness to the person perceived as better coping with reality and giving support (Bowlby 1988). These first attachments secure the foundation of later emotional and personality development, while the disruption of attachment has a negative impact on individuals’ emotional and cognitive life. It has been noted that attachment to the figure of the parent represents a broader range of relations with people and the environment (e.g. place) which can be examined in the context of

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migration (Grzymala-Moszczynska and Trabka 2014). Fried’s study (1966) demonstrates the post-relocation experience which – according to the author – for the majority of the relocated may be described as grief, which encompasses the disruption of continuity, fragmentation of spatial and group identity, distress and a tendency to idealise the lost place. However, from another perspective, the transmigration literature shows that migration does not always lead to the end of attachments to places, and migrants might maintain a strong connection to their places of origin. Embeddedness constitutes another related concept highlighting the immersion of individuals in existing structures and broadly defined social institutions that frame people’s behaviour, which reflects Polanyi’s (1992) and Granovetter’s (1985) notion that economic behaviours and organisations are enabled and constrained by social contexts. The term ‘embeddedness’ has been translated to migration studies as a concept that ‘refers to an individual finding their own position in society and feeling a sense of belonging to and participating in that society’ (Davids and van Houte 2008: 174), with three dimensions: economic, psychological (linked to a feeling of safety) and sociological (pertaining to social networks) (van Houte and Davids 2008). As Korinek, Entwisle and Jampaklay (2005) demonstrate through their research into ‘thick and thin’ layers of social ties in the urban settings, it is the configuration of connections at multiple levels that influences migrants’ experiences and settlement decisions. Hess (2004) proposes the metaphor of rhizome to interpret the notion of embeddedness and its applicability to different geographical scales in an attempt to analyse embeddedness in social structures in time and space. Drawing on the concept of embeddedness, Ryan and Mulholland (2014) examine the processes of one’s sense of rootedness and settling in on the continuum of emplacement. They proposed the notion of ‘embedding’ to emphasise its dynamics as a process rather than a static, achieved state. Ryan (2018), in her work on ‘differentiated embedding’, analyses how migrants negotiate belonging to different degrees across various domains as dynamic temporal, spatial and relational processes within opportunity structures at micro, meso and macro levels. Despite the advances described, embedding needs further development to capture the temporal and multidimensional nature of ties, and does not refer to tangible points of connections which might be visible in terms of specific anchors.

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Like these notions, the concept of anchoring presented in this monograph also aims to capture the processuality of migrants’ social connections and belongings but it highlights psychological mechanisms involved in the processes studied (such as coping strategies and a need for safety and stability), their multidimensionality (including cognitive, spiritual and material anchors), the flexibility of anchoring, re-anchoring and un-anchoring, and the simultaneity of anchors in different transnational settings. In line with Archer’s theory (2003), the concept of anchoring also underlines human agency in seeking for life footholds to recover the feeling of safety and stability while taking into account the existing structures of opportunities and constraints impacting this activity. As has been mentioned, the concept of anchoring links the different notions and allows their limitations to be overcome. Even though newer theories of integration have become more complex and multi­ dimensional – such as Bosswick and Heckmann’s (2006) integration model (differentiating between the structural and interactional dimensions of social integration as well as the cognitive-cultural and identificational dimensions of cultural integration) or Portes and Zhou’s (1993) theory of segmented assimilation (highlighting divergent integration paths and incorporation models depending on the host country’s policy, social reception and characteristics of migrants) – they usually underestimate issues such as migrants’ identities and their need for security and stability, which are highlighted by the concept of anchoring. This may be partly attributed to the fact that migrant adaptation remains a relatively obscure area of research within psychology, often focused on laboratory-based or correlational general population research, although issues of migrant adaptation related to intra-individual, interpersonal, and intergroup processes are fundamentally psychological (Dovidio and Esses 2001). Exceptional in this regard is Ager and Strang’s (2008) model of integration underlining the significance of safety and stability, which on the basis of empirical data identifies the following ten interrelated integration domains: 1) employment, 2) housing, 3) education and 4) health (that are markers and means), 5) social bridges with members of other communities, 6) social bonds within one’s own community and 7) social links with institutions (constituting ‘social connections’), 8) language and cultural knowledge, 9) safety and stability (being facilitators) and 10) rights and citizenship (representing the ‘foundation’

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of integration). The almost complete absence from integration theory of safety and stability is striking in the light of Maslow’s theory of needs (1954) that showed that these are the most basic needs (after the biological), the significance of which has also been demonstrated in recent studies (Bakker et al. 2013; Cheung and Phillimore 2013). Bringing in the psychological perspective, therefore, helps to improve our understanding of integration processes and informs a more comprehensive approach to the processes of adaptation and settling. According to psychologists, lack of safety and stability contributes to acculturation stress and has a detrimental effect on migrant adjustment (Berry 1997; Crockett et al. 2007; Hovey and Magana 2000). In accordance with the conservation of resources (COR) theory developed by Hobfoll (1998), stress occurs when resources – defined as, inter alia, objects or personal characteristics that are appreciated in their own right or that are valued because they act as channels to the attainment or protection of valued resources – are threatened or lost (Egan et al. 2008). The COR theory points to the importance of objective sources of stress and aims to integrate both environmental and internal approaches to stress, in contrast to predominant stress theories which focus upon the cognitive nature of phenomena (Hobfoll 1998). The COR theory argues that individuals strive above all to protect and, to a smaller degree, gain and expand resources, and they maintain resources by replacement, substitution, selective optimisation and compensation. Faced with external constraints or lack of resources, individuals tend even more to employ reactive coping (focused on the maintenance of resources) instead of proactive coping. SAST builds on the COR theory while theorising the processes of anchoring, at the same time arguing that identifying and establishing anchors may be seen as a strategy for facilitating resilience, for example through becoming involved in hobbies and socialising (Hart et al. 2007). Similarly, Tartakovsky’s study (2007) shows that acculturation stress may be buffered by personal psychological resources and social support, while discrimination aggravates distress and harms adaptation. However, while the COR theory focuses on resources which always play an adaptational role, anchors might also have a negative effect (e.g. too strong anchors in the past and/or in the previous country might prevent migrants from developing a sense of belonging in a new place). In addition, anchoring pays more attention than the COR theory to differences in the processes experienced by migrants due to

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their constraints and opportunities related to migrants’ positionalities while highlighting their agency more. To sum up, this chapter has developed the argument that the established concepts of integration and settlement require reconsideration in the context of social, cultural and legal changes as well as new patterns of migration which have an impact on new modes of adaptation, life strategies and identity processes. To this end, the existing concepts should be better connected, with their limitations addressed by advancing more integrative and transdisciplinary notions, such as the concept of anchoring, to better understand the complexities and dynamics of the processes of migrant adaptation and settling.

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2 Developing the concept of anchoring: from a metaphor through a sensitising concept to an empirically grounded concept My previous long-term empirical research on the processes of adaptation and settling of Polish migrants in Belgium and later Vietnamese and Ukrainian migrants in Poland has provided a basis for my critical reflection on the limitations and sometimes insufficiency of the key concepts used in migration studies, especially the concept of integration (e.g. Grzymala-Kazlowska 2008a). The political and practical usage of the latter – as well as its structural and functionalist assumptions that in order to maintain the existing socio-cultural order, separate elements must be adjusted and incorporated into the receiving society, perceived as a coherent system – led to a situation where integration is often equated, in policy and political debates, with assimilation, disregarding Berry’s distinction (1997) that highlighted that integration refers to participation in the life of the hosting society without the migrants rejecting their own cultural uniqueness (unlike in the case of assimilation). As mentioned before, the adequacy of integration as a concept could also be questioned in the face of growing individualisation, fluidity, increasing diversity within societies and their interconnectedness (Cohen and Kennedy 2013). Integration thus needed to be rethought from the perspective of transnational practices and new types of non-settlement migration. Noticing these limitations and the insufficiency of the traditional categories, I began to look for different ways of conceptualising migrants’ adjustment and settlement, first within the project ‘Identity and Ties in Transnational Social Spaces’, focused on the adaptation of Ukrainian

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migrants and repatriates in Poland (2009–2012, financed by the Polish National Science Centre), and later developed in the SAST project. My former empirical work and the outcomes of my previous analysis of the existing theoretical field in migration studies allowed me to sketch the first integrative and transdisciplinary framework incorporating the previously underestimated psychological perspective of adaptation and settling processes (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2013a). It was accompanied by a conclusion on the need to strengthen the two-way link between migration studies and wider sociological theory, both by embedding migration research more in general sociological theory and by using developments in migration studies to address wider sociological problems (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2013b). In addition, discussions with my colleagues from the Institute of Sociology at the University of Warsaw about the first drafts of the book, particularly the introduction by its editor Aleksandra Lompart (2010), prompted me to think about the ways of conceptualising ‘rootedness’ and its contemporary relevance in migration studies, and possible alternatives such as the metaphor of anchoring. The reason for this was that rooting implies a rather firm connection between individuals and a solid social ground, whereas anchoring helps to capture looser ties and different types of links (material, economic, legal, etc.). What struck me was that rootedness had not been extensively described or explained in the literature, in contrast to the notion of searching for one’s own roots by contemporary individuals, but it had started to attract more academic attention as a result of the growing importance of the processes of settling down and putting down ‘roots’ by recent migrants (e.g. Malkki 1992; Moroşanu 2013; Winslow 2001). This is opposed to the more popular concepts of ‘uprooting’ and ‘uprootedness’ usually associated with people’s migration from peripheries and small traditional communities to urban settings as a result of the Industrial Revolution, urbanisation or the development of modern societies (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2016). It highlighted how such migration alienated newcomers from family, traditional lifestyles and communities, as illustrated in The Uprooted (Handlin 1951). The uprooted have been depicted, for example, as Jewish immigrants to America in the early twentieth century (Rockaway 1998) or children shipped to Canada from the UK after 1867 (Parker 2008). Uprootedness is currently most of all associated with displaced migrants, victims of war or refugees.

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The concept of anchoring developed in my work has been built upon the metaphor of an anchor, which in everyday usage represents a tool that allows a floating object to be stopped and held in a proper position. The Oxford English Dictionary (2013) defines an anchor as ‘a heavy object attached to a cable or chain and used to moor a ship to the sea bottom’. In a broader sense, an anchor refers to an element that keeps a given object stabilised in its position and joins it (in a more or less flexible way) to something else (usually more stable). The term is also used to represent ‘a person or thing which provides stability or confidence in an otherwise uncertain situation’ (e.g. key news broadcasters or significant others, also called ‘rocks’) and as a verb which means ‘to secure firmly in position’ or ‘provide with a firm basis or foundation’ (Oxford English Dictionary 2013). In academic literature, the concept ‘anchoring’ has been mostly employed in economics, marketing and psychology (GrzymalaKazlowska 2016). It denotes one of the basic techniques in neurolinguistic programming (NLP), used for example in marketing, and means a type of conditioning where associating an anchor with a reaction does not have to be directly strengthened and conditioned over the long term to cause a desired response (Dilts et al. 1980). In NLP, an anchor can be any representation (such a stimulus can be, for example, sight, sound or touch) evoking another representation (such as the memory of place or experience). The process of anchoring means associating a stimulus with a given experience in order to gain access to the latter. In that way connections between a stimulus and a desirable emotional state can be created and purposely triggered to enable people to access a ‘resourceful’ or other target state. In cognitive psychology and business psychology, terms such as ‘anchoring effect’ and ‘anchoring technique’ refer to the limitation of imagination restricted by the given points of reference and the importance of information first provided when making decisions. Anchoring techniques are used in negotiations, as it has been shown that an initial anchor (e.g. information that constitutes a starting point) has a substantial impact on the assessment of the negotiation range by the other side. In the main in psychology, the anchoring and adjustment heuristic refers to the fact that individuals base their estimations on given implicit reference points and then make gradual adjustments to reach their estimate (Tversky and Kahneman 1974). This has been employed for developing the methodology of anchoring

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vignettes which makes use of setting examples for defining concepts and measuring them to improve interpersonal comparability in survey research (Hopkins and King 2010). Of more significance for my concept of anchoring has been, however, a more peripheral psychological usage of anchoring related to therapy for people who experienced serious crises, life-threatening or other traumatic experiences, such as therapy for cancer patients to overcome their identity crisis and restore their feeling of continuity and integrity (Little et al. 2002). In the face of such experiences individuals need to find relatively stable points of reference to cope with the challenges they face. Little, Paul, Jordens and Sayers (2002) showed that restoring or preserving the feeling of continuity is one of the major tasks for patients suffering from cancer because physical and mental changes resulting from the illness lead to identity crises and problems with the perception of one’s own body and relation with the world. Those who cannot restore their feeling of integrity feel socially alienated and even experience a kind of strangeness towards themselves (Little et al. 2002). The authors demonstrated how the restoration or maintenance of continuity can be supported by using ‘anchor points’ such as patients’ beliefs, values or professional identities. An analogy can be drawn with other people who experience major life changes, including migrants, especially refugees, since international migration usually involves substantial changes and identity crises, meaning that migrants might particularly need to (re)establish some points of stability and reference during their processes of adaptation and settling. Regardless of its inspirational promise, the metaphor of anchors and anchoring appears in sociological texts surprisingly rarely, although it can be traced in passing in the work by Bauman (1997) or Castells (1997). Bauman (1997: 26) refers to this metaphor in the context of a challenging search for certain points of reference to ‘anchor’ one’s own identity and stop it from drifting: As we have seen, it is the widespread characteristic of contemporary men and women in our type of society that they live perpetually with the ‘identity problem’ unsolved. They suffer, one might say, from a chronic absence of resources with which they could build a truly solid and lasting identity, anchor it and stop it from drifting.

The problem of anchors for individuals can be particularly noteworthy in the context of so-called ‘liquid reality’ (Bauman 2000). On the other

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hand, while highlighting the rather chaotic fluidity and processuality of identity and society, Bauman (2004) to some extent underestimates the significance of stability and safety and the different mechanisms that come into play to recover them, such as the processes of anchoring. Castells (1997: 66) also uses the metaphor of anchoring when he refers to the function of memory, places of belonging and social relations to stabilise individuals both psychologically and sociologically: ‘When networks dissolve time and space, people anchor themselves in places and recall their historic memory. When the patriarchal sustainment of personality breaks down, people affirm the transcendent value of family and community, as God’s will.’ Anchoring in social relations may be also visible in Appadurai’s dedication (1996) – ‘For my son Alok, my home in the world’ – in his book on globalisation, sociocultural change and identity. The significance of being grounded in family relations, to be precise in mother–daughter relations, for middle-class American women in the period 1880–1920 has been outlined by Rosenzweig (1993) in The Anchor of My Life. Similarly, in migration studies the terms ‘anchors’ and ‘anchoring’ occur rather sporadically, mainly metaphorically and descriptively (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2016). For instance, Park (2007) distinguishes varied types of transnational identities of migrants that can be anchored in family obligations, market and labour relationships or take the form of complicated class-ethnic identities, when people anchor themselves in diverse transnational, strategically imagined communities as a defensive mechanism. The term anchor is also mentioned in relation to different geographical places which migrants can feel attached to (e.g. Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2009; Silveirinha de Oliveira 2011; Vertovec 2010b). A very interesting example is the study of transnational Thai retirees whose mobility has been depicted as spatially, temporally and infrastructurally (technologically) anchored (Williams et al. 2008). In spite of its theoretical and practical potential, anchoring has not been developed into an analytical concept or a specific theoretical framework, either in migration studies or in broader social theory. The concept of social anchoring is thus proposed here as an analytical tool which makes use of the strength of its founding metaphor and the promising intuitions which it embraces (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2016). The promise is that this can be used as a base for a wider social theory, such as Goffman’s theatrical metaphor (1959). As Lakoff and

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Johnson (1980) indicate, metaphors grounded in everyday experience can help to build abstract and complex concepts. Using a metaphor may allow researchers to look at the research phenomena from a different perspective and to imagine them in a new way. It is of crucial importance when the previous ontological apparatus, with its analytical tools, has been questioned, as in the work of Urry (2000) or Glick Schiller (2003). The strength of metaphor lies in the fact that it draws on a physical experience and evokes emotions, which makes metaphors particularly attention-catching, vital and appealing (Derrida 1982). This potential of metaphors is also employed in politics. Thus, the term ‘anchor baby’, classified as an offensive term in the American Heritage Dictionary (2013), is utilised in the American political debate to denote a child used by migrant parents to increase their chances of becoming American citizens: used as a disparaging term for a child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially when the child’s birthplace is thought to have been chosen in order to improve the mother’s or other relatives’ chances of securing eventual citizenship.

In a similar vein, the term is described by Barrett (2006): anchor baby n. a child born of an immigrant in the United States, said to be a device by which a family can find legal foothold in the US, since those children are automatically allowed to choose American citizenship. Also anchor child, a very young immigrant who will later sponsor citizenship for family members who are still abroad.

The capacity of a founding metaphor to grasp new phenomena, inducing cognitive ‘ferment’, stimulating the imagination and inspiring research, is, however, accompanied by its frequent vagueness and ambiguity. As Turner (1974: 29) states: ‘The danger is, of course, that the more persuasive the root metaphor or archetype, the more chance it has of becoming a self-certifying myth, sealed off from empirical disproof.’ Metaphors are also difficult to change into scientific concepts which are clearly defined and empirically tested. Also in the case of my founding metaphor, it should be pointed out that I am not comparing migrants to vessels in the sense of dehumanised and passive objects but the opposite: my theory emphasises migrants’ needs and agency while the concept of anchoring moves

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beyond the material understanding of anchors, focusing rather on social, cognitive, cultural and spiritual aspects. Bearing in mind these difficulties, through analytical work and empirical research I have developed the concept of anchoring to use the potency of metaphor but overcome its limitations and deficiencies to provide theoretical inspiration and a useful research tool. A working definition of anchoring refers to the process of establishing significant footholds which allow migrants to recover their feelings of safety and restore their socio-psychological stability in new life settings. The anchors people use allow them to locate their place in the world, give form to their own sense of being and provide them with a base for psychological, social and practical functioning (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2016). I argue that the analysis of anchoring is required to understand the processes of adaptation and settling among contemporary migrants. The theory of anchoring focuses on the processes whereby individuals establish major footholds in life, which allows for the identification of sources and mechanisms of recovering stability and security. It gives an opportunity to go beyond the existing concepts, including the predominant but not always adequate integration paradigm. Anchoring represents a new theoretical approach to the analysis of how migrants adapt and function, linking the issues of identity, a psychological need for security and stability, and social emplacement. The proposed approach allows us to overcome the limitations of the concepts of integration (for example, its narrow socio-cultural focus; conservative, essentialist, structural and functionalist assumptions; its political and ideological burden), adaptation (which takes insufficient account of sociological aspects related to relationality, social ties, social order and coherence) and identity (with its overconcentration on subjective and usually verbalised identification). It highlights the role of identity and safety in the adaptation and settling of migrants. In general, anchoring links migrant adaptation, belonging and the processes of homemaking (Ralph and Staeheli 2011) and re-grounding (Ahmed et al. 2003). The proposed approach is informed by the sociological and psychological perspectives, bringing together social, cultural, identity and psychological issues in one framework. It allows us to capture the complexity of adaptation processes in increasingly diverse and changing reality, the processual, uneven and relational character of ‘settlement’

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(understood more as searching for stability rather than putting down roots in a new country) as well as the flexibility of belonging and changeability of anchoring (including the reversibility of anchoring that is un-anchoring). The concept of anchoring underlines a multiplicity of footholds (not only social and cultural, but also cognitive, economic, material, legal, religious and spiritual, habitual and so on) which may provide a base for identity and social emplacement. Different types of anchors can be analytically distinguished. In spite of difficulties in drawing the distinctions between subjective/objective and internal/external, some dimensions of anchoring may be more subjective and internal whereas others are more objective and external. National identification can be an example of the former, while formal citizenship constitutes the latter. Tangible anchors may be legal and institutional (e.g. personal documents, formal legal status), economic (economic assets, consumed goods, types of economic activity), spatial and environmental (such as place of birth, place of residence). The graves of loved ones represent a specific kind of anchors with a large emotional and symbolic load. Other possible tangible anchors may be material objects not regarded as economic resources, such as photos and personal possessions, or body and practices (appearance, bodily capacities, habitual behaviour), which, however, also carry a significant social meaning and emotional weight. The most subjective and internal types of anchors might be those related to identity characteristics and self-concept, individual beliefs and memories. Anchors such as the social and professional ones (e.g. family roles, occupation, being a migrant), a position in a social structure and group belonging (actual and imagined) have a more mixed character. Other types of mixed anchors include cultural ones (related to language, cultural transfers, norms and values) interiorised by individuals. Anchoring highlights various possible (not only social) types of footholds which enable migrants to recover safety and stability and to function in a new country. In this sense, this approach moves beyond social networks; it shifts the focus from relations between people to individuals and their resources and it changes perspective from the structural to the interactional and cognitive. The approach emphasises migrants’ agency in establishing new anchors and flexibility in the usage of existing ones, despite structural constraints and barriers which sometimes hinder and prevent those processes, in accordance

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with Archer’s theory on agency and structure (2003). Migrants can be perceived as agents who actively try to recover their sense of security and stability through establishing and maintaining anchors while operating in the context of certain constraints and opportunities which impact their behaviour. Drawing on Archer (2003), it might also be said that migrants have their own hierarchy of concerns which affects which anchors they value over others and which aspects of anchoring they focus on. Anchors vary in their strength, degree of flexibility and how easily they can be subject to change; for example, beliefs are more easily subject to change than physical constraints or psychological dispositions (Dweck 2008; Lau et al. 1990). Also, social anchors differ in the level of their variability and their role in integration (for instance, family bonds can be less flexible and adaptive than voluntary relations). Among different anchors that can provide foundations for adaptation, I argue that those which play a major role in settling understood as establishing stability and security are of crucial importance. Anchoring also highlights the simultaneity of anchors and their possible transnational character when migrants maintain tangible, cognitive and virtual anchors spanning state borders and connecting migrants to different geographical places as well as unlocalised spaces. Some anchors can be transferred from the country of origin while others need to be transformed or created (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018a). Persistent anchors, which link migrants to the country of origin, might even prevent people from becoming incorporated into a new society while at the same time, for example, stabilising them and being useful resources for adaptation. Thus, the footholds connecting migrants to a host country need to be examined in relation to other anchors which connect them with their countries of origin or anchor them in transnational spaces (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2016). Anchoring corresponds to new approaches to integration which emphasise its complex and multidimensional character (e.g. Bosswick and Heckmann 2006) and its dialectic and multi-layered nature (Bivand Erdal 2013), where more empirically grounded, relational and processual approaches to integration are proposed, such as Paulle and Kalir’s framework (2013) based on the dynamics between the established insiders versus outsiders (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018b). It is useful to rethink the relationship between migration and settlement and shift the focus from processes of migration to wider societal processes

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(Penninx et al. 2008). I argue that the concept of anchoring may help to bridge the divide between the ‘sedentarist’ and the mobility approaches, by capturing people’s attempts to establish relative security and stability, even while on the move, or showing instability and insecurity while migrants looked to be settled and immobile. Morokvasic (2004) interestingly investigated how migrants began to get ‘settled within mobility’, for example, after choosing mobility as a strategy to maintain the quality of life ‘at home’ and/or as a tool for women’s empowerment and agency. Anchoring might be used to analyse this phenomenon as it helps to challenge the temporariness and permanency dichotomy. The concept of anchoring can additionally have practical applications useful for supporting migrants’ adaptation and integration (for example, inspired by the use of anchoring in therapy for cancer sufferers described by Little and his co-researchers (2002)). Moreover, the theoretical and practical significance of the proposed concept seems to go beyond migration studies, and offer potential for it to be employed for the wider problem of individuals’ adaptation to life in complex and changeable reality, particularly in the case of those who have experienced dramatic life changes and/or remain socially disconnected (for example, the homeless, people with disabilities, individuals with health issues). In the last section of the book I will return to the issue of potential practical applications of anchoring to support not only different categories of migrants (including such unsettled and vulnerable groups as refugees) but also other individuals who face overwhelming changes.

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Researching migrants’ anchoring

As mentioned in the introduction, the empirical analyses presented in this book are based on the material gathered in my research conducted in 2014–2015 within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship SAST. In total, 80 individual in-depth interviews and questionnaires were undertaken with 40 post-accession Polish migrants in the UK and 40 post-2004 Ukrainian migrants to Poland legally residing there (see the Appendix, Tables 1 and 2). The participants needed to meet a selection criterion of not having a local spouse or life partner, to exclude those who had already been well established in the receiving societies through their spouses or partners. The interviewees had to be in their 30s and 40s and to have lived in the UK or Poland (respectively) for between one and ten years, based on the assumption that establishing anchors in a new country takes time, so it should not be examined too early, while at the same time the focus should be on intensive processes of anchoring, which can be particularly visible in the first years of migration. The interviewed migrants had to have been resident in Birmingham/Warsaw or surrounding towns (respectively in the West Midlands or Mazovia Province). While both cities and their vicinities represent diverse urban areas, the different scale of diversity in the UK and Poland should be acknowledged. All the Ukrainian participants needed to be legally resident in Poland, to increase comparability between them and the migrants from Poland in the UK, who at the time of the research enjoyed a stable legal status as EU citizens.

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Maximum variation sampling (MVS) was applied to select participants who differed in terms of gender, education, socio-economic position (e.g. professionals, manual workers, entrepreneurs, the homeless and unemployed), sexual orientation and family situation (representing single people, families with children, single parents and couples without children). MVS was used as a purposeful form of sampling to enable the capturing of common patterns that emerge from variation as representing core characteristics (Patton 1990) while also allowing me to explore different positionalities and experiences. In this way the heterogeneity of the researched populations was acknowledged, in accordance with the project’s standpoint regarding contemporary diversity and to facilitate the falsification method (Popper 1959). This allowed internal generalisation alongside the analytic external generalisation of the theory and the possible transferability of theoretical developments to other cases (Maxwell and Chmiel 2014). The study included alternate, cyclical stages of theory building and fieldwork research inspired by the grounded theory approach. However, in contrast to the traditional grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), which avoids pre-conceptualisation and often uses only sensitising concepts to guide data collection, some embryonic theoretical considerations were developed prior to the fieldwork research (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2016). The general theoretical framework drew on my previous empirical research into adaptation and integration of various categories of migrants such as undocumented pre-accession Polish migrants in Belgium, repatriates from Kazakhstan in Poland, Vietnamese and Ukrainian settled migrants in Poland (e.g. Grzymala-Kazlowska 2005, 2015; Grzymala-Kazlowska and Grzymala-Moszczynska 2014) as well as my personal experience of adaptation to host societies (in Belgium and the UK) and crucial life changes, accompanied by the previous analysis of the literature on migrants’ acculturation, adaptation, integration and settlement (e.g. Grzymala-Kazlowska 2008a, 2013a). Since 2008, the metaphor of anchoring has constituted an inspiring idea in my thinking about migrants’ adaptation and settling which has been developed through the SAST study into a research category and analytical concept. Nevertheless, while doing my SAST empirical research, I adopted a perspective based on grounded theory to immerse myself in the studied world and conduct the fieldwork in the most open way, so as to derive findings inductively and build theoretical developments on

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the basis of the empirical research. My aim was to comply with Morse and Field’s (1995) and Bowen’s (2006) guidelines that grounded theory needs to be developed through the systematic collection and thematic analysis of empirical data. Following Charmaz (2006), I treated grounded theory as a comparative and interactive strategy for analysis that makes the method explicit and fosters open-ended development, as an approach which ‘builds a series of checks and refinements into qualitative inquiry through an iterative process of successive analytic and data collection phases of research, each informed by the other and rendered more theoretical’ (Charmaz 2008: 156). Thus, the SAST methodological approach may be characterised by its open, comparative and processual character of theory building through fieldwork research and analytical work. After the initial formulation of the general analytical framework and the designing of provisional research tools (largely relying on minimally structured interviews and observation), I began empirical research among Polish migrants in the UK. The data collection and its analysis were done cyclically, to build theoretical considerations on the basis of findings emerging from empirical data to guide the next stages of empirical research (the study of textual materials). The same theoretical and methodological approach was used for the succeeding fieldwork with migrants from Ukraine in Poland, which led to next steps in theory construction, to use analytical induction in building theoretical generalisations. The theory presented in the book is, thus, grounded in empirical research which allowed for the development and revision of the initial general framework. The project’s predominantly qualitative methodology aimed to explore the processes of anchoring and to understand differences in the footholds related to the positionalities of the migrants interviewed. This included the following aspects: capturing meanings and emotions; examining experiences and positionalities; investigating relationality and multidimensionality; understanding the processuality and dynamics; and exploring uncertainties and ambiguities. In the case of both Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland, fieldwork research started with observation and minimally structured individual in-depth interviews, during which migrants were encouraged to speak freely about their life in relation to the following five general topics: 1) life prior to migration, 2) departure

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to the UK/Poland, 3) the beginning of life abroad, 4) changes in life over time, and 5) current situation and plans for the future. After the minimally structured interviews, a projective technique – the ‘fresh paper’ test – was used, when the interviewees were asked to sketch a spontaneous picture (in the form of a diagram) of their anchors. At that time the concept of anchoring was introduced, with anchors defined as footholds, points of reference, and issues of particular importance in life, which were linked to migrants’ country of origin (Poland/Ukraine) and residence (UK/Poland) and other states they had connections with, to discuss the participants’ present, past and potential anchors. The largely open and minimally structured approach was employed not only to encourage the expression of the diversity of migrant experiences but also to allow the participants to choose what they would say and how they would structure their narratives. This approach also drew on the potential of the interviews as a type of intervention since, according to Honeycutt (1995), interviews about personal life and family relations may be treated as ‘informal, unorthodox, lay interventions’. Hutchinson, Wilson and Wilson (1994) point to such possible effects of qualitative interviews (especially in health studies) as: 1) serving as a catharsis, 2) providing self-acknowledgement and validation, 3) contributing to a sense of purpose, 4) increasing self-awareness, 5) granting a sense of empowerment, 6) promoting healing, and 7) giving voice to the voiceless and disenfranchised. The SAST interviews had similar functions in making my participants more aware of the footholds they had, their role in their life and what adaptive anchors could be more developed (e.g. to facilitate their belonging to and integration in a new society). Due to the topic of the SAST project and its methodology, my interviews could play a similar role to the above-mentioned interventions by encouraging the migrants to reflect on their footholds and constraints and express emotions and fears, giving them a kind of recognition. The important feature of the interviews was the fact that they were undertaken by me – an experienced researcher with a psychological background – or, in the case of the interviews with Ukrainian migrants, by other experienced researchers under my supervision, ensuring that interviewees’ potential distress was minimised. The research was conducted with particular sensitivity and guided by ethical

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guidelines (Corbin and Morse 2003) and complied with the ethical requirements of the University of Birmingham and the European Commission. The interviews were conducted in Polish (in the case of a few interviews with Ukrainian migrants some minor parts were additionally translated into Ukrainian or Russian), recorded, transcribed, and coded using a qualitative analysis software, employing substantive (Kelle 2014) and theoretical coding (Thornberg and Charmaz 2014). The quotations included in this book were selected on the basis of their relevance and succinctness. They were translated into English as literally as possible to reproduce the speakers’ words. The interviews were followed by projective tests (underused in previous migration research), such as the sentence-completion test and a questionnaire gathering socio-demographic and migration data as well as measuring the self-assessed levels of adaptation, integration, life problems and satisfaction (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018a). Adaptation and integration were respectively defined as the level of adjustment to the migration and life in the UK (Poland), and participation in different domains of British (Polish) society and maintenance of social relations with British people (Poles) outside work; on a scale from 1, ‘not adapted/integrated at all’, to 9, ‘adapted/integrated very well’. The material from the questionnaire was coded in the software and analysed as supplementary data. The interviews and questionnaires were accompanied by ethnographic research (fieldwork observations of gatherings of Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland in public spaces such as ethnic churches, cafés and events, school yards). In addition, the analysis of texts from Internet forums and blogs by Polish/Ukrainian migrants provided ‘unguided’ and naturally occurring materials (Silverman 2005). The analysis of Internet texts allowed the use of non-reactive methods, where the researchers did not influence the production of content. However, one must acknowledge that the production of such original texts is also limited by the rules of conduct and characteristics of a given platform (Babbie 2001). As Jones and Alony (2008) point out, writing blogs might be the result of various motivations including a need for self-expression, recognition, social contact, learning and sharing knowledge, documentation and artistic activity. Although autocreation and presentation of the self might play a vital role in the social media activity of

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some individuals, interviewees’ self-presentation can also have an impact on what participants say while being interviewed, so this problem should not preclude using the Internet material when it is adequately handled. On the other hand, the Internet might facilitate spontaneity in expressing views, due to a stronger feeling of anonymity and less social pressure (Bargh et al. 2002). It might foster openness while at the same time giving a feeling of privacy (Ben-Ze’ev 2003) Selecting the textual material was a multi-stage process. After the identification of blogs and video-blogs (vlogs) run by Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland, a sample of blogs was selected on the basis of the following criteria: their authors needed to be Polish migrants in the UK or Ukrainian migrants in Poland presumed to reside there for between one and ten years, be aged 30–49, not having host country partners or spouses and writing about their personal experiences related to adaptation to life in the host country over the course of at least one year and posting substantial pieces of text. Although researchers such as Denzin (1999) insisted that the Internet contains content belonging to public discourse which may be accessed and studied without consent and ‘The analysis of Internet archives is not human subject research if a researcher does not record the identity of the message poster and if the researcher can legally and easily access such archives’ (Walther 2002: 207), others discuss ethical issues related to this type of research (see, for example, Convery and Cox 2012; Eynon et al. 2008; Roberts 2015). In addition, professional bodies such as the Association of Internet Researchers provide rather general frameworks for reflective ethical judgement than clear guidelines (Franzke et al. 2020). Therefore, SAST obtained consent from the authors of the selected blogs to use their texts for analysis and to quote them in my papers, following a more cautious approach represented by authors such as Kozinetz (2015), who has developed netnography. Two of the bloggers (one Polish migrant in the UK and one Ukrainian migrant in Poland) requested that the source of their texts were mentioned when their blogs are cited. In the case of two other blogs – one by a migrant from Poland and one by a migrant from Ukraine – after obtaining their consent, the material from their blogs was coded and used in a way to secure its anonymity, while all comments on forums were only analysed in general terms and not cited.

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After the identification of popular and open forums and discussion groups (accessible to other Internet users) where predominantly actual migrants (not potential or former ones) shared their thoughts on living abroad, those with the most relevant content (related to adaptation to life abroad) were selected and their providers were approached for consent. After receiving the consent, the SAST text analysis was based on material from the websites: MojaWyspa.co.uk [MyIsland.co.uk], polsha24.com [Poland24.com], chemodan [suitcase] and texts published on the Facebook groups for Poles in the UK and Ukrainians in Poland in 2015. In the case of both blogs and forums or group discussions, posts constituted units of analysis which were coded in the software in accordance with the same coding frame system as used for the interviews with the migrants. Posts from Polish forums, groups and blogs were coded and analysed in the original language (mainly Polish), whereas posts by Ukrainian migrants in Ukrainian or Russian were translated into Polish before coding. In order to protect the anonymity of users, direct citation of the Internet material is purposely limited and posts are cited in this book without providing any names, nicknames or identifiable details and are only translated into English to not permit identification through a simple Googling of the quotation. In addition, a substantial part of the research consisted of systematic autobiographical research based on a research diary kept throughout the whole project and accompanied by participant observation, thanks to my position as a migrant myself and my daily contact with various groups of Polish migrants living in the UK. Autobiographical research enabled me to include some insight and first-hand experience in adapting to life and settling down in the UK, so I could better understand the complexity of people’s feelings, relations and practices. This was accompanied by the use of Bourdieu’s reflective approach to take into account my positionality, the factors which could influence me (e.g. the shared ethnicity and my similar migration status in the case of Poles in the UK) and constraints (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Apart from the reflection on my own positionality, the quality of the study and its consistency were ensured by employing all four types of triangulation (of data, theoretical perspectives, methods and researchers) (Denzin 2006) and getting regular feedback on the research process, empirical findings and theoretical developments from other researchers

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representing different positions, approaches and methodologies, as recommended by Seale (1999). In line with Morrow’s (2005) key transcendent standards (not associated with specific paradigms) such as social validity, recognition of subjectivity and reflexivity, adequacy of data and interpretation were employed to increase the trustworthiness or credibility of the research. As Babbie (2001) highlights, qualitative fieldwork may provide better measures than survey or experimental research because entering the researched worlds can be an effective method of getting real insight into the diversity and complexity of experiences. This also gives a voice to different kinds of participants (e.g. those not used to surveys), allowing us to understand their categories and reconstruct their meanings. The multi-method, multistage and multi-researcher comparative methodology of the project was beneficial for its reliability related to repeat study research, which is particularly challenging in qualitative studies (Babbie 2001). This multi-method qualitative approach encompassing the minimally structured interviews, the questionnaire with open and closed questions (including projective ones), the observation and the autobiographical research and the textual analysis allowed me to refocus attention from the etic perspective predominant in the integration debate to the emic perspective by re-engaging with migrants’ own senses of identity, belongings and meanings of settlement and embracing a diversity of experiences. Due to the fact that the research was undertaken with migrants and included collection and processing of sensitive personal data, it was important to safeguard participants’ rights and welfare. The research received full ethical approval from the University of Birmingham Ethical Review Committee and complied with the ethical guidelines of the UK research councils and was overseen by the European Commission’s research body. Informed consent was obtained from all the participants after explaining the aims and objectives of the research, who was carrying it out and financing it, and what were the interviewees’ rights (e.g. confidentiality, anonymity and the possibility of withdrawing from the study). Sensitive personal data such as addresses were not collected. Personal information was kept separate from the research data in a secure place. People from vulnerable groups, such as children and young people under 18 years, those with cognitive impairments, in severe distress or with serious health or well-being issues were not

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interviewed. Before being interviewed, the participants were paid a modest incentive (respectively different in the UK and Poland) for their participation in the research to compensate for their time (the fee was paid in cash except for a few homeless participants in the UK who received supermarket vouchers at the request of the nongovernmental organisation (NGO) SIFA Fireside, a Birmingham NGO offering a drop-in and other services to vulnerably housed and homeless people, who facilitated my contact with the interviewees). The research findings are presented in a manner such that individual participants cannot be identified, using changed names and personal details or omitting them. The SAST project used the comparative case studies method involving the analysis and synthesis of similarities, differences and patterns across the two selected cases: Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland, which is beneficial for understanding and explaining how different contexts influence outcomes, which may be also useful to inform practice and policy (Goodrick 2014). This policy and practice potential constitutes an advantage in the context of my study focused on migrants’ adaptation and ‘settlement’ and conditions which influence people’s behaviours and identities. Using the comparative methodology facilitated the development of the concept of anchoring, since it allows for the identification of commonalities and peculiarities as well as testing theoretical developments in two different contexts. The comparative approach enabled me to examine similarities and differences between the two selected migrant groups functioning in different contexts. Polish migrants in the UK, before the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016 enjoyed a stable legal and institutional position (including social security) under EU regulations, although they faced the challenge of living in a more distinct (and stratified) society in linguistic and cultural terms. This distinctiveness was related to both the linguistic distance between Polish and English, and the superdiversity encountered in many urban spaces in the contemporary UK, which was new for migrants coming from Polish society, which is relatively ethnically homogeneous (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore 2019). Migrants from Ukraine in Poland, while residing in a more similar socio-cultural environment (with the relative similarity of the language), experienced a less certain and stable legal and institutional position.

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Using a comparative methodology – in spite of the mentioned benefits – also brought challenges and problems. Apart from the dissimilar wider legal, institutional and cultural contexts of the studies in the UK and Poland, the research had a different dynamic in the two places so the common general research framework and tools had to be slightly adapted in the two countries. A major dissimilarity was related to the language of the interview: all Polish participants in the UK chose to use their mother tongue, whereas Ukrainian migrants were predominantly interviewed in the language of the receiving society – that is, Polish. The principles of grounded theory (regarding conducting minimally structured interviews and not introducing the concept of anchoring until the end of the ‘free-style’ part of the interview) were more consistently applied in the research with Poles in the UK, where I conducted all the fieldwork research myself, than in the study with Ukrainian migrants in Poland, where the data was gathered by my collaborators. Certain categories of migrants were underrepresented or missing among Ukrainian migrants in Poland in comparison to Polish migrants in the UK (e.g. the homeless and unemployed), despite efforts to recruit such participants. However, it must be pointed out that there were also far fewer homeless or unemployed Ukrainian migrants in Poland than the same categories of Poles in the UK (Kaczmarczyk 2015b). The more specific features of both cases will be described in depth at the beginning of each case study in Chapters 4 and 5 before conducting qualitative comparative analysis, as recommended by Goodrick (2014).

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4 From mobility to anchoring: Ukrainian migrants in Poland

This chapter attempts to theorise flexible adaptation and complex settlement processes among migrants from Ukraine in Poland through the lens of the concept of anchoring. I argue that traditional categories such as ‘integration’, ‘assimilation’ or ‘settlement’ are not sufficient to capture the ways of functioning and experience of the Ukrainian migrants studied in Poland. A similar conclusion was drawn by Drbohlav and Dzurova (2007), who noted that the Ukrainian migrants they researched could be characterised by their specific transnational pattern: that is, making a living through continuous regular movement across national borders, not settled but keeping strong ties with Ukraine, so it was difficult to link this mode of operation to Berry’s (1992) and Portes and Zhou’s (1993) conceptual frameworks of integration and assimilation. The concept of anchoring allows an understanding of the simultaneity, temporality and flexibility of Ukrainian migrants’ attachments as well as the complexity and changeability of their ‘settlement’. It helps to capture their ‘fluid’ migration, ‘drifting’ lives and dynamic identities in addition to the intricate mechanisms of settling down, in terms of searching for relative stability and security, rather than putting down roots. This approach emphasises the psychological and emotional aspects of establishing footholds and the process of anchoring in the context of structural constraints and opportunities. Particularly in this context, the concept of anchoring gives insight into migrants’ unsettled lives and illuminates ways of coping with

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temporariness and developing footholds to recover a sense of stability and safety. The adaptation and settling of Ukrainian migrants is discussed in relation to lasting temporariness linked to the nexus of legal constraints, cultural and geographical proximity enabling individuals to cross identity and cultural boundaries, as well as enabling their spatial circulation and maintaining various simultaneous attachments and links with the country of origin and the host state. These complex and dynamic processes of adaptation and settling are also influenced by Ukrainian migrants’ multiple and fluid identities and their ambiguous position in Poland, constructed and perceived by them as neither strangers nor the same; neither on the move nor settled. The adaptation and settling of Ukrainian migrants in Poland in the context of persistent mobility In spite of various studies concerning Ukrainian migrants in Poland, research to date has predominantly concentrated on the issues of economic activity, social networks and mixed marriages (i.e. Fihel et al. 2007; Gorny and Kepinska 2004; Gorny et al. 2010; GrzymalaKazlowska 2008b; Kindler 2011). The previous studies have rarely focused on socio-psychological challenges experienced by migrants nor examined the complexity of adaptation and settling beyond the rather separated frameworks of circulation, integration, assimilation and transnationalism. The temporary – often circular – form of migration of Ukrainian citizens to Poland in the period of systemic transition following the end of the Soviet Union was described with the aid of the concept of ‘incomplete migration’ (Okolski 2001). This has framed migration of Eastern Europeans since the 1990s as a temporary international movement without resettlement between countries, where migrants sojourned in host states, usually not complying to administrative rules, and worked in ‘shadow zones’ for the benefit of households in their countries of origin, while taking advantage of economic disparities between European countries combined with demand for migrant labour in the secondary job sector of more industrialised societies. However, over the years we have witnessed the increase and diversification of migration, the transformation of patterns and blurring of lines between different types of mobility from Ukraine to Poland. Circular economic migrants have been joined by settlement migrants,

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professionals operating in transnational spaces, numerous students (sometimes partly of Polish origin) and recently by Ukrainian citizens fleeing from their country’s political turbulence and violence and seeking protection abroad. The divided and multiple attachments of contemporary Ukrainian migrants as well as the complexity of their adaptation strategies have also begun to be analysed from the transnational perspective which acknowledges that migrants keep transnational connections with both countries of origin and destination, including family, economic, social, organisational, religious, political ties which span nation-state boundaries (Glick Schiller 2003), and live in transnational social spaces that cross geographical, cultural and political borders (Faist 2000). For example, Fedyuk (2011) conceptualised contemporary labour migration from Ukraine to Italy as a form of transnational, gendered and crossgenerational project to demonstrate how migrants deal practically, emotionally and cognitively with their families from a distance. The notion of ‘liquid migration’ could also be applied to Ukrainian migrants in Poland to understand individualised paths of repeated migration in an ongoing search for better opportunities (Engbersen 2011), showing that migrants may remain detached from their countries of origin and current and past places of residence (Engbersen et al. 2013) and adopt a strategy of intentional unpredictability (Eade et al. 2006). In the case of Ukrainian migrants in Poland, particular temporariness resulting from circular migration has been observed as an effect of the combination of legal constraints and geographical proximity (Gorny and Kindler 2016). These phenomena pose a challenge to the established categories such as ‘integration’ or ‘assimilation’, which seem in this context insufficient to capture the diversity, complexity and fluidity of contemporary migrants’ lives, and inadequate to understand the processes of their adaptation and settling. In addition to the character of Ukrainian migration, the cultural proximity as well as the ambiguous perception and position of Ukrainian migrants in Poland contribute to the difficulty in applying the integration paradigm. Ukrainians are not only seen as relatively similar to Poles but also as relatively unproblematic and desirable migrants (as the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS) study shows (Kowalczuk 2015)). This is due to their cultural closeness and the demand for their labour in the secondary sector, particularly in the farming and social care sectors, and the predicted depopulation of Poland due to low fertility

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rates and substantial emigration. A comparison of the results of the 2013 representative survey studies in Poland and Ukraine showed that in the past dozen years contacts between Poles and Ukrainians intensified and social distance considerably decreased, with Poles and Ukrainians predominantly believing that they are similar in terms of values and attitudes (Fomina et al. 2013). This is reflected in a special status in terms of migration policy in Poland which migrants from Ukraine have been enjoying since 1989. After a relatively open general admission policy, stricter regulations were introduced in the Act on Foreigners of 1997 (Lodzinski 1999) and then in the Act of 2003 introducing a visa requirement instead of free movement for citizens of Ukraine. Although the policy was tightened further when Poland became a part of the Schengen Area in 2007, certain categories of foreigners, including co-ethnics from neighbourhood countries such as Ukraine, the inhabitants of borderlands, or citizens of Ukraine in demand by Polish employers were granted special opportunities to enter Poland for work and study. These groups were given the advantage of a simplified employment procedure and granted special visas to undertake employment in Poland. Another special provision allowing Ukrainian citizens to reside in Poland is represented by the Karta Polaka described in the Introduction. The card gives such benefits as the right to take up employment and economic activity in Poland, and access to free education. Amendments introduced in 2016 gave further privileges to cardholders including: a permanent residence permit, special financial benefits for maintenance (up to nine months) and the opportunity for naturalisation after one year of residence in Poland. On the other hand, in spite of cultural similarities, historical and geopolitical proximity, a social distance and power asymmetry impact Ukrainians’ adaptation and position in Polish society (GrzymalaKazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). Yuriy’s1 words illustrate the perceived closeness of the two societies coexisting with a kind of uncertainty and confusion about migrants’ position ‘in-between’: I did not have any depression since I left [Ukraine], longing for the homeland, because I come from a place close to the border with Poland – about 400 kilometres and I do not make a secret that I can go home 1  All names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

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even every two months for a weekend […] It is worthwhile to mention that I did not feel such a difference between Ukraine and Poland because – as known – the culture is very close, the languages are very similar, cuisine is very alike, people are similar so there is not such a difference […] As I have said – there is not such the difference – I do not notice. Generally, I have fit in here. I cannot say that I am an alien. I am not a stranger. I am not a countryman and I am not a stranger – I am someone in-between. When I say that I am from Ukraine, my name is Yuriy, there is such a noticeable distance in some cases, but if these people start to continue a conversation with me, they feel, hear that I really speak Polish as they do – in general there is no difference. (PL01/m/partner in PL/8y)2

This ‘in-betweenness’ pushed Yuriy to anchor himself emotionally and symbolically in Ukraine, as well as grounding himself practically in the life and activities of Ukrainian migrants in Poland, while feeling distant from Polish society. As Hormel and Southworth (2006) also demonstrated, Ukrainian migrants choose Poland as their destination not only because of geographical proximity and easy transport but also because of the common cultural heritage (e.g. the Slavic language and a kind of religious similarity). The long-lasting contact between the two nations, the language and relative religious similarity, the parallel socio-cultural characteristics and shared historical experiences contribute to the predominant construction of Ukrainians as relatively close to Polish society (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). However, the relationship between the two nations is still, to some extent, overshadowed by historical conflicts – Polish dominance in Ukrainian territories in the past, and negative stereotypes of Ukrainians in Poland originating from the Second World War period (particularly related to the killings of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army) – and by the negative perception of the post-Soviet countries which have not modernised and Europeanised themselves to the same degree as Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. Although CBOS studies indicated an increase in positive attitudes towards Ukrainians 2  In the symbols for interviews, ‘PL’ stands for Poland, ‘w’ for woman, ‘m’ for man, ‘y/m’ for years/months of residence in Poland. For example: ‘PL01/m/ partner in PL/8y’ represents a male (from Ukraine) who has been living with a partner in Poland for eight years.

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since the Orange Revolution (Konieczna-Salamatin 2015), asymmetry in mutual perception may still be observed, with the prevalence of a critical view of the Ukrainian state and ambivalent attitudes towards Ukrainian society and Ukrainians in Poland. A general positive perception of Poles and the Polish state in Ukraine can be explained by Poland’s support for pro-democratic, pro-European changes in Ukraine, advocating for Ukraine in the EU (Fomina et al. 2013) and supporting Ukraine in the Russia–Ukraine conflict (Kucharczyk et al. 2015). As was apparent in the migrants’ narratives, Poland for them was associated with the West, higher standards of living and values regarded as European (i.e. civil liberties, transparency, obeying the law) as, for instance, explained by Olena: ‘Here [in Poland], it seems to me, it is the more civilised West, there is such a more civilised attitude towards business’ (PL38/w/single/5y) and Roksana: ‘I came [to Poland] and everything surprised me that it’s all so European, not like at home’ (PL07/w/husband in PL/4y). Ukrainians appreciate the effects of the Polish political transformation in 1989 and the country’s subsequent modernisation (Fomina et al. 2013). Meanwhile, analysis of the Polish press and survey results from 1993 to 2003 demonstrated a mixture of feelings of familiarity and similarity on the one hand and distance on the other, together with paternalistic and patronising attitudes towards Ukrainian migrants and their country of origin (GrzymalaKazlowska 2007). In addition, the majority of the SAST interviewees (28 out of 40) came from western Ukraine, which had particular cultural and historical connections with the Polish state, where a Polish minority lives and where the most noticeable cross-border relations and exchanges take place. Despite increased contacts since the early 1990s, direct and personal relations have still not been frequent (Fomina et al. 2013), but there have been substantial cultural flows between the two countries from before 1989, including access to Polish radio or television in western Ukraine, as mentioned by the interviewees. Another key aspect of the proximity perceived by the participants was language comprehension. According to data from representative research by the Institute of Public Affairs in 2013, 41 per cent of Ukrainian citizens claimed that they could speak or understand Polish (Fomina et al. 2013). It should be noted, however, that language proficiency varies substantially across different regions and generations, with older residents of western Ukraine more often claiming to be

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able to communicate in Polish, which was related not only to their having Polish roots or personal contacts with Poles, but also to their access to Polish media and books. The level of spoken Polish among the interviewees was quite high – 23 participants evaluated it as ‘rather good’ and 13 as ‘very good’, with only four perceiving their Polish-language skills as ‘rather poor’, which was largely confirmed during the research carried out in Polish (with only a few exceptions). The participants saw Polish as the most significant factor for adaptation in their life in Poland (38 out of 40 perceived it as ‘very important’ or ‘important’) although the Polish language was described by the interviewees as the biggest challenge, especially after arriving in Poland, despite the similarity of the Slavic languages. As Orina recalled: It was very difficult, morally hard that I could not say, I could not speak, it was horrible. It seemed to me that similar languages and when I was going I thought that it would be easy, that I would understand and I could communicate and people would understand me but it did not turn out to be true. When someone is talking slowly, you can understand in general what is meant but not in details. But when somebody is talking fast, you do not understand anything, even in general and it is bad. But I did not have opportunity to learn [Polish] when I arrived, I needed a lot of money so I worked a lot. (PL19/w/ single/adult son in Italy/3y)

Communication problems were experienced even by migrants such as Yuriy who had learned Polish prior to their migration: Funny. As I have said I had been learning Polish for a long time, I passed as one of the best in Polish language and culture in Ukraine. I went to Olympics in Polish so I thought that I knew Polish quite well. And when I came to Wroclaw, I was shocked because I did not understand anything. The first two weeks were very hard because I had not had any contact with everyday language and I did not know what it means. I did not know how to construct basic phrases related to going to shop or getting to somewhere. Despite I read Mickiewicz, Sienkiewicz and listened to etc. but in relation to practical things it was useless. (PL20/m/single/5y)

Unlike Orina, Yuriy came to Poland for study, so he also needed to become familiar with an academic and specialist language, which constituted a particular challenge (see also Brzozowski and Pedziwiatr

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2015). In the case of students, the acquisition of Polish was facilitated by a one-year language programme before the proper study. Noticeable regional differences in knowledge of Polish are related to the history of Ukraine and reflected in its ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity as well as the complex nature of Ukrainian identities. According to Taras, Filippova and Pobeda (2004), Ukraine encompasses three main ethno-cultural groups: Ukrainophone Ukrainians, Russophone Ukrainians and Russophone Russians, while Shulman (2004) distinguishes two main forms of national identity: ‘Ethnic Ukrainian’ encompassing the idea that Ukraine is essentially a European nation, and the other incorporating Soviet and Pan-Slavic Russian-speaking identities and representing ‘Eastern Slavic’ nationalism. As a consequence, the ethnic and linguistic identities of Ukrainian migrants might be mixed, fuzzy and dynamic reflecting the diversity of their attachments and family and friend networks, as in the case of Olena: When I was in this [Polish] association, I felt such a feeling, it was related to Polish patriotism because I could not replace this with anything. Once I wondered whether I am Russian or Ukrainian. I contemplated this for a long time and I could not decide who I am. And I decided that maybe I am Russian because I speak Russian. But then Polish origin was added. I started thinking of my Polish origin, going there [to the Polish association] and there was Polishness and Ukrainianness and I could not decide who I am. I do not feel affiliation to anybody, I do not have the feeling of identification which is maybe a fact because I do not feel that I am a Russian, I am a Ukrainian or I am Polish, world citizen. (PL38/w/single/5y)

This quote illustrates not only a kind of uncertainty and hybridity of identity but also an ambiguous linguistic identification in a predominantly bilingual society (Kulyk 2006). As we can see in this passage, migration was interrelated with changes and confusions of identity. This complexity visible in the narratives collected was, however, less reflected in the data from the SAST questionnaire, where people tended to indicate one dominant or – as they might think – expected identification in spite of multiple options. As many as 33 defined themselves as Ukrainians, five identified as Polish, one declared as both Ukrainian and Polish and another could not tell (GrzymalaKazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). Mixed affiliations remained more noticeable in the case of attachments to countries – the majority of

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the participants (21) felt most attached to Ukraine, nine to Poland whereas ten indicated simultaneous attachment to both countries. Similarly, 18 interviewees perceived only Ukraine as their home while 13 of them regarded Poland as such and six participants thought of both countries as their home. This shows that some interviewees felt relatively settled in Poland while at the same time keeping their clear Ukrainian identity. The migrants’ accounts demonstrated that migration led to a stronger realisation of their own ethnicity. This could result in the reinforcement of Ukrainian identity, as in the case of Yulia, who after moving to Poland began to be preoccupied with her Ukrainianness and her moral obligations to the homeland: At the beginning when I came [to Poland], when in Ukraine there is a kind of routine, you do not think about it, but when I came at the beginning, I felt a great pity that I am not … there is something happening in Ukraine. In Ukraine I would not think about it […]. [In Poland] I started to think a lot about some Ukrainian problems, in general about the history. […] and then I started take some part, but it was probably later. […] When I left [Ukraine], I somehow started to understand that there probably something was left, whatever I did right or not? It was exactly whether right or not, about this Ukrainianness that I left and somehow dumped it although in Ukraine actually, I guess I would not think about this. (PL05/w/partner in UA/5y2m)

The growth of Ukrainian patriotism and civic nationalism, defined as affection for the Ukrainian state as a political entity and increase in civic engagement, had been prompted by the Euromaidan, Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine (Kuzio 2015; Riabchuk 2015), as highlighted by Vasyl: ‘I never perceived myself as a patriot before Maidan. I lived in this country. There was always something not right in our Ukraine but I did not feel proud that I come from Ukraine. But now I just think that I have to do something good for this country’ (PL40/m/family in PL and UA/2y9m). On the other hand, the interviewed migrants clearly displayed a prevailing orientation towards Polish language and culture and establishing ties with Poles. Relative cultural proximity could contribute to the fact that the interviewees self-evaluated their adaptation and integration in Poland relatively highly, with respective means of 7.75 and 7.25 (on a scale from 1 to 9 where 1 meant ‘I did not adapt/integrate at

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all’, and 9 ‘I adapted/integrated very well’). Overall, 35 of all the 40 participants were satisfied or rather satisfied with their sense of security in Poland. The participants regarded as principal values: the Polish language, ties to Ukraine and contacts with Poles (respectively 38, 37 and 36 interviewees described them as ‘very important’ or ‘important’). At the same time, they perceived as less important the maintenance of contacts with compatriots living in Poland (30), speaking Ukrainian (29) and observing Ukrainian tradition (24), which might be partly attributed to participants’ endeavours to present themselves as ‘good migrants’ to predominantly Polish researchers. European Union (33) and Ukrainian citizenships (28) were relatively more important to the participants than Polish citizenship (24). Mobility, lasting temporariness and drifting lives In spite of a need for security and stability, long-lasting temporariness and unsettlement featured noticeably in the case of the Ukrainian participants. Geographical proximity accompanied by the existing migration regime facilitated a temporary and circular migration over a more durable one. Legal statuses available for Ukrainian migrants (i.e. visas, temporary or permanent permits) provided different opportunities and constraints in terms of rights and time perspectives (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). Short-term visas (up to one year) issued for the purpose of study, employment or selfemployment allowed migrants to reside in Poland for the period of the visa, take up employment (providing they held the appropriate type of visa and either employment work permit or right for employment without permission) or run certain types of business. Migrants with short-term visas might study (providing they had the correct type of visa) but had to cover the costs of education, possess health insurance in order to access public health care and could not benefit from social care provision. Temporary residence permits were issued for a period of one to three years if migrants proved their need to reside in Poland for employment, business or study as well as showing that they could make a living and had health insurance and a place to live. Apart from the duration, the main difference in the visas was that migrants possessing temporary residence permits could be reunited with families after two years in Poland. However, the permit might be cancelled if the reason for issuing it no longer applied. A permanent

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residence permit was issued for an indefinite time (although it might be withdrawn for security reasons) to those who were of Polish descent or possessed the Karta Polaka and wanted to settle permanently in Poland, or had been married to Polish citizens for at least three years, as well as to those who had been living legally in Poland for five years. The permanent residence permit gave migrants full access to the job market, public education, health and social care, together with the opportunity for family reunion; thus it provided the most stable and secure (apart from citizenship) long-term life conditions for settling and, at least, institutional inclusion. In spite of migrants’ actual long-term residence in Poland, the unstable legal statuses prevailing among participants contributed to their feelings of uncertainty and lasting temporariness as well as their ‘makeshift life’. Although all the interviewees were legally resident in Poland, only three out of 40 had a permanent residence permit, while 17 held a temporary permit and as many as 20 had only short-term visas (the latter including six participants with the Karta Polaka). In a longer perspective, 18 participants wanted to apply for Polish citizenship, 12 did not, while ten had not decided, with some from the two latter groups highlighting the benefits of short-term visas, as Roksana explained: ‘It is more convenient for me to come here with visas. Half a year later I am taking a year to avoid waiting in a corridor. When one year passes I have to wait again six months at home and this year covers this half a year and I again apply and come’ (PL07/w/husband in PL/4y3m). Roksana rationalised her behaviour as an accepted, easier and less expensive way to achieve her goals in comparison to applying for a residence card, which involves paying annual taxes even if one does not work in Poland for some months, in order to meet the requirements for the permit extension. Legal instability, the need to deal with bureaucratic procedures, difficulties with securing legal status and legal employment in Poland were among the most apparent problems listed by the interviewees, as Ivan explained: For a migrant every day here changes something. What was yesterday, it has changed today. On Friday I thought that everything will be fine and then … Friday in the morning everything was fine, but in the evening it turned out that I must apply again for a residence permit, look for work. I do not have time to think of this, every day is a survival […] For example my passport expired so I needed to get a new one in a consulate on Monday. I have such a life that I cannot plan. I



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cannot plan my stay for longer, maybe two or three days in advance. (PL26/m/wife and child in PL, 3 children in UA/1y2m)

The list of general challenges also included: language difficulties, problems with access to health care (e.g. high costs of private services), negative stereotypes of Ukrainians in Poland and migrants’ low self-esteem. Migrants’ precarious situation in the job market in Poland manifested itself in the fact that nine out of 40 were working illegally, in addition to another six having only partly regulated contracts with employers. However, some interviewees had experienced even greater uncertainty and temporariness in the job market before they came to Poland. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was followed by years of political instability, high levels of corruption and crisis of state institutions (Lapshyna and Düvell 2015). The economic crisis in the mid-1990s led to a rise in unemployment, delays in payments, reduced wages and deterioration in the standard of living (Hormel and Southworth 2006); the changing structure of the Ukrainian labour market resulted in the decline of some occupations, the growth of the informal economy and the worsening of working conditions (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). Prior to migration, 13 of the interviewees had only casual jobs (e.g. working illegally as petty traders or kitchen helpers) and three were unemployed. Twenty participants gave economic reasons as the main motive for their migration, while 11 came to Poland to study and the rest displayed motives other than economic or education (e.g. family reunion, desire to change life, lifestyle aspirations). The lack of job prospects and the instability in Ukraine could combine to push some of the participants to migrate, as in Yuriy’s case: Usually it was illegal work or a partial employment for the minimum wage declared by the state and the rest [of the money] you got in an envelope. An employer could always cheat you in some way, do not pay you the remaining money. In general, I realised this after two months of work and then I had a possibility to go to Poland for a scholarship and finally I decided to go. (PL01/m/partner in PL/8y)

The economic hardship especially affected women, particularly single mothers, because they were more likely to be pushed out of the state sector and less likely to get jobs in private companies. At the same time they had more care responsibilities due to shrinking welfare provision (Solari 2010), meaning that they often needed to

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combine caregiving roles and breadwinning (Zhurzhenko 2001). This contributed to migration, especially when economic adversity and politico-institutional instability coexisted with difficult personal circumstances, including conflicts and abuse within families, as described by Oksana: To be honest, it was a bit personal. I could not reconcile with my husband at home because of money since I earned little and there was always shortage of money for something. And then I decided that I would go abroad. If everyone else can try to earn, I also can. […] I applied for a passport and firstly went to pick strawberries. It was supposed to be just a one-off – to go and earn for something. I needed one thing. And that would have been it. […] And then I went abroad with my acquaintances. (PL28/w/family in UA/8y)

In cases similar to Oksana’s, migration to Poland was preceded by painful experiences of difficult marital relations or breakup. A number of the other participants used migration to try to detach themselves from negative factors. The above quotation also shows the importance of social networks in migration from Ukraine to Poland, providing migrants with practical support, information, job offers and accommodation. Networks were particularly significant in the domestic work sector – especially in the case of the care sector – where 12 of the participants were employed and where jobs are offered on the basis of trust and thanks to references, and where a rotation system is needed not only because of legal constraints (e.g. visa requirements) but also due to the physically and emotionally demanding work (Kindler 2011). Thus Halyna, who worked as a carer for elderly Alzheimer’s sufferers, said: ‘I have such a person who replaces me so that we change one with another because it also suits her since she does not want to be [here] all the time and this is so psychologically difficult to work without a break because with this Alzheimer’s disease sometimes I think that I am going mad’ (PL14/w/single, child in PL/3y). Fedyuk (2009) points to the psychological implications of work in an informal care sector where migrants have to look after elderly and terminally ill people and face uncertainty related to the patient’s possible death leading to a loss of job and home, which is accompanied by remorse on the migrant’s part for leaving their own parents and children behind in Ukraine. Working in the self-organised rotation system, as Halyna did, also

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occurs in other sectors such as the construction industry and petty trade, due to their seasonal character and legal constraints. Circular migration between Ukraine and Poland, although it could be a permanent feature of migrants’ lives, was particularly noticeable in the first period of their migration to Poland, as Borys’s words illustrate: ‘It is difficult to say because, exactly, I cannot point to any particular moment that I arrived because I came and went and came again, so it was so blurred’ (PL35/m/wife and child in PL, child in UK/5y). In the case of some interviewees, settlement in Poland was preceded by internal migration within Poland and previous temporary stays in other Polish locations or multiple migrations to different countries (e.g. Spain, Finland, the UK, Israel, the Czech Republic). Circulation encompassed changes of work – also in terms of occupation and types of jobs – and the recurring problem of moving house. Lasting temporariness could be related to the avoidance of material but also cognitive and emotional anchoring, illustrated by Dimitr’s account: It means I have always followed such a principle that I do everything without fanaticism, so I am not bound to anything, nothing makes me stay. I have got used to, I changed place of living a few times and simple something is today, something will be at this place [tomorrow], so I do not have any attachments to a place, to something and I did not have [them]. (PL24/m/wife in PL/3y)

This could result in a lack of long-term plans, which might be a part of the strategy of ‘fluid’ migration and intentional unpredictability. Nadiya highlighted not only her inability to determine the length of her stay abroad but also a changeable situation in Poland, where she avoided anchoring: Honestly, I did not think that I would be here so long. I came for one year. But now there is my daughter. […] And I have decided to let my daughter study here and then I calculated costs and think that after one month there [working in Ukraine] I would not have money for her accommodation. […] So now I say [I will stay] five years more here. And then we will see. […] I am simply not attached to anything. You do not plan in Warsaw, you know. Someone asked me how it is possible that you do not plan? So now in Warsaw it is like this, and after two days it can be a completely different situation. I do not know whether this applies to everyone or only to us, Ukrainians, because we do casual work. So I do not plan anything in Warsaw that could attach

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me. I have no idea why? Maybe where is better [for me], I am fine. Everybody does this, not only me. (PL18/w/family in UA, daughter in PL/1y10m)

A significant source of unsettlement in Poland was spouses and underage children left behind, which Fedyuk (2011) analyses from the perspective of the ambivalences of transnational motherhood. Hochschild (2001) highlights the challenges of migrant mothers working in the care sector who are subject to particular inequalities due to their involvement in global care chains. Such female migrants leave their loved ones to provide paid care in wealthier countries, which leads to the separation of families, a complex relationship between migrants and other family members and the displacement of attention, care and love from their own children or parents to those for whom they are paid to care. The example of Halyna below shows, however, that the movement of her grown-up daughter to Poland un-anchored the participant from Ukraine but did not help much with her settlement, since Halyna still perceived her life as unsettled and unstable due to the lack of a life partner: Yes, I would want because I like this job, but I do not know now when my daughter is here, by and large, nothing attracts me there, keeps me that I could even decide about being permanently here. For now it is as it is, some time here, some time there because I do not have my personal life arranged, simply I do not have anybody so for now I can go there for work and here, there is no such stability by and large. This is also somehow not good. (PL14/w/single, daughter in PL/3y)

The absence of stability and grounding in Poland led to the sense of insecurity which is seen in Mariya’s words below. Her insecurity was fuelled by unstable work and accommodation: It’s good here, I want work here, peace even in this that I am not worried, that I am not so worried about what will be tomorrow. Although in Poland you live in a permanent stress because you do not have work, a rented flat and you lose everything. You have kind of work, you have a contract for work, you know about it but nowadays a person lives in fact in a permanent stress that you can lose everything in every moment. Maybe you perceive this when you are getting older, but you know that you have, that there is a hope that you will have and have any future. (PL10/w/42/divorced, adult child in PL/7y)



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Yuriy also reflected on his social and psychological state of inbetweenness – being disconnected from social networks in Ukraine but not settled in Poland: ‘I have not built a lot of friendship relations and connections here and I lost those I had there because of migration so coming there [returning after a period of living in Poland] it was at zero too. In sum it turned out that I did not feel at home there and I did not feel at home here’ (PL20/m/single/5y). Using anchors for settling within changeability? As discussed earlier, the processes of adaptation and settling of Ukrainian migrants in Poland cannot be adequately captured by means of the established categories such as ‘integration’ and ‘assimilation’ or binary oppositions such as temporariness versus permanence (Gorny and Kindler 2016). The concept of anchoring is thus helpful to understand the experience of Ukrainian migrants in Poland and theorise their dynamic, complex and relational forms of adaptation and settling. Over time the interviewed Ukrainian migrants were trying to settle in in terms of searching for relative stability and security, rather than putting down roots. The SAST research sheds light on the mechanisms of settling within mobility and changeability when individuals attempt to recover their sense of stability, security and attachment at the same time as being engaged in mobility. Iryna provides an example of relative ‘settlement’ after securing long-term accommodation and employment: ‘Now, I do not swap so much. The job is permanent and the accommodation is permanent too. It used to be continuous changes – every half a year for sure both accommodation and job’ (PL16/w/single, child in UA/4y). Iryna’s words illustrate the importance of a relatively stable work and housing situation as key anchors in Poland. Having one’s own flat is an ideal associated with stability, which brings confidence, as Sofija stressed: Of course I would like to have my own flat to feel confident. All my acquaintances have such a feeling that they feel confident when they have their own flat. In this regard, I feel … when I hear all the time that they talk about their credits, whether they have paid or not but at least they have something that is theirs. In comparison to them, I do not have anything. I rent and I do not have mine, I do not have confidence. (PL06/w/partner in the UK/5y2m)

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Similar to Iryna’s, Artem’s account illustrates a gradual process of changing how one operates, from predominant changeability to prevailing relative stability where migrants established their (quasi) life centres in Poland yet remained mobile, flexible and open to further migration: This first period lasted relatively long, because I still did not have a permanent accommodation […] not only the first, second, third but after the fourth year I felt like this. After each arrival here I had to look for accommodation. There was a big problem to obtain different documents to get not only a visa but also a residency card […] because of these problems you did not feel secure […] The lack of security led to the situation that I might feel more stressed and tired […]. Searching for accommodation is a difficult problem, but it can be solved, so I decided that you can be relatively poorer in Warsaw, but feel better and in this moment in 2009, 2010 I felt like this and I was looking for opportunities to stay here. (PL32/m/wife and child in PL/8y)

After ‘exhausting’ years spent in circulation, Artem recognised his need to establish himself somewhere, also appreciating the relative predictability and security of conditions in Poland: ‘I concluded that it is not only about earnings, but better social conditions of life – let’s say. When I was talking to my friend – she still uses this argument – that here you can come to a bus stop and know what hour and minute the bus will arrive. This is the element of predictability in a way, maybe also security’ (PL32/m/wife and child in PL/8y). However, although Artem currently saw himself more attached to Poland through his wife’s job commitments and due to concerns about their child’s stability than before, he still remained flexible and open to migration – looking for work opportunities in different countries. Even though he saw himself as relatively grounded in Poland, he felt closely attached to Ukraine: In general, I wanted to put this ‘I’ a bit closer to Poland because I am already away from Ukraine but I would draw such a clear bonded connection. Here I am far closer but are these intensive connections? As I have said we are doing quite a lot now. Ukraine is far away but we are doing quite a lot, we live in Poland, maybe there are some contacts but no emotional bond […] I would say this differently – there is an emotional relationship but at another level. There are emotions too but … I do not know – this is more rational, pragmatic. I am loyal. (PL32/m/wife and child in PL/8y)

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Artem clearly articulated differences in the strength and character of his relations to different countries: pragmatic and rational, habitual relation to Poland and deeper emotional bond to Ukraine. The SAST study confirmed the key role of work for anchoring in the host society, which was visible in the position of employment issues in the migrants’ narratives, which were to a large extent oriented around work. The majority of the Ukrainian participants (34 out of 40) remained satisfied or rather satisfied with their work in Poland even if they were mainly working in the secondary market. The participants especially valued opportunities in Poland for finding or changing jobs, which contributed to their feelings of psychological and financial security, as described by Iryna: ‘Opportunities, for example, when you lose a job here, you do not need to panic that it is the end of the world. No, there will be another [job]. […] Work is the most important for a person both psychologically and financially. […] But here, even if you wake up and know that you do not have a job but only today and you should make the most of this day for yourself because you do not need to work today’ (PL16/w/divorced, child in UA/4y). Even in spite of a lack of permanent or sometimes even regular employment in Poland, the interviewees highlighted the opportunities for relatively accessible work and development, prospects for salary increase or chances for changing work arrangements (e.g. in the domestic care sector from live-in to live-out). Over time the participants tended to look for footholds other than in work and accommodation, despite obstacles and constraints to establishing themselves in Poland related to difficulties in obtaining a more long-term legal status and/or obligations owed to families left in Ukraine. Regardless of temporality and limitations of legal status linked to visas and/or unregulated or only partly regulated work, migrants endeavour to recover their sense of stability and security in various ways. Interestingly, establishing formal institutional anchors related to a regular and stable legal status, including rights to the welfare system (e.g. health provision), occurred later than the other types of anchoring. The process of institutional anchoring can be illustrated through the example of regularising one’s stay in Poland and acquiring a permanent residence permit. For instance, Ulana’s feeling of security was eventually realised when she legalised her residence in Poland after seven years of unregulated stay: ‘But thanks to this abolition, which we had thanks

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to us, you can say, this abolition was done, my life obviously has changed. Simply I am not afraid of anything, work with a contract, I have satisfaction that I was able to do such something like this and somebody else has made use of it and is glad’ (PL36/w/single, children in PL/10y). Another turning point represented obtaining a residence permit, particularly a permanent residence permit – the most desirable but the most difficult to obtain type of denizen status. Tamara pointed explicitly to the feeling of security which the residence permit can give her: I must also have a residence card for five years for sure for a permanent residence and then citizenship. Simply I have not thought about this yet [citizenship] but I want a residence permit very much because when it is it is easier not that life … but simply it is easier to find a job and you feel more secure when you have it, have these papers. Just now I have such an ordinary visa for a half a year. (PL22/w/single, child in PL/5y)

Iryna also aimed to secure a permanent residence permit regardless of efforts and costs: ‘I would try to get a permanent residence permit. So far I have been working for this family but I will change [job] later and I will have problems again with finding someone who will employ me to be legally here. I am employed in a normal way. I pay social security contributions. This is of paramount importance to me’ (PL16/w/divorced, child in UA/4y). In a similar vein, Sofija, despite her right to remain in Poland thanks to the Karta Polaka, wanted the confirmation of her status through a permanent residence permit to gain more confidence: I just have set myself boundaries that when I get this residence, arrange these all legalisations, I will begin to be more … I will be self-confident. The point is that I have like a guaranteed [stay] because I have the Karta Polaka but this is not the same as permanent residence. Then there is somehow differently because even if … I do not think, and it is possible to get a loan it takes place in a different way. This is differently when somebody has something different because they feel differently. Now I do not feel fully fulfilled because I do not have everything, not all papers […] It is not my aim to get citizenship – I have one. Why do I need [it], for collection? This is not important, by and large permanent residence gives me the same but I cannot vote. (PL06/w/ partner in the UK/5y2m)



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The above quotes also highlight the empowering role of an acknowledged legal position, affecting migrants’ confidence and agency. The strength and roles of anchors are relational so they might transform in relation to other changes. For instance, Ruslan’s account reflects that the civil war in Ukraine contributed to a change in his attitude towards the legalisation of his stay and settlement in Poland: So more or less this was about money. To earn some, build something, have something. Or set up something in Ukraine or here. And there was always a decision that I do not know what I want. Either here or there. But when the war started in our country, at once I began to sort out the paperwork, pay for insurance [National Health Fund/Social Insurance Institution contributions, Polish acronyms NFZ/ZUS] and extend a temporary residence permit in order to stay here. […] I built a building in Ukraine together with my brother when I was here, what I wanted through my whole life. […] But now because of this war, because of this everything, this has all been finished and now I must start everything from scratch. (PL30/m/partner in PL/6y)

Another type of essential anchors noticeable among the Ukrainian migrants were social ones. They represented the most vital ties linking the interviewees with Ukraine or, to a smaller degree, anchoring them in other transnational social spaces. Thirty-eight participants had close family residing in Ukraine, including ten out of 25 married migrants whose spouses were left behind and ten with minor children in Ukraine. Some interviewees belonged to transnational families extending beyond Poland and Ukraine, with relatives living in the Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan and Belarus, additionally having close friends in the US, Spain, Italy, Belarus, Russia, the UK, Canada and Germany. The separation from family represented the most significant driver for transnational practices and the reason for maintaining other anchors linking migrants to the country of origin (e.g. material and institutional). In such a situation, especially in the context of caring at a distance, migrants grounded themselves in practices of remitting and communicating (with information and communication technologies playing a key role in interconnectivity and sustaining the relationship), complemented by personal contact through (re)visiting. Co-presence could be sustained by transnational family members through physical, virtual, proxy (through objects and individuals whose physical presence embodies the longed-for person) and imagined ways (Baldassar 2008). Technologies were used in the service of sustaining exchange and

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interaction, enabling transnational everyday practices, creating intimacy and emotional closeness and in reproducing obligations and expectations associated with proximate family relations where distance and separation were intrinsically constitutive of families in migration contexts (Baldassar et al. 2016). Levitt’s notion of social remittances (1998) might be employed to understand a broad set of interchanges by which migrants and their families residing abroad sustain family ties alongside financial and material remittances. Social remittances range beyond the two latter in terms of the characteristics of their transmission and dynamic as well as their larger bi-directionality, including normative structures, systems of practice and social capital transmission. These new forms of sustaining close family ties and ‘settling in’ contribute to migrants’ choice of transnational care for their children left behind over family reunification, in addition to legal, economic, socio-cultural and geographical factors, as demonstrated by Leifsen and Tymczuk (2012). The actual presence of loved ones, especially children, was of key importance in anchoring in a new country, including the situation when migrants moved their family members from Ukraine to Poland to establish themselves abroad more permanently and increase their feeling of security. The example of Ihor shows that having a family around led him to create his own little world where he grounded himself in Poland: That is a space I simply operate every day, that is starting from the closest space of my family – spouse, daughter, then the circle of my close friends and so on, so in the general Polish environment I have been functioning in for eight years. Poland has become such a natural environment to me. Right now even if I return to Ukraine, I cannot stand being there for a long time, because I feel there totally ill at ease. (PL03/m/family in PL/8y)

Apart from loved ones, friends and acquaintances – both Ukrainian and Polish – also played a significant anchoring role in migrants’ lives. Even though the interviewees maintained more social contacts with compatriots than with Poles, they socialised quite intensively with Polish acquaintances. Thirty-four participants spent their free time with other Ukrainian migrants at least once a month and 29 met up with Poles every week. Out of 143 best friends (defined as those who are trusted and can be relied on) listed by the participants, 104 were born in Ukraine (although the vast majority of them lived in Poland)



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while only 29 were born in Poland. Meeting with compatriots not only satisfied a need for social contact but also provided migrants with relevant emotional support and practical help and information, especially important in the face of limited ethnic institutions, as Ivan explained: In the initial period, which is still going on in fact, it is difficult, to be honest. There are foundations which help at the beginning which run workshops introducing to the reality of life in Poland, but then the individual stays alone with their problems and has nobody to ask for help. There is no legal assistance, I am thinking about the situation in Warsaw, there is no foundation you can approach they tell you about small things related to essential needs, for example what to do if your child has a toothache or the child should be enrolled for school – how to deal with it – such simplest things. Seriously, I have not found any foundation which explains to migrants how to live in Poland. So far, regarding everyday challenges, I have been simply relying on contact with … people. There is an issue, you ask … Ukrainian or Pole – it does not matter, everybody is ready to help. (PL26/m/wife and child in PL, other children in UA/1y2m)

Social anchors such as friendships with non-migrants were mainly established at university (in the case of students) or at work. A particularly interesting example was represented by friendships between Ukrainian migrants and their current or former employers in the context of the domestic sector where as many as 12 of the interviewed participants worked as cleaners, housekeepers or carers. For instance, Mariya pointed to her former employers, with whom she spends her free time, as people other than close family who are significant in her life: I meet more girls I worked for [as a cleaning lady] and we have become friends. Because the girls who come, who are my super mates are difficult to invite for a walk since they come for two–three months so they either work or go shopping […] So it is difficult to invite them somewhere, so I have other acquittances we meet up, go out for wine or to a bar to sit somewhere, walk, talk or take a sunbath on the bank of the Vistula. (PL10/w/divorced, adult child in PL/7y)

Zlata noted that her needs and lifestyle are more similar to Polish acquaintances’ lifestyles than other Ukrainian circular migrants, who are more focused on work and consumption (PL12/w/husband and

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children in UA/6y9m), whereas Tamara gave the example of her pastoral relationship with Polish employers who supported her in completing her beauty courses and in her plans to set up her own business (PL22/w/ single, adult child in PL/5y). Jelena compared her relationship with her employers to family ties in terms of the intensity of interactions and emotional load: These all are my new acquaintances, those I work for too, because you almost live in each family. You come and [you are] with them, it is not that you came there and went out, there are their own problems in each family or worries about children. They tell you [about them] and you also share your [worries]. Every day you have something and advise and play a role of psychologist. This is like a new family because you know almost everything about everyone. (PL11/w/family in UA/7y)

Jelena’s account reveals additional emotional labour that migrants working in families need to undertake on top of their daily duties. The relationship between migrants working in the domestic sector and their employers was intimate but also marked by power asymmetry and inequalities. Thus, Lyuba referred to her employers as ‘masters’: ‘Our masters [employers], yes, we are friends. I work for them but we have very good relations. We are friends’ (PL17/w/partner in PL, 2 children in UA/8y). The patron–worker relation in the domestic service sector protects migrants from risks and instabilities (including irregularity) (Kindler 2011) and provides various forms of support, including: emotional and practical, help in regularising legal status and dealing with formal institutions, access to bridging social capital (Putnam 2000) and weak social ties (Granovetter 1983) as the source of work and new opportunities. On the other hand, this kind of asymmetrical and intimate relationship (Kindler 2009) might also lead to abuse, exploitation and dependency, which was experienced by a few interviewees in the first period of their stay in Poland. The participants also developed anchors in the sphere of free time, related to their involvement in sports, artistic or religious activities (e.g. cycling, skating, running, participating in services in the Greek Catholic, Orthodox or Pentecostal churches), where they could mix with Poles or other – not only Ukrainian – migrants. The latter in particular played a prominent role not only in spiritual, social and practical terms (e.g. for the exchange of information) but also contributing to migrants’ sense of continuity and security, as Nazar expressed:

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‘And also this Orthodox church and this Greek Catholic church in Poland. [This is] such a bridge between me and Ukraine, I can say. That I can come there and [this] is so comforting, how to say this? Also showing such love that I am here in this Ukraine’ (PL25/m/ wife and children in UA/6y). Nazar highlighted the importance of observing traditions during religious festivals which connected him to his homeland, loved ones and the past. Due to the character of the sampling method used (snowballing through initial seeds such as ethnic leaders and organisations), five interviewees were directly engaged in Ukrainian NGOs. However, in general, the temporary and unsettled position of Ukrainian migrants in Poland did not help their civic involvement in Polish society or engagement in voluntary associations. As a whole, Ukrainian NGOs in Poland have only recently developed from rather small-scale and elitist initiatives since the Euromaidan, which boosted and consolidated the majority of activists around a common aim – providing support to the victims of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk as well as fundraising for the Ukrainian Army (11 of the interviewees contributed to this initiative) (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). The organisations the participants were connected to included: Our Choice Foundation, the Friends of Ukraine Association, the Open Dialog Foundation and the Termopilska Foundation, the Euromaidan Warsaw Foundation and Our Home. Some interviewees also took part in activities in the Centre for Ukrainian Culture, the choir Kalyna in the Ukrainian House, youth meetings organised in the Greek Orthodox church, the Experimental Ukrainian Theatre, or Boyovoho Hopak events representing a mix of Ukrainian martial and folk dance (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). The participants also indicated their attachment to their neighbourhoods, which they largely perceived in a positive way. The vast majority of them (37 out of 40) indicated that they were satisfied or rather satisfied with contacts with neighbours and 20 received some form of help from them, which might be surprising bearing in mind the social distance and anonymity of Warsaw’s neighbourhoods. Only five participants experienced antipathy in their places of residence or were not happy with relations with neighbours. However, even though predominantly positive, social contacts in neighbourhoods

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were limited in their scope – eight participants who spent leisure time with neighbours largely met compatriots living nearby or other migrants. Another key dimension adding to a sense of security was related to participants’ perception of the relatively stable institutional context in Poland compared with Ukraine, summarised by Borys in the following way: ‘Here I trust this system and I can focus on productive things’ (PL35/m/second wife in PL, child in UA/5y). The interviewees referred to a set of values such as democracy, freedom, civil liberties, transparency and lawfulness associated by them with Poland and regarded as ‘European’, which contributed to their sense of predictability and stability as Mykola’s words demonstrate: Contemporary Poland is the future of Ukraine. Poland and Ukraine were similar socialist republics 30 years ago, but only Poland joined the European Union earlier and has followed this European path. This is something Ukraine fights for now and the only thing that I want to give my children – such a European spirit. And this is for me […] a part of the free and united Europe. So yes, I wanted to change something there in my life, see something different, how it is to live in Europe. Not only hear about it, but experience how it is to live there, see for myself and try such a life. (PL33/m/family in UA/1y6m)

The above-mentioned values and ideas not only played a vital role for individual anchoring but also helped with the social and civic incorporation of the migrants in wider society in Poland. The participants particularly appreciated the more supportive role of the Polish state, as well as its clearer and more transparent institutional procedures, particularly in the context of small businesses, as pointed out by Ruslan: ‘Exactly, there is a big support here. The state does not trick here like ours. And here it is much easier, you know. For running your business and I do not know … The same with credit and everything’ (PL30/m/partner in PL/6y). This was contrasted with the higher levels of corruption and lack of stable institutional rules in Ukraine stressed by Maksym: ‘I realised here [in Poland] that one can work and not pay bribes for this. I can work peacefully here and nobody comes and tells you that you must pay extortion because otherwise [you will have] problems with your family and so on. So I am, you can say, more secure, I feel safer than in Ukraine’ (PL29 /m/partner in UA/5y4m).

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In general, 30 out of 40 interviewees were satisfied or rather satisfied with the support of Polish institutions, and only four were discontented. However, it must be pointed out that not all of the participants had any contact with Polish institutions, either governmental (apart from the Department for Foreigners of the Mazowieckie Province Office) or non-governmental ones they could refer to. Only three participants indicated that they had contacted a job centre, one received social benefits, 16 used the public health service and 15 benefited from NGO assistance. The feelings of predictability, familiarity and closeness were particularly related to subjective and internal types of anchors represented by convictions and emotions. Tamara’s words illustrate the sense of security linked to a knowledge of Polish and immersion in Polish culture: I think sometimes that in a way Poland and Ukraine … but it is not a foreign country, truly. Maybe because there is such a feeling, that maybe I have got used to and I am not afraid because I understand the language and everything, maybe I do not speak so well, but simply it is that I am not a stranger here. It is that I feel more or less safe. (PL22/w/single, child in PL/5y6m)

Likewise, the sense of attachment and belonging to particular socio-spatial spaces resulted in the feeling of being ‘at home’ despite the maintenance of clear ethnic identification and anchors in Ukraine, as in Kateryna’s case: ‘I am Ukrainian, yes, I will not get away from it, but I feel here as at home’ (PL37/w/partner and child in PL/7y6m). Immersion in a local context and repeatable spatial and behavioural practices contributed to the sense of safety and stability, as illustrated in Dariya’s comments about operating in her little world where she feels comfortable: ‘I cannot say that the whole Poland is my favourite country but just in Warsaw I feel OK for different reasons. First of all, because I have managed to build around myself […] such a system where I get around well and comfortably’ (PL31/w/single/1y5m). This part of the empirical analysis might be summarised in the form of Figure 1, presenting Ukrainians’ major anchors in Poland (with the most important, encompassing work, ethnic identity, Polish language and family highlighted in grey). Among them, there is a smaller group of anchors which mainly contribute to the reinforcement of Ukrainianness, such as ethnic identity and culture, Ukrainian friends

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Housekeeping and daily routines

Values and norms, agency, opportunities for development

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Material anchors (e.g. accommodation) and technology

Religion and spirituality

Local neighbourhood Polish acquaintances

UKRAINIANS IN POLAND

Ethnic community and institutions (incl. supporting Ukraine) Ukrainian friends and acquaintances

Polish legal system and institutions Work (current and possibilities)

Leisure activities (sports and other physical activities, artistic activities, activities related to nature)

Ethnic identity, language and culture Polish language and culture

Family

Figure 1 Different types of anchors of Ukrainians in Poland (author’s elaboration) Note: grey circles are the most important anchors; anchors contributing to a sense of Ukrainianness are circled with a solid line; anchors facilitating inclusion are circled with a dotted line.

and the Ukrainian community in Poland (circled with a solid line). Another more numerous group includes anchors which facilitate inclusion and belonging to a wider society such as: work encompassing meaningful encounters (Amin 2002; Valentine 2008) with Poles; Polish acquaintances; the grounding in the Polish legal system, culture and institutions, Polish-language competency, attachment to Polish society (especially local neighbourhoods) (circled with a dotted line). The spheres of leisure activities and religion might play both roles (therefore are circled by both solid and dotted lines). The SAST study demonstrated the Ukrainian migrants’ different layers of anchoring in Poland, from external footholds related to the legal and institutional framework and work, through more complex anchors embedded in social networks and to deeper internal footholds,

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linked to familiarity and the constructed cultural closeness, as well as European, modern and civic aspirations (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). Applying the concept of anchoring thus allowed better understanding of Ukrainians’ mobility, drifting lives and complex identities as well as mechanisms of coping with temporariness and settling in terms of searching for relative stability and security. It enabled the simultaneous connections to Poland, Ukraine and other transnational spaces to be captured. The concept of anchoring embraces the complex, multiple and dynamic attachments of the Ukrainian migrants as well as the flexibility of their adaptation and settling. It highlights migrants’ agency and possibilities for connection or disconnection. The approach employed allows us to theorise adaptation and settling as a process from drifting to anchoring. This study demonstrated the significance of stability and security in migrants’ eyes even when their lives could still be regarded as ungrounded. This instability might be linked to the participants’ lack of an established legal status in the long term (where only three interviewees held a permanent residence permit), to their geographical and cultural closeness enabling easy circulation between different social spaces across national borders, and to their maintenance of substantial ties to Ukraine (mainly including the closest family members left behind). The position of Ukrainian migrants in Poland as neither the same nor strangers, where migrants were constructed as culturally similar but not exactly socially close and equal, seemed to contribute to the participants’ mixed identities and multiple yet not firm attachments. Migrants’ proEuropean aspirations, achieved by acquiring Polish language and culture competencies, coexisted with the revival of Ukrainian civic identity in the face of the political developments and the military conflict in Ukraine (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Brzozowska 2017). The migrants studied contrasted the institutional stability and work opportunities in Poland with the situation in Ukraine in terms of lack of institutional transparency, unpredictability and low accountability of political elites. The SAST study showed migrants’ agency in anchoring despite the noticeable constraints which hindered their processes of adaptation and ‘settlement’. This research captured the development of the process of anchoring over time in Poland, while the interviewees simultaneously maintained

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links to Ukraine (mainly related to their families there) and remained open to new opportunities such as returning to Ukraine or moving to another country. Additionally, differences in the process of anchoring were observed, related to types of capital (e.g. economic, cultural, social), family situation and migrants’ legal status. These differences were related to inequalities in terms of stability and security as well as capacity for agency and ability to establish new anchors, which will be developed in Chapter 7.

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5 Anchored not rooted: Polish migrants in the UK

This chapter analyses the mechanisms of adaptation and settling among Polish migrants in the UK, where less circular migration was observed than in the case of Ukrainian migrants in Poland. Even though settlement processes remained more noticeable among the Poles than among the Ukrainians, they can still be better characterised in terms of anchoring rather than putting down roots. This may be linked, on the one hand, to a larger cultural and geographical distance between Poles and British society, and on the other hand to the situation at the time of the SAST research, whereby Polish migrants, as EU citizens, enjoyed free movement to the UK with full rights to participate in the labour market and benefit from welfare state provision. The migrants I conducted the research with belong to the numerous and diverse population of post-accession Polish migrants in the UK. The SAST research was conducted in Birmingham and surrounding towns of the West Midlands, an area rarely researched despite its size and diversity, where, according to the 2011 national census in England and Wales, Poles (52,499) represented the third most numerous non-UK-born population, after residents born in India (99,717) and Pakistan (88,636) (Krausova and Vargas-Silva 2013). In terms of residents who held only a non-UK passport, the Polish were the most numerous group, with 49,974 residents in 2011. Polish was the second most spoken main language other than English (after Punjabi). However, what is distinctive about the Polish migrants is the fact that 92 per cent of Polish-born residents in the West Midlands arrived

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in the UK after the 2004 EU expansion, in contrast to previously arrived migrants from India and Pakistan (Krausova and Vargas-Silva 2013). Although the vast majority of migrants from Poland arrived in the UK after 2004, the West Midlands has a long history of hosting Poles, at least from the time of the Second World War when Polish soldiers and exiles from Poland and previously its annexed territories found their new home in the UK (Midlands Polish Community Association 2011). The post-war Polish community was, to a large extent, concentrated around the Polish church and characterised by patriotism, traditionalism and self-perception as Odyssean refugees ( Joly 2002), guardians of the pre-war Polish traditions and heritage of independent Poland which needed to be liberated from communist rule (Stachura 2004). The post-war Polish migrants predominantly adopted an attitude of guests who had to integrate in the host British society while at the same time maintaining their strong ethnic identity. In 1962 the migrants funded ‘Polish Millennium House’, a base for the Polish Catholic Centre in Birmingham and the wider Polish community in the West Midlands, close to St Michael’s Catholic Church, which still offers services in Polish. Since 2004 the post-war migrants and political refugees from communist Poland have been joined by numerous post-accession Polish migrants, changing and developing ethnic institutions. New Polish migrants tended to concentrate in certain areas of Birmingham and the West Midlands such as: Erdington, West Bromwich, Smethwick, Redditch, Herefordshire, and Wychavon (the last two are more rural areas offering jobs in farming and factories). Apart from the Polish church and the Polish centre, other thriving Polish institutions were a few Polish Saturday schools and grass-roots organisations such as the Polish Expats Association (promoting Central and Eastern European culture and supporting the integration of Poles in the UK), the Midlands Polish Business Club and the Birmingham Volleyball Club, alongside many Polish shops and services (beauty salons, medical centres, advice agencies, garages, restaurants, discos) across Birmingham and other towns in the region. Not surprisingly the influx and settlement of post-accession Polish migrants to the UK aroused interest among many researchers, who began to analyse the processes of migration, their causes and consequences (e.g. Burrell 2009; Fihel and Anacka 2012; Galasinska 2010;

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Trevena 2009; White 2011). Eade, Drinkwater and Garapich (2006) showed the diversity of post-accession Polish migrants in terms of not only their socio-economic characteristics, but also the type of migration, distinguishing a new type of migrants who adopt the strategy of intentional unpredictability. Trevena, McGhee and Heath (2013), examining internal mobility among post-accession Polish migrants in the UK, concluded that migrants without children who arrive through recruitment agencies are the most internally mobile, whereas those who arrive through personal networks (of family, friends or acquaintances) and with (especially school-age) children are the least likely to relocate after arriving in the UK. The authors found that the general propensity to move internally decreases with time: once migrants secure permanent employment and stable accommodation, they are less willing to uproot again. A great deal of research has been devoted to Polish migrants’ social networks, showing that it cannot be taken for granted that networks are always the only sources of social capital and facilitate settlement in a receiving country, and that there are many ways in which migrants construct, maintain and access different types of networks (Ryan 2011). Irek (2011) has pointed to the plurality, omnipresence and instrumental effectiveness of migrants’ informal networks. There is evidence that the process of adaptation and settling of Polish migrants in the UK is relatively long and complex due to a language barrier and limited non-ethnic social support. The research by Kouvonen, Bell and Donnelly (2014) demonstrates that many Polish migrants undergo a lengthy process of adaptation to Irish society, with some not feeling they have settled in in spite of moving into Ireland five to ten years earlier and not thinking about returning to Poland. Because of the language barrier and limited emotional, social and practical support since their family and friends have been left in Poland, this study indicates that Polish migrants have few opportunities to share their experience of disconnection and feel broadly isolated. The study by Kozlowska, Sallah and Galasinski (2008) reported that although Polish post-accession migrants in the UK improved their financial situation as a result of migration and gained independence and economic stability, a substantial percentage of them suffered from psychological distress and were at risk of developing a mental disorder. The participants in the above study experienced: isolation,

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loneliness, displacement, a feeling of being a stranger, discrimination, a state of living in limbo between countries and cultures, fear of being left alone in case of unemployment or illness, uncertainty about the future, frustration at losing control over their time and career aspirations (e.g. due to underemployment and overwork) in addition to lack of sufficient social support and access to psychological help. All interviewees identified support from their friends and family as a crucial condition of their mental well-being. Strong attachment to Poland via relationships with family and friends, a sense of disconnection, experiencing a lack of closeness in relationships with others in comparison to Poland were also apparent in the in-depth study conducted by O’Brien (2011) in the UK. However, this research with university-educated young Polish professionals showed that despite difficulties, its participants greatly appreciated their emigration and the resulting personal growth, which included increased self-confidence and maturity, and becoming increasingly open and more aware of diversity. O’Brien’s interviewees associated the UK with tolerance, a sense of freedom and opportunities for development, in contrast to Poland, described as constraining, restricting and lacking in flexibility. The SAST study also demonstrated that the processes of adaptation and settling of Polish migrants in the UK were complex, uneven and dynamic. Only 16 of the interviewed migrants regarded England as home whereas a majority – 23 – still perceived Poland as such (one participant could not tell). Those who did not plan to remain in England (13) outnumbered those who wished to remain in the UK for the rest of their lives (8), while almost half the interviewees were undecided (19), which illustrates the relative unsettlement of this group. What is interesting is that EU citizenship was considerably more highly valued by the interviewees than Polish citizenship, whereas British citizenship as such did not have much significance for migrants. As many as 25 migrants out of 40 perceived the latter as ‘rather unimportant’ or ‘not important at all’, while a similar attitude towards EU and Polish citizenships was held by only three migrants. The attitude towards British citizenship has, however, changed since the Brexit vote, with more migrants applying for British citizenship to feel more secure and certain about their future. Although this temporariness related to the idea of returning ‘home’ or moving somewhere else may be linked to marginalisation and contrasted with ‘integration’ and ‘assimilation’,

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I argue it can also be imagined as an alternative to a ‘permanence pathway’ for adaptation and settling (Latham et al. 2014). Despite the above-mentioned complexity and relative unsettlement among the interviewed migrants, their overall satisfaction with life in the UK was also relatively high – 6.7 on the scale from 1 ‘very unsatisfied’ to 9 ‘very satisfied’, and significantly, no one described themselves as dissatisfied (the lowest score was 4). The interviewees also self-evaluated their adaptation and integration relatively highly (with respective means 7.1 and 6.3),1 with just one participant describing herself as not adapted and four as not much integrated. The reported levels of problems encountered in daily life as well as stress and anxiety were not particularly high either – 3.4 and 3.9 respectively2 – but there was a substantial group of participants who reported difficulties: ten of the interviewees admitted that they experienced adaptation problems, and eight had felt distress and anxiety. Six interviewees had concerns about their physical security, eight about health and well-being, seven had contacted psychological services for help, which had not usually been provided, in addition to a few others who asked me about the possibility of psychological support. Regardless of varied levels of English competency among the participants, speaking English was seen as the most significant factor in settling in, but also the biggest challenge. Separation from family in Poland and lack of or limited social support in the UK were indicated as other major difficulties. The participants were also concerned about the increasingly restrictive immigration policy and what might happen if the UK left the EU (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018a). Hostile antiimmigrant and particularly anti-Polish rhetoric from politicians and the media contributed to feelings of insecurity, as did difficulty in finding proper full-time employment and concerns about physical safety, especially in the case of some neighbourhoods perceived as dangerous in terms of high crime rates. The consequences of the outlined processes might be considered from the perspective of the politics of anchoring with, on the one hand, the negative impacts of 1 Respectively defined as the level of adjustment to life in the UK/participation in different domains of British society and maintenance of social relations with British people; on a scale from 1, ‘not adapted/integrated at all’, to 9, ‘adapted/integrated very well’. 2 On a scale from 1, ‘I do not experience’, to 9, ‘I strongly experience’.

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political discourses alienating migrants, and on the other hand, more potential than actual, mobilisation in terms of anchoring, which became more visible after the EU referendum.

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Reconstructed safety based on ethno-cultural and family networks Attachment to the Polish language and culture strongly grounded the participants interviewed in the UK and gave them a stable point of reference, which was noticeable in the migrants’ narratives, daily practices (such as cooking dishes according to Polish recipes and using Polish products), celebrations of family events and religious festivals (e.g. baptisms, first communions, Christmas or Easter), even by those who did not identify themselves as Catholics. Bartosz described this phenomenon as living in a kind of Polish ‘bubble’: ‘At home, although we are in England, our home looks like in Poland – starting from the curtains, ending at everything, this is Polishness at home. […] We have many Polish acquaintances and this is our little Poland and we carry on like this’ (UK35/m/wife and children in the UK/4y6m), which was echoed by Iga, who admitted: ‘I live in such a little homeland – Polish television, Polish mates’ (UK04/w/husband and children in the UK/7y). When unpacking this (re)constructed Polishness, the role of the language seemed to be paramount, followed by the importance of cultural values and traditions, as Anna explained: ‘I have to mention about the family and the way we have been brought up, what has been passed on to me by the family – culture and religion. This is important to me and I think I base myself on this’ (UK19/w/ single/7y11m). After knowledge of English, using Polish, contacts with Poland and maintaining Polish customs were declared as particularly significant values (very important for respectively 26, 25 and 24 migrants, and rather significant for a further 11, 10 and 9; with no one regarding Polish language as not important at all). Even migrants with an excellent command of English highly appreciated the opportunity to speak Polish, read Polish books and have other contact with their native language. (Re)constructed Polish ethnicity, even if, to a significant degree, uneasy and imposed, constituted a key reference for the interviewees in the process of their adaptation and settling. In a similar vein,

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Schwartz, Montgomery and Briones (2006) have shown how ethnic identity is used by migrants as a tool to ‘anchor’ themselves in life during transition and adjustment to a new country. Being anchored in Polishness manifested itself in recurrently expressed self-identification, as demonstrated in Magda’s words: ‘And my identity, my family, are in Poland. I feel a Pole and I can return there without a problem. I also do not have any problem to talk about this here when somebody asks where I come from that I am just from there’ (UK01/w/husband and children in the UK/8y). However, Magda’s narrative also hints an awareness of the possible derogatory perception of Polish identity as a consequence of stereotyping. Similarly, in the following comment by Dorota her desire to maintain a strong identity is coupled with her choice to expose rather than hide it: ‘For sure I believe in God and I am proud that I am a Pole and I come from this country. I told myself that I will not hide this that I originate from this country. I have such a culture, not different. All I have learned in Poland, I want to pass to the children’ (UK06/w/ husband and children in the UK/4y4m). By contrast, Kinga’s account reveals her own mixed or even prevailing negative assessment of her cultural heritage: ‘This Poland – it is … all my identity comes from this Poland, even if I would not like this very much’ (UK3/w/ single/1y6m). Maria’s voice reflects that Polish identity was often reinforced in response to the difference and being perceived as a stranger: ‘I also started to realise that I am a Pole in England’ (UK13/w/ single/10y). The processes of anchoring were thus accompanied not only by identity maintenance or preservation but also by identity (re) construction when, in reaction to social categorisation or even stigmatisation, Polish identity was being reinforced, re-evaluated or transformed (Lopez Rodriguez 2010). Even participants like the above-cited Kinga or Robert quoted below, who were more critical and distanced themselves from the homogeneous and essentialist vision of Polish ethnicity and nationalist standpoints, perceived Polishness as their important frame of reference (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018b). Even if they showed their distance from Ossowski’s so-called ‘ideological homeland’ (Chalubinski 2006), they still highlighted the importance of their ‘private homeland’ linked to local communities, unique emotions and experiences: ‘Even though I am not any great patriot, that I do not love everything that is Polish, but, let’s say, this Poland which is, let’s say, my family and friends’ (UK38/w/single/4y9m).

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Identity and ethnicity were also reconstructed in reaction to the new (unfamiliar) socio-cultural environment, including the urban superdiversity of Birmingham, predominantly perceived as chaotic and lacking coherence and shared key reference points, as expressed by Hubert: ‘Of course the whole Polish culture is significant, because England has no culture. It is important that my children will cultivate Polish culture and customs, everything that is related to Polishness. The fact that I am in England does not mean that I cut off, do not want to be a Pole but only a European’ (UK07/m/wife and children in the UK/5y9m). The reconstruction of identity and ethnicity included not only reproducing an idea of Polishness but also producing an idea of Britishness and otherness, when Polish migrants compared themselves to those constructed as others in racial and religious terms (e.g. contrasting themselves with ‘Muslim migrants’). As Fox and Mogilnicka (2019) argue, East Europeans (Poles, Hungarians and Romanians) in the UK are not only drawing on pre-migration stereotypes but also, to some extent, copying racist and racialising behaviours as well as employing the British forms of racism as a part of their integration tactics and practices. At the same time, the processes of identity diversification with emerging new or transformed identifications could be observed. Sometimes this could be an unconscious consequence of newly established anchors. The example of Marek, who was pragmatically planning to obtain a second, British, citizenship illustrates that strong attachment to the Polish language and culture could be accompanied by the development of other simultaneous identifications – British and multicultural: Literature and history – this is in me all the time. I cultivate Polish values, those which I took from my home – Polish culture, history, language. This is very important to me in spite of the fact that I will be a Briton in terms of passport […] Especially in such a multicultural society as the UK you can be a good Briton and a very good Pole. (UK09/m/single/2y10m)

Unlike Marek, Kuba, who was particularly immersed in Polish literature and engaged in creating short pieces of literature in Polish, did not want to apply for British citizenship but acknowledged the development of his European or even cosmopolitan identity: ‘It has changed that I feel more a European than a Pole, really, rather European than British, but I feel like a global citizen and feel less connected



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to Poland’ (UK18/m/single, child in another part of the UK/8y). The duality of being strongly grounded in Polishness at the same time as belonging to the local community and feeling settled in Birmingham’s diversity was clearly expressed by Slawek, one of the Polish migrants filmed as a part of the Polish Expats Association project ‘From Exile to Freedom’ that aimed to capture voices of Polish migrants on belonging and integration: A man who wants to change his life at the age of 41, a man who recalibrates his life diametrically is either insane or extremely desperate. I was a bit of both I think. It is like a speeding locomotive and you have to change the track. But it was quite tricky to do. It was not easy. I would not like to do this for the second time in my life. It was a major cultural change. As much as I love Poland and really feel Polish I would not like to come back to Poland now because I would not be myself. I would not be genuine. What I have here is that when I go out I meet people of different cultures and I feel a cosmopolitan, not even a citizen of Europe. I feel a citizen of the world. (PEA 2011)

Anchoring in his own diverse neighbourhood was also the most salient feature of Marek’s account, which will be discussed further. By and large, one’s own family constituted the crucial reference point in the migrants’ narratives, reflecting its central position on emotional and mental maps. A focus on one’s nuclear family, predominantly children, remained prominent, particularly for female interviewees preoccupied with caring and providing for their loved ones – illustrated by Dorota, Aneta and Ewa: ‘I am most concentrated on my children, on the house, dinners’ (UK06/w/husband and children in the UK/4y4m), ‘Generally everything is focused in my life around the children’ (UK12/w/husband and children in the UK/8y), ‘Now everything revolves around my daughter’ (UK14/w/husband and child in the UK/8y). Irek stressed that moving his family from Poland to the UK enabled him to settle down abroad: ‘My anchor moved from Poland to the UK – it is a family’ (UK34/m/wife and children in the UK/2y1m). An analogous type of anchoring is Appadurai’s dedication of his book (1996), mentioned above, where he refers to his son as his ‘home in the world’. Likewise Castells (1997), using the metaphor of anchoring, emphasises the value of family and community attachments in the face of the dissolution of time, space and patriarchal sustainment of personalities. In a similar vein, Botterill (2014) demonstrates that

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in spite of individualisation, the practices of mobility and settling among Polish migrants are, to a large extent, still organised through the structures of family life. In the narratives collected by the SAST project, the family was a site that mediated multiple ties (including transnational ties) and temporal imaginings (projections into the future, attachments to the past, ideas of Polishness and otherness) (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018b). The interviewees (including the single) largely appreciated the value of the conventional family ideal based on romantic love and lifelong relationship, where women celebrate their femininity and, more than male partners, concentrate on homemaking and caring for the family, while men perform their masculinity, focusing on the role of main breadwinner. In a parallel way, Lin (2013) shows how reconstructed family practices and conventional gender norms linked to the patriarchal family were used by migrants in China in the (re)construction of identities to cope with a sense of dislocation. According to Mahalingam and Leu (2005), sticking to traditional gender roles helps migrants in the maintenance of reimagined ethnicity, which gives comfort and stability in a new cultural environment. Probably, therefore, there are less noticeable opposite examples where migration provides individuals with the opportunity to transgress established gender roles and power structures, thanks to more egalitarian norms and higher tolerance in the receiving societies, as well as the liberating effect of being outsiders (Espin 1999), or thanks to improvements in women’s status through increased personal autonomy (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1992). Idealisations of family and home were also present in the SAST narratives of the single people (including LGBT participants) who, despite valuing freedom and lack of obligations, also verbalised their desire for romantic love and a family. Some of them openly regretted that they had not set up their own families and complained about the lack of closeness in social relations and difficulties in starting a family due to a limited choice of partners (and to some extent friends too); they expressed a fear of failure, especially as some of them had experienced a painful breakdown of a previous relationship (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018b). However, the prevalence of this traditional heteronormative family ideal among Polish migrants in the UK also produced insecurities of the self, related, for example, to social pressure and expectations – particularly among single women and those individuals who could not fit in, such as LGBT migrants. Similarly, Kay and Trevena (2018)

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show how in the context of migration, family may contribute to insecurities due to changes in family configurations and practices, role and identities, the emergence of contradictory needs and expectations, together with separation and decline of emotional and practical support. In relation to this, Botterill (2014) notes emerging tensions between the narrative of the family and the growing diversity of family practices and lifestyles. In terms of the source and scope of support, the interviewees could be divided into three groups: family-oriented, self-oriented and institution-oriented. Apart from their own nuclear family, the participants, particularly the family-oriented, were involved in reciprocal exchanges with a limited number of other relatives, as in the case of 15 interviewees out of 40 who had parents or siblings in the UK. Migrants lacking close relatives tended to establish quasi-family ties with selected Polish friends or acquaintances like, for example, single mother Marta, who got help from two couples regarding childcare and shopping as well as celebrating festive time together: ‘We spend festive periods together […] this is a group of five people who can always rely on one another. […] This is such basic support here’ (UK37/w/single parent with children in the UK/2y). However, the strength of ties and scope of assistance between friends or acquaintances usually remained substantially lower than between family members in Poland, where generations often share caring responsibilities and are involved in intergenerational exchanges, as Sylwia noted: This year we have bought an animal because I cannot decide to have another baby and I do not know if I decide to have a baby in fact. I am afraid to be here alone without family [besides her young daughter and husband – a lorry driver]. In Poland always somebody would help, my sister or my mother-in-law or my mother if I need, but here a person is alone, unfortunately a friend is not a family. She can help from time to time but you cannot rely on her as on your family, so I will rather not have another child here. (UK40/w/husband and child in the UK/3y4m)

While informal, predominantly family-based, networks of Polish migrants could be characterised by their omnipresence and instrumental effectiveness (Irek 2011), they did not always provide sufficient social capital to facilitate ‘proper settlement’ and provide an adequate security net (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2005; Ryan 2011). In addition to the core

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group of support, the participants usually tried to establish connections with a wider circle of – usually Polish – acquaintances, as Irek explained: ‘I feel under pressure to build an environment of positive people around me. This is also, as I have said, because of the kids’ (UK34/m/wife and children in the UK/2y1m). Similarly Darek – who had also lived in Birmingham for a relatively short period – joined a Polish music group to continue his hobby from Poland and meet families who had migrated after the Second World War, who he perceived as patriotic and well-integrated (UK22/m/with wife in the UK/2y1m). The single migrants often lived in shared houses or flats with other Polish migrants but not exclusively. Although their social networks varied and might include relatives, they could be predominantly characterised as representing limited support. Self-sufficiency represented a particularly significant grounding feature in these migrants’ narratives, often accompanied by the appreciation of freedom and independence as well as keeping different options open, as in the strategy of intentional unpredictability (Eade et al. 2006), which can be exemplified by Kuba’s testimony: So far I do not have any family life mainly because I do not want to tie up with anybody. I want to be alone and focused on my passions. […] I have never sought support. I do not have a need to seek support either in institutions or probably really in people. […] It is important to have work besides this, which is my hobby and my passion. My mainstay is the feeling of freedom, independence. […] Independence and freedom in opinions, freedom in sexual life, in everything. This is the most important value above all. […] I belong to people who have everything they need with them. (UK18/m/single, child in other part of the UK/8y)

Eriksen (2014) points out that individualisation and the general shift from the socio-centric to egocentric perspective lead to the individualisation of adaptation strategies where migrants juggle, on the one hand, a demand for security and belonging with, on the other hand, a need for freedom and self-actualisation. The single migrants interviewed combined intensive work with time-consuming hobbies and substantial consumption, constituting their migration lifestyle. For instance, this might be exemplified by Anna, an officer in a public



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institution and a self-employed businesswoman who was mainly focused on her work, development and being fit and attractive: In general, I am happy with my life. I am a single person and I am over 30. I live in the city centre in a big flat. I share it with somebody simply because I do not want to be alone. Concerning financial issues I am totally relaxed. I have what I want, I save if I want. In the next year I want to buy my flat, house. […] I do whatever I want but I am alone. […] I work a lot. Apart from my daily work from 9 to 5, from Monday to Friday, I try to develop my business. […] It is going well, but I do not have my private life because I do not have time. Besides I go to gym a lot, I take part in competitions, which are soon. The season is beginning, so I prepare myself in this respect and I run a lot. I try to go out with mates a lot, if I find any time. […] I want to look good and that’s all, the rest does not matter so to say. (UK19/w/ single/7y11m)

Zuza, like Anna, remained focused on progression at work and selfactualisation in the urban setting, while being anxious about her inability to establish her own family due to the lack of a proper partner: When I started to work in my current company, I got out of a small town and I am in a big city. This is the fact that I returned to a shared accommodation but this was an option for me to meet people because I am still single. I travel lots, so it does not make sense to me to have my flat and pay a lot for it when I am almost never there […] I travel from work but also I use this for myself to see different places. I travel a lot on holiday […] I often meet my mates. I still go out a lot but less than before. I try to find other interests. I went to dancing classes […] Of course sports have been always present in my life and now I have a gym at work so I go there a few times a week. (UK20/w/single/9y)

Both Anna and Zuza stressed that they chose to share flats with someone not only to reduce costs of living but also to have the opportunity to socialise and avoid loneliness. In general, almost all the interviewees preferred close friendship with Poles, although some maintained connections outside the Polish community. Both family-oriented and self-oriented migrants spent their free time hosting, visiting or contacting Polish friends and acquaintances in addition to families (including those living in Poland and other countries). Singles were relatively more open to, and active in, connecting to others within and beyond the Polish community, as

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well as establishing new relations on the basis of their work and leisure activities. Having non-Polish friends was correlated with higher competencies in English. When asked about up to five of their best friends (defined as those who can be fully trusted and relied on), the participants listed 121 born in Poland, but only ten born in the UK or another country. Having a quite intensive social life (all but one regularly met friends), the interviewees mainly spent time with other Poles (GrzymalaKazlowska 2018a). Native British were the most frequent friends among other nationalities, followed by other – mainly European – migrants and representatives of British ethnic minorities. The transformed post-war ethnic institutions and those developed by post-accession migrants, including the new ethnic media, substantially influenced the processes of adaptation and settling of Polish migrants in the UK (Garapich 2008). The thriving Polish community with numerous Polish shops and services (such as beauty salons, medical centres, advice agencies, garages, restaurants) constituted a very important space of anchoring, especially at the beginning of migrants’ stay abroad, as Aneta described: ‘These were only [the first] three weeks when I did not have a job and I was searching. I was looking for contacts with Poles, Polish shops so I acclimatised very quickly here’ (UK12/w/husband and children in the UK/8y). For many, particularly family-oriented migrants, the Polish church and Polish Saturday schools became significant points of reference in their life in the UK. Not only were they places of religious practice and children’s education but they were also spaces of social contact (e.g. enabling exchange, making friends) and the reinforcement of ethnicity and identity and the growth of self-esteem. Beside spiritual assistance, Polish priests also indicated the psychological and practical support that migrants – especially in crisis – were offered at church. Polish school additionally played a substitution role when teachers worked there voluntarily (even the childless) to connect to other educated and engaged individuals, to practise their profession, rebuild their self-esteem and reinforce their social position with the ethnic community, illustrated by Malwina’s case: Actually, over the last months, I dedicated a lot of time and attention to it and I have lots of plans, so if there is something which stops me or keeps me [here], this would be the school certainly more than my



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work, because – quite strangely – it looks as though I dedicate everything to the school, much more than to normal work. (UK36/w/partner in the UK/5y)

Migrants’ voluntary activities remained predominantly within the Polish community. Being so immersed in their families, social circles and the Polish community, the participants were usually not interested or willing to go beyond their comfort zone to establish new social anchors outside the Polish community (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018b). Polish language and culture, close family, relatives and friends, ethnic institutions and the wider Polish community represented different layers of ethno-cultural and social safety nets which they relied on, with transferred or reconstructed footholds in the UK accompanied by anchors remaining in Poland. From connecting to anchoring in British society This section focuses on the processes playing a crucial role in connecting Polish migrants to British society and the mechanisms of establishing new ‘bridging’ footholds linking them to British society. These anchors were mainly visible in the following spheres: work, learning English, children’s school and after-school activities, neighbours and local community, and British governmental and non-governmental (welfare) institutions. Since the beginning of their stay abroad, employment played a vital function in connecting and then anchoring my participants in British society. This essential role was reflected in the centrality of work in their narratives, which were usually built around work and family. Work provided not only opportunity for connections and means of living but also a life frame and regularity, a sense of stability and security which was of key importance, structuring migrants’ time and strengthening their agency, confidence and self-esteem. However, transcending Polishness at the workplace was actually not always possible due to limited social contact at work or the domination of contacts with Polish or other Eastern European migrants there, as Paulina explains: ‘When my husband worked with these Poles his language was as it was. It is known, wherever we called, there were interpreters, so there was not any special pressure’ (UK02/w/ husband and children in the UK/4y). In the case of some migrants,

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their self-employment, short-term jobs or zero-hours contracts hardly guaranteed sufficiently secure, stable and long-term conditions for establishing sustainable social relations, as demonstrated by Krasas Rogers (2000), or even for entering meaningful contact at work. Nevertheless, even if restricted, work could offer chances for development, improving language skills and establishing connections outside the Polish community, as in the case of Agata. Agata was a single mother and an unskilled worker with hardly any work experience who came to the UK with her children not knowing English. Thanks to her openness and willingness to learn, Agata managed to progress fast in her subsequent jobs and to develop basic English skills which she summarised in this way: After changing jobs and having contact with the English, who taught me, as I can say, corrected me, helped me learn the language … After this year I spread my wings so much that I was able to change job and then once more to another which is better paid. There are better work hours and I have opportunities to develop in terms of language because I have to speak English at work all the time. (UK39/w/single mother with children in the UK/2y3m)

The participants appreciated job opportunities in the UK (including existing, albeit limited, potential for upward mobility), which contributed to their overall feeling of security and stability. The availability of opportunities in terms of work or lifestyle, as well as possibilities for development and changes also added to migrants’ sense of safety. The workplace could offer a space for meaningful contact that could develop beyond work settings and allow for reciprocal exchange (Phillimore et al. 2018). Friendship with non-Poles was mainly established through work, particularly when the interviewees adopted an open and friendly attitude towards colleagues, like Kinga or Bogdan, who admitted: ‘Almost all the people I regularly go out with, are from work’ (UK03/w/single/1y5m) or ‘I eat lunch with my workmates. After work, we play badminton, also with mates from work’ (UK11/m/ wife and child in the UK/7y). The interviewed participants predominantly maintained relationships with workmates which included inviting guests home, celebrating birthdays and festivals, spending days out together – the first two being traditional Polish ways of socialising helpful for building deeper and more sustainable ties, contrasted by



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some interviewees with the British pub culture, which was more popular among younger migrants (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018a). An example of home- and family-oriented socialising was provided by Bartosz, a working-class migrant who simultaneously maintained contact with non-Polish friends and lived in his ‘little Poland’ in Birmingham: And this English part is when I go to work, when I talk to the English. I have great mates, ladies in the office are very nice and whatever […] I have an English mate. His name is Paul. He is 24. From time to time he comes to us, pays us a visit. […] I have a mate – he came from Uganda, but he has got already a British passport. […] He comes frequently, we have a coffee, talk, joke. […] Or another mate is also English. (UK35/m/wife and children in the UK/4y6m)

Bartosz stressed his open and sociable attitude towards colleagues and his willingness to accommodate: It is important to be good to others, have contact, talk. I think that conversation gives a lot. Just talk to someone, joke, listen, even sometimes have an argument. […] We try to integrate with the English – I try to integrate. I understand them and think – because I can hear different opinions about this – I think that, if we are in this country, we came here, they did not come to us, so it seems to me that we should understand them a little and respect them. (UK35/m/wife and children in the UK/4y6m)

In the cited passage, Bartosz explicitly refers to integration which is – in his view – enabled by social activity and efforts to understand and respect the host society. However, as indicated by Zuza, friendship with colleagues often has a rather loose character and stops with changing a job: ‘People I meet who are my friends, are so easy going. We meet and talk from time to time but everyone is already established and nobody relies on anyone, that is we meet once or twice a week to do something but everyone also has their own plans in the meantime’ (UK20/w/single/9y). Nevertheless, even shallow connections have the potential to become footholds helpful in settling. Likewise learning English played a significant role in connecting and provided settings for meaningful encounters and establishing anchors in the UK. Language courses gave migrants a safe and regular opportunity to meet others, transcend their own ethnicity and homogeneous social networks and learn new scripts of behaviour, including

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how to interact with members of the diverse British society, as highlighted by Monika: ‘I have just started [English classes]. […] We try to speak and this is a very diverse cultural, religious, language environment. […] The atmosphere in the class is very nice. These cultural differences are not so visible, we treat each other equally and that’s all’ (UK10/w/husband and children in the UK/1y3m). Connecting to others and then building closer relations within the context of English classes was facilitated by the similarity of attendees’ situation in terms of adaptation challenges, the position of being strangers in British society and the language limitations, which gave students a common ground, reduced power inequalities and, paradoxically, helped in communication (see also Wessendorf 2015). However, although the migrants appreciated the benefits of learning English and having contact with the British, and enrolled for English classes either on a voluntary basis or as a requirement of job centres, they usually struggled to continue formal classes due to work and family commitments (e.g. a lack of childcare, long hours at work) (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018b). Learning English was also challenging due to the dissimilarity of the two languages and low pre-migratory English competencies of many migrants. In addition, the interviewees emphasised impeding factors such as psychological and emotional barriers (related to a fear of being ridiculous), stress and decreased self-confidence, leading to social avoidance, as well as the belief that one could manage without English thanks to the assistance of Polish acquaintances, one’s own children as cultural brokers ( Jezewski and Sotnik 2001) or formal interpreters (if available). Those who had made substantial progress, as for example Agata, underlined the significance of everyday learning and a supportive environment for language acquisition, in her case not only at work but also at home with her children: We simply agreed with the children that when we return home and when guests come to visit them, we all speak only English … We agreed with my children’s friends to give me more confidence, as the children spoke very well, that they would not laugh at me and would help me. My daughter had very nice friends and when they came they taught me … These children gave me more confidence, so that thanks to these interactions or conversations – having these children one hour at home I could say more things. (UK39/w/single mother with children in the UK/2y3m)



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Learning through daily practice took place not only at work but also through meaningful encounters in the neighbourhood and socialising, as Jan highlighted: Generally in the first two months I rented a room from the English and in some way socialised with them. We went out at weekends and English was all the time, so it was not easy but I managed. Later, I think I became worse in English because when the family came and I began to meet more and more Polish families and Poles, my English became worse. (UK33/m/partner and child in the UK/5y10m)

In contrast to Agata, who learned from her children, Jan’s words show that being surrounded by a family and immersed in its life could hinder English acquisition. Those who spoke English fluently, like Darek, reflected on the significance of the language as their anchor in the UK: From a formal point of view national security [National Insurance number (NI)], no, I always liked English language, maybe this. Maybe this English language linked me to the UK. […] I always wanted to get to know whether I can use it equally for example with somebody from England. And it turned out that more or less it is possible. […] these connections the UK – English language – the school I work at, this is something that I could prove myself that I know something so maybe these aspirations are something that link me to this country. (UK22/m/wife in the UK/2y1m)

English was not only a tool for communication and a foothold grounding migrants in British culture and society but also a means of transforming identity. Immersion in the language and culture led to familiarity and contributed to the feeling of predictability and safety described by Marta: ‘You use names of streets, change to English, change to Polish, think in English, jump from Polish to English television and do not notice the difference while you are watching a Polish or English film. Simply you started thinking normally of shops, doing shopping. […] So probably the biggest change is normalisation’ (UK37/w/single parent with children in the UK/2y). Children’s school and other activities also provided a possibility for connecting to British society as well as learning culture and practising English in familiar and regular settings, although those opportunities remained somewhat underused by my participants (GrzymalaKazlowska 2018a). The school as an institution was rather effective

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in at least superficial accommodation of diversity and inclusion of children, representing one of the most stabilising footholds in British society, which is illustrated by Aneta’s words: Children’s school … I notice it more now that for our children home is England, the UK. […] This is so encouraging on one hand, that I see that they develop here well and have a good school. They speak both languages wonderfully. This is very important and it is now the main reason why we are here in England – I think of the children. (UK12/w/husband and children in the UK/8y)

Iga, like Aneta, explained her the children’s school was one of the key factors keeping their family in the UK and preventing them from returning to Poland: ‘This [her lack of integration] is such my complex, so I miss Poland because I feel at home there. On the other hand, I know that there are rather no real chances for my return there due to various reasons – at least because of the girls, of whom each is at a different stage of education and no time is good’ (UK04/w/husband and children in the UK/7y). Meeting non-Polish parents at school provided an opportunity to practise English, establish new relations transcending Polishness, get access to new resources and establish weak ties – that is, to belong to networks of different, sometimes dissimilar people (Granovetter 1983). In a parallel way, after-school activities could potentially constitute an important form of connecting whole families with other families engaged in the same type of activity. For instance, football could be perceived as significant space of meaningful encounter and one of the routes for establishing anchors. Similarly, Hobfoll (2015) uses the love of baseball as a model for the cultural integration of migrants in the US, based on baseball’s role as a ‘national pastime’ which everybody can play or be a fan of, where the knowledge of and involvement in the game becomes ‘a uniter’ within neighbourhoods and nationally. However, despite this potential, football was hardly used by my participants due to the language barrier, withdrawal, lack of self-confidence and preoccupation with daily life and their own families. More prominent connections were those the interviewees established in their neighbourhoods and local communities. The significance of such initial local footholds was reflected in Aneta’s choice of her first place of residence: ‘We moved very close to these friends, in another

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part of the city, not at the place where we live now. We lived close to them, so we had all kinds of help from them. They had been settled here and known everything. We felt very secure’ (UK12/w/husband and children in the UK/8y). Thus Aneta’s first anchors in Birmingham were Polish friends settled in the UK. Overall, the interviewees settled relatively well in their neighbourhoods and had overwhelmingly positive experiences with living in their local communities: 35 out of 40 reported satisfaction, among whom 33 maintained daily contact and received help from neighbours, and 13 spent free time with their neighbours. The participants provided examples of support such as helping out during emergencies, assisting migrants in dealing with formalities in institutions, or driving them to the doctor, as Agata described: My neighbours on streets are very helpful. There was no electricity, they came to ask if we have candles, they invited us to their place, because they have more emergency lights in houses. […] Here, if you are among friendly people, life is nicer and the attitude towards the world is better, so that in spite of difficulties and that someone cries from time to time at home, they meet such an English3 person who will say, ‘Do not worry, it will be fine. I will help you. Do you need …? Do you lack anything? I will drive it for you,’ as it was in relation to school or GP. (UK39/w/single parent with children in the UK/2y3m)

Aneta shared a story about her neighbours offering their house to accommodate her guests, which she contrasted with rather reserved attitudes in Poland: ‘I really felt that people make an effort, help. […] In Poland you can rely on neighbours, but never in this way as here when they came and said, “We are going away for a week and you have guests” – we had guests from Poland – “so we give you the keys so use our kitchen and you can sleep at our home”’ (UK12/w/husband and children in the UK/8y). Aneta gave an example of other ‘pastoral’ friends, previous neighbours, offering her continuous guidance and assistance: I have English friends, wonderful people, that I know, that if something happens to me, I can always rely on them. They are substitutes for my

3 Like many Polish migrants, Agata used ‘English’ and ‘British’ interchangeably.

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family, which I do not have here. […] Elderly people, approaching their 70s, but wonderful. I really noticed … that we understand each other very well. I have tried to establish a relationship with younger people of my age and this is very difficult. […] They used to live next to these our [Polish] mates in the place where we moved in at the beginning […]. They have also been in Poland, so they have met our family. (UK12/w/husband and children in the UK/8y)

Aneta stressed the age difference between herself and these neighbours, which made the relations quasi-parental. Paulina, a housewife who felt isolated due to low competence in English, got assurance from her older English landlords as well: These landlords, who come here … she is also very kind. My husband worked for her for some time, so he says that she is like that because she has not got any children and she wants to be such a mother for me. When she comes, she always gives me a hug and ‘What is going on?’ and in general she inquires about everything. (UK02/w/husband and children in the UK/4y)

Paulina represented a migrant highly immersed in Polishness – living in her Polish world in a superdiverse urban context. Another illustration of a pastoral relationship was provided by Barbara, whose disabled son was supported by a British Muslim family hosting him during days out, taking him for trips and buying gifts (UK24/w/husband and child in PL, other children in the UK/1y5m). Barbara, whose English skills were basic, described her relationship with the elderly couple as close and ‘natural’. She interpreted their help as a kind of charitable activity in the context of their lack of other caring responsibilities. Pastoral friends thus might be seen as a third distinctive type of friendship in comparison to workmates (involved in exchange and support beyond the workplace) and leisure-oriented friends (mainly related to spending free time together). The observed positive attitudes and assistance from people living nearby (e.g. offers of food for sampling, inviting children to play together) usually took place in mixed neighbourhoods due to the specificity of Birmingham’s demographics and patterns of migrants’ concentration in areas of high diversity. Therefore this might exemplify ‘commonplace diversity’, when diversity becomes a daily practice, an ordinary part of social life, and people mix in public and associational spaces (Wessendorf 2013), as well as a form of everyday conviviality



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providing the possibilities of openness (Gilroy 2004), boundary crossing and inter-ethnic solidarity (Karner and Parker 2011). Connections in local communities not only constituted important resources for settling but also facilitated job-related activity, as in the case of Marek, who started to be involved in his neighbourhood after organising a common space around the multi-occupancy house he lived in: I called our agency and asked if I could arrange it [a garden]. They said that it was fine. So I bought soil, flowers and began to do this. At the same time one neighbour came, second, third and they started to help me. All of a sudden this changed into a party, because someone brought cake, rum. […] [Polish friend] asked when I felt here like at home? I said that when I was opening my office I had already known my all local community […]. There was nothing like this in Poland. When I come back home, my neighbour living downstairs, a Pakistani, frequently opens her door and talks to me. My Jamaican neighbour, when he sees me with my dog, brings some rum and we talk. I feel here like at home thanks to people who are very open. I feel like at home, connected to this local community. (UK09/m/single/2y10m)

The above quotation also clearly demonstrates the benefits of being active and socialising for Marek’s identity and belonging. Anchoring in neighbourhoods and local communities could take a material form when migrants became householders, as evident in Bogdan’s previous example and this comment by Robert: ‘However, I have never had a strong sentiment towards Birmingham, but I start to like Erdington but this is exactly because, so to say, I have anchored here [after buying his first house]’ (UK38/m/single/4y9m). Although a substantial number of the participants (recruited through NGOs) were involved in some systematic voluntary work (16 out of 40 – in socio-cultural organisations and initiatives, particularly as teachers at one of the Polish Saturday schools), their activity was usually restricted to the Polish community. Other spaces of connecting to others beyond the Polish group were related to leisure time. Artistic activity (such as producing music, organising concerts, arts festivals and exhibitions) could also play a vital role in migrants’ adaptation and ‘settlement’, helping them sustain their identity, overcome isolation, express their desires and deal with emotions, as in the cases of Maria creating artistic installations (UK13/w/single/10y), Pawel organising musical and artistic events promoting the culture of Central and

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Eastern Europe (UK05/w/single/4y6m) and Kuba developing multicultural projects. Kuba described his activity in these words: In addition, I started to deal with art because I hung around with artists, musicians. Slowly I am moving towards diverse artistic projects and I began writing. […] Basically, I did not take part in any Polish projects, but rather in international ones. Unless I do something with my best friends and in this case it is being done by Poles but not for Poles. (UK18/m/single with a child in another part of the UK/8y)

Single migrants enjoyed more free time, resources and opportunities to socialise, including beyond the Polish community. The participants pointed to the British custom of going out as facilitating social connections and first footholds but not often helpful for turning them into strong and deep anchors. Such a way of socialising – going out and mixing with others – was, to a great extent, characteristic of urban, younger residents with higher cultural (English) and economic capital, and so was difficult to follow for those who did not possess such resources and opportunities. Maria recalled living in a remote community with few migrants, who were separated from the locals not only because of their different ethnic origin but also due to their different socio-economic profile, and so were forced to stick together among themselves. Some interviewees pointed out that their relations with non-Polish friends remained marked by distance and temporality – being rather superficial and focused on going out together rather than representing deep, trustful and long-term friendship, as with best Polish friends. This could also partly reflect cultural differences in the perception of friendship and closeness in Poland and the UK. For the participants, the word ‘friend’ was reserved for a particularly close relationship based on loyalty and strong emotional bonds, so they generally rarely used the Polish term ‘friends’, instead speaking of ‘mates’ or ‘acquaintances’. Nevertheless, there were also a few examples of deep and sustainable friendship with the British, providing strong anchors, as for instance in Anna’s case: In this hopeless [situation], these were Britons who helped me and my family, not Poles. I have a few people I can rely on in every situation and they are British. […] Since I have been here a very long time and all my contacts in Poland have ended, I have friends here. I spend a



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lot of time with them, I try to go on holiday with them. They are a very important part of my life. (UK19/w/single/7y11m)

Anna emphasised her preference for British friends as ones more oriented towards development and similar in terms of lifestyle and aspirations. For Polish migrants, who are predominantly Catholics, local parishes potentially provided natural spaces of meaningful encounter and connection to British society, allowing them to establish footholds useful for adaptation and settling. However, despite often being in contact with local parishes because of their children attending Catholic schools, the migrants tended to underuse this potential to integrate into local communities. Nevertheless, religious practices and spirituality provided them with other types of life anchors, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Governmental and non-governmental (welfare) institutions represented other spaces of connection to the UK. By and large the interviewees valued the British welfare system and other state institutions, with practically the only service criticised being the National Health Service. Aneta’s words expressed a predominant feeling of trust in welfare institutions in the UK, often contrasted by the interviewees with social provision in Poland: ‘I think that this is also very significant, so secure that I would know that if something happens to my husband or to me and I could not work, I know that we would get help’ (UK12/w/husband and children in the UK/8y). Nevertheless, even if the participants received child benefit, tax credit or housing benefit, they did not usually treat this support as footholds in their lives in the UK but rather perceived themselves as independent agents relying on themselves and their families and friends, as Kuba expressed it: ‘I have never, never, got such an idea that I could rely on [institutions], look for such a support. Even in Ireland when my situation was very difficult, I relied on myself and nature around, maybe also on books. Taking all my mates and friends here, in fact the majority rely on themselves and the closest circle, not on institutions’ (UK18/m/single with a child in another part of the UK/8y). Welfare institutions (both state-funded and NGOs) only played a central role in the narratives of a few unemployed and homeless (male) participants who could be categorised as institution-oriented. Either having no family in the UK or being estranged, they needed to rely

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on formal institutions, especially as a lack of other support was often accompanied by health issues (physical and/or mental) and alcohol problems. These interviewees accessed institutions to receive various types of help (e.g. meals and food, clothes, medicines, toiletries, access to showers, legal help and assistance in translation, completing forms and/or contacts with institutions). Around such institutions they could socialise with other migrants, who provided additional emotional support and company but usually hampered attempts to change. One such recipient was Zenon, who indicated his main institutional sources of support in the UK: ‘Job centre and housing benefit. […] Thanks to the job centre I can afford food and basic maintenance. Housing benefit – I have a place to live. Hospital is also free, because it happened that I was in hospital a few times’ (UK29/m/partner in the UK/1y6m). In a similar vein, Damian called SIFA Fireside ‘an assembly point for Poles in Birmingham and vicinity’ (UK23/m/single, no contact with children in the UK/5y6m). The relationship with these institutions structured migrants’ time and grounded them in reality, and through this contributed to their sense of security and connectedness to British society. However, this also had ambiguous side effects. Alongside assistance, the institutions exercised a substantial degree of power and control over the participants, decreasing their agency and leading them into dependency, even though the beneficiaries argued that relying on institutions was less constraining than being dependent on social networks, as Damian explained: ‘I would be afraid to return to Poland since I do not have anything there. I would not like to return as others do and be depend on others. I know that here I manage somehow on my own’ (UK23/m/separated4 from wife and children in the UK/5y6m). Welfare institutions remained particularly significant in the life of only two female participants: Grazyna – a single mother suffering from depression after recent cancer treatment (UK30/w/single, children in Poland, children in the UK/8y5m) – and Barbara, the main carer for her disabled son, who had moved to the UK hoping to facilitate the boy’s inclusion into wider society (in terms of education, therapy and opportunities for social contact) (UK24/w/husband and child in 4 ‘Separated from family’ describes a migrant who did not have contact with his children and a former spouse.

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PL, other children in the UK/1y5m). However, Barbara and Grazyna treated institutions as a complementary source of support in addition to their networks of family and friends and their own activity on the labour market. To sum up, this part of the empirical analysis demonstrates the centrality of security and stability in the experience of Polish migrants in the UK. I argue in this chapter that, even in the context of the relatively stable legal framework of intra-EU migration prior to the EU referendum, the Polish participants tended to anchor themselves rather than put down roots in the UK. The chapter particularly focuses on the mechanisms of establishing new social anchors connecting migrants to British society and their determinants. The migrants interviewed represented agents looking for life opportunities while recovering their sense of stability and security, based mainly on the ethno-cultural network, family ties, social networks and work opportunities in the UK. The multiple anchors developed and maintained by the interviewees could be divided into two main categories (Figure 2): those contributing to the maintenance of Polishness (‘bonding’, circled with a solid line) and those facilitating inclusion in British society (‘bridging’, circled with a dotted line). The footholds strengthening Polishness and ethnic bonds included: Polish language and culture; strong national identity; close family members; narrow circles of support and wider Polish community (particularly involvement in the Polish school, church and voluntary activity within the Polish community). They were related to gender and family roles as well as homemaking and other daily practices that defined and organised the lives of the participants. The footholds mainly grounding the migrants in British society encompassed: work; English language (e.g. English skills, language classes); children’s (English) school and before-/after-school activities; and anchors in neighbourhoods and local communities. However, there were also other anchors functioning to establish security and stability which could not be easily classified as any of the former groups and which will be analysed in the following chapter. They include spirituality and religion as well as a sense of agency; material footholds such as houses, cars, technology; leisure activities encompassing sports, travel and the arts; in addition to illnesses or addictions which had a particular determining and thus constraining character (for instance,

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Leisure activities (sports and other physical activities, artistic activities, activities related to nature, pets)

Church (usually Polish) and God

Home and housekeeping (cooking, cleaning, daily routines)

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Material objects and technology Neighbours and local community

Values and norms (especially gender and family roles)

POLES IN THE UK

Children’s school and activities (English)

Polish community and institutions (especially school) Polish acquaintances

English classes

Close circle of social support (close family or friends)

British government and NGO welfare institutions Work (current and possibilities)

Polish identity, language and culture

Family (children and spouse)

Figure 2  Different types of anchors of Poles in the United Kingdom (author’s elaboration) Note: grey circles are the most important anchors; anchors contributing to a sense of Polishness are circled with a solid line; anchors facilitating inclusion are circled with a dotted line.

having a child with medical conditions, being disabled or addicted to alcohol). In spite of many commonalities in anchoring across my diverse sample of 40 participants, certain differences were noticeable among families (family-oriented participants), single (working) self-oriented migrants and institution-oriented migrants (e.g. the homeless or other vulnerable individuals), showing the variety of adaptation and settling patterns.

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6 Towards a general model of migrants’ anchoring

This chapter aims to synthesise crucial points about anchoring which emerge from my research with Ukrainian migrants in Poland and Polish migrants in the UK, to develop a framework that allows for a better understanding of the processes of migrant adaptation and settling. In order to outline key elements useful for building a general model of migrants’ anchoring, it concentrates on commonalities observed across both groups, in contrast to the previous chapters, which focused on Ukrainian migrants in Poland and Polish migrants in the UK as separate case studies to highlight their specifics and contextual insight. The centrality of the need for security and stability The SAST research in both groups demonstrated the salience of security and stability, which featured prominently in the collected material. Their centrality was reflected in migrants’ narratives when they recurrently, more or less explicitly, referred to ‘stability’, ‘security’, ‘safety’, ‘peace’ and ‘regularity’, acknowledging their significance in life. Examples of remarks of the Polish migrants in the UK include: ‘Stability is important’ (UK23/m/separated from wife and children in the UK/5y5m); ‘How to say it … that stability here’ (UK14/w/ husband and child in the UK/8y); ‘Somehow we managed to establish a rather stable life’ (UK36/w/single mother, children in the UK/5y); ‘Stable future, better existence’ (UK15/w/husband and children in the UK/5y); ‘My life currently is incredibly peaceful. I do not experience

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any pressure or stress. […] I feel here secure in every aspect of my life’ (UK09/m/single/2y10m). In the same vein, the Ukrainian migrants spontaneously referred to safety and stability: ‘We have got used to a better life, so that we feel safer than in Ukraine’ (PL07/w/husband in PL/4y); ‘Here is work, stability, so everything will be fine tomorrow’ (PL18/w/partner and children in UA/1y10m); ‘Poland, work, security, residence, simply peaceful life’ (PL24/m/wife in PL/3y). Similar comments were repeated in the sentence-completion test when the participants commented, for example: ‘The most important thing is to have a feeling of security and stability’, ‘The biggest problem is a lack of stability’. Despite the different country contexts, security and stability represented essential needs expressed by both Ukrainian migrants in Poland and Polish migrants in the UK, in accordance with Maslow’s theory (1954). The research showed that the migrants did not only refer to such categories as security and a sense of stability in my interviews and questionnaires, but similar expressions were also noticeable in blogs and forum discussions. The below quote illustrates how migrants justified remaining in the UK by referring to material stability and a lack of concerns about the future: And even though sometimes I miss them and what I left in Poland, I regard an emigrant life as a good choice. Not one time I will face dilemmas which emigration brings. But something for something. Year after year I confirm my conviction that this country can give us much more than the homeland. It gives us a stable financial situation and no fears for the future. And that is why we do not return. (Blog 17, PL)

Another example illuminates migrants’ endeavours to find stability and the acknowledgement that they will eventually put down roots: In total, I moved 21 times in a life. I lived in ugly and beautiful places. And everything in the pursuit of work, of school, of a better life, of a better future, of larger opportunities. I have enough. I do not want to move any more. I want to settle down somewhere permanently. Put roots down. Plant my trees in a garden and watch how they grow for us. Over the last ten years we have lived in four different places, in different parts of the country, in a number of different houses, flats and rooms. We wandered about from one corner to another like Gypsies. Eventually the time has come to settle down and put roots down for longer. (Blog 1, PL)

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The interviewees also referred to anchoring and related processes in a more direct yet metaphorical way, like Renata, who used the phrase of being ‘a drifting raft’ to describe her struggle for acquiring stability and security abroad: ‘So far I have been like a drifting raft, since I spend my time in searching for work in order to make a living, survive. Costs are much higher here than, for example, in Poland and I do not have anybody here I can rely on’ (UK17/w/single/2y6m). In this figurative way, Renata highlighted her current unsettled position in the UK which might be seen through the lens of Bauman’s concept of liquid life (2000). Bogdan spontaneously used the metaphor of anchoring to describe a milestone in his settling, the purchase of a house: ‘Buying a house. It has anchored me a bit, I may say’ (UK11/m/ wife and child/7y). The motif of buying a house as an essential foothold was also apparent in the Internet blogs and forums, as in the example below. Buying a house is presented here as a stabilising factor of crucial importance in life: The purchase [of a house] gives us stabilisation and it is the most important in the world to me. As a tenant I always felt like a vagrant with suitcases. You never know if sometimes the landlord will not suddenly wish to sell the house and get rid of the tenants. It is not known how long you will have possibility to stay at this place. A man cannot hit the proverbial nail and never will feel that they are in their own place. (Blog 18, PL)

Relativity of stability and dynamic character of anchoring One of the most noticeable features was the relativity of safety and stability, which were constructed both temporally and cross-country in relation to previous life circumstances. For example, Magda contrasted her current position in England – which she described as having more stable economic and institutional conditions coupled with a more relaxed and tolerant social environment – with her former situation in Poland, presented as more insecure due to institutional and economic instabilities. For example, she cited the inefficiencies of the legal and institutional systems: Maybe I treated this too generally, but stability is attributed to the UK, for me it is related to everything I have now, that I know what to do, where I live. Job, home, my circle of friends, the fact that I know where to arrange what [I need] and I feel secure. I am aware that

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everything depends on me, and I do not feel any danger that something unexpected can happen, so I feel secure. What I experienced in Poland, that every day someone could knock my door and say that I must move out from my home or everything is falling apart because for example clients do not pay. It is not the case here. (UK01/w/husband and children in the UK/8y)

Magda’s words reveal how she perceived stability through comparison to the reconstructed circumstances in the home country, rather than to standards expected in the receiving society, which can partly be the consequence of a self-reassurance and self-presentation strategy to justify her own migration choices and outcomes. Magda seemed not to take into account that her greater stability in the UK could also be linked to her life cycle (being almost 40 with an established family and professional life) and she might have equally secured similar stability in Poland. Neither did she acknowledge the contextual impact of the political transition of 1989, which led to overwhelming and rapid changes, followed by Poland’s extensive transformation related to accession to the EU in 2004. As Burrell (2011) demonstrates in the case of the majority of the first post-accession Polish migrants, the system transition in Poland coincided with their own life-course transitions from youth to adulthood, creating a destabilising ‘double transition’ effect for them to cope with, where the emerging opportunities offered by a liberalised economy and recently open borders coexisted with the uncertainties and anxieties underpinning their memories and experiences of this time. Marek explained that his life in the UK became more peaceful and safer than in Poland because of a different work culture and the change in his values and lifestyle in the UK: It is very peaceful. In 2007 in Poland I was diagnosed as diabetic type 2 … Last year, in June [in England] I had an annual review of my diabetes mellitus and my doctor ordered that I should stop taking insulin and two additional pills, leaving only one. My blood sugar is still normal. I think that it is not the change of treatment but the change of lifestyle […] openness towards people, lack of fear, physical danger wherever on the streets and financial existence. (UK09/m/ single/2y10m)

Marek’s narrative shows his feeling of relief after getting out of pressures related to his position and aspirations in a competitive, harsh and



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unstable work environment and life conditions in Poland, which was even reflected in his clinical results. Similar views were held by other migrants, even though some of them were well established in Poland with decent yet demanding jobs and their own houses, like Irek: Having experience, living in Poland, knowing that I cope but at what expense, I wanted to avoid this, that my children would not experience this. I mean the burden of making a living, getting financial means – in general stress, stress, stress. […] Now, let’s say that this life status is comparable in financial terms but incomparable in the case of peace, the number of working hours, my peace, the peace of my family, the possibility of spending time with the family, the possibility of talking to each other because there is time for this and there are no nerves. Nothing irritates – even stressful situations do not make me nervous, just because there is such a psychological comfort. (UK34/m/wife and children in the UK/2y1m)

Irek emphasised the better quality of his life in the UK with less stress and pressure at work, more leisure time and his increased wellbeing related to this more stable and balanced life. The issues of safety and stability were even more prominent and recurrent in the narratives of the Ukrainian migrants interviewed in Poland, which can be linked to lower levels of predictability and stability in terms of institutions and life conditions in Ukraine, as well as the political unrest and military conflicts in that country. The appreciation of life conditions in Poland can also be explained with reference to the scarcity hypothesis that a higher subjective value is attributed to the goods and ideas that are relatively difficult to achieve (Kacprowicz and Konieczna-Salamatin 2014). In the sentence-completion test, my Ukrainian interviewees repeated: ‘When I settled in Poland … I started to feel safe’; and ‘I feel safe … in Poland’; as well as ‘I do not feel safe … in Ukraine’. Roksana concluded: ‘That you have got used to a better life, that we feel safer than in Ukraine not only regarding money’ (PL07/w/husband in PL/4y). Dimitr emphasised a more peaceful life in Poland away from the war, although, to some extent, his situation in Poland was also shadowed by insecurities related to his legal status: It is much more peaceful first of all, because the differences are huge. When in the past it was said that you can get better salaries, now it is much safer first of all. And, in general, everything has changed for

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better of course. I do what I want, I live where I want, I am safe. I do not know how safe I am in terms of the future, because you must fight for your documents, for your residence. But in general, if there is no problem with residence, it is great. (PL24/m/wife in PL/3y)

As discussed in Chapter 4, the Ukrainian participants complained about instability experienced in Ukraine due to institutional inefficiency and corruption, as expressed by Maksym, who was running his own business before moving to Poland: ‘Stability’ that is when I arrange something and I know that it will be the same tomorrow but it was different in Ukraine. There could be something agreed and then you came and it turned out that ‘You know but there is missing something and this will be in six months but, you know, you can pay and it will be [now]’. And, in general, ‘stability’ means to me that if I do something this will give some fruits. In Ukraine, I had such experiences that what I did over years when we had our business, in sum, just disappeared. (PL29/m/partner in UA/5y4m)

Where Maksym paid particular attention to the business environment in both countries, other participants highlighted different features of everyday life. Dimitr emphasised more reliable services such as city transport: ‘Poland, work, security, residence, simply peaceful life. Because here is safe, you live peacefully, buses are on time’ (PL24/m/wife in PL/3y). Ruslan stressed the greater efficiency of the legal system and enforcement agencies in Poland in comparison to Ukraine: ‘There is a big difference. That is here you spend time peacefully. At ours there is always something going on, just uneasiness. […] You are always concerned about the future. […] Here is cool. There is culture, order with the police, with everything, exactly, order and peace. So at home [in Ukraine] you cannot sit peacefully’ (PL30/m/partner in PL/6y). Alina idealised compliance with formal rules in Poland, which in her opinion made her life more predictable and contributed to her feeling of security: Here work, psychological comfort, I do not know if it may be written. I just feel comfortable here among people, more comfortable than in Ukraine. […] There is more safely and peacefully … […] And there is such an order. For example, I have not seen that someone is running across a street, that is I have seen this but cars are not crossing while there is a red light but are waiting and this also influences that I feel safer here. (PL02/m/wife and child in PL/1y)

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Nadiya pointed to greater job opportunities as a factor adding to the sense of safety and stability that was similarly present in the narratives of the Polish migrants in the UK: ‘So if there is no work today, it will be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. There is stability, stability related to work. We do not have such a thing at home [in Ukraine]. Here there is work, stability, everything will be fine tomorrow’ (PL18/w/ partner and children in UA/1y10m). Whereas less institutional predictability and stability in sending societies was underlined by both Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland when they referred to their homelands, the military conflict in Ukraine constituted the unique point of reference in the Ukrainian participants’ interviews. The sense of physical danger related to the political situation and military conflict and their destructive power was also apparent in texts posted in the analysed social media, as the following example illustrates: ‘It is mainly not about counting money but about an opportunity for being a free and happy man in a normal country and every morning waking up in a bed with your own wife and children without anxiety and fear, so movement to Poland – it is a solution’ (Facebook 1, UA). The analysis of migrants’ accounts from the biographical and narrative perspectives demonstrated the usefulness of the concept of anchoring as a framework for understanding the processes of adaptation and settling over time. Various stories of the Polish and Ukrainian participants illustrated the ongoing process of recovering stability and safety after emigration. Monika explicitly reflected on her process of gradually establishing herself and the ‘normalisation’ she aimed for, related to a stable family life and employment: ‘There is here our new future – I think so. To me here is stable, that is stability, although it has not been fully reached. When I can work in a normal way [at school] and my husband too [work on a proper contract] … when I can say that I work normally, peacefully … These are our goals’ (UK10/w/husband and children in the UK/1y3m). In general, Monika felt emotionally and cognitively grounded in her family life with her children and husband living with her, unlike the previously cited Renata who did not manage to establish herself in the professional, social and private spheres despite her hopes for developing these footholds in the UK: I worked for more than 20 years in one company in Poland and felt satisfaction and stability … I am not referring to this last period [when

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she was sacked after extended absence due to cancer therapy] … whereas here these two and a half years are exhausting and disheartening if you do not have a permanent job. […] I try to continue a healthy life, but it is not always possible because I have been under a permanent stress for two and a half years while searching for this life stability. (UK17/w/single/2y6m)

Despite the structural and determinist limitations, a biographical trajectory framework (Riemann and Schutze 1991) can be also helpful to conceive migration as a turning point and life-changing experience which initially leads to disruption, disorganisation of life, disintegration of identity and the loss of at least some previous points of reference and life footholds. Different phases may be distinguished in the processes of disconnecting and connecting, starting from strategies for individuals’ pre-migratory attachments, through transition and disorganisation, and then attempts at restoring or reconstructing previous anchors as well as establishing new footholds to recover the sense of security and stability. The character of pre-migratory anchors, their durability, flexibility and portability influenced migrants’ strategies. For example, those who could more easily move their anchors (e.g. family members) and had more resources to establish new ones, chose more long-term, ‘sedentary’ and new-country-focused migration strategies which might or might not be accompanied by an inclination to integrate. The beginning of migration was often of key significance for further adaptation and settling. First experiences and encounters provided Goffman’s frame of reference (1974), including cognitive base, essential skills and initial social relations, contributing to a set of constraints and opportunities for further operation. At the start participants could experience a kind of a honeymoon period when they felt relief after liberating themselves from previous limitations, roles and expectations, were excited about new prospects and intrigued by a new reality. Thus, Slawek, interviewed in the Polish Expats Association project, gives an insight into the feelings and experiences of Polish post-accession migrants in the UK at the beginning of their migration journey: I remember my first time on a double-decker. I was looking for a job. I realised how much I wanted to live here although we were passing the most awkward districts of Birmingham you can possibly imagine but I loved it to bits that I was on the double-decker on the left side. Everyone around was so colourful and smiling. There were no depressed



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people. I envied them a lot and I wanted to be like them. I want my wife here. I want to stay. It was a wishful-thinking. You know sometimes wishes come true. They did in my case. (PEA 2011)

This phase of excitement is usually presented as followed by next stages such as: the crisis phase, the adjustment and gradual recovery phase, and the adaptation phase (Winkelman 1994). Alienation from one’s own culture, disconnection from the familiar social environment and life changes may be overwhelming and lead to feelings of bereavement, contribute to isolation and affect identity (Fried 1966). Migration causes stress related to the necessity of dealing with an unknown and different socio-cultural environment, which can be accompanied by culture conflict and acculturation shock. Bhugra (2004) points out that there are distinct challenges and stressors at different stages (pre-migratory, migration and post-migration) which are handled differently depending on migrants’ resources. As Hobfoll (1998) demonstrates, in order to deal with loss of resources, different cultural, cognitive, social, economic and spiritual resources are mobilised and used by people in a form of replacement, substitution, selective optimisation and compensation. Migrants need to reorganise their lives and identities. In a post-migration period individuals must cope with the potential discrepancies between goals and aspirations on the one hand, and actual outcomes on the other, and they need come to terms with barriers, inequalities and discrimination. The SAST research demonstrated that adaptation and settling processes are not simply linear, as assimilation theory claims, and do not have simple sequential stages, as the psychological theories of adaptation state, but can include phases of regression or be cyclical, with repeated shifts from crises to adjustment while individuals encounter serious personal (e.g. job loss, family breakdown, serious illness) and/or external challenges (e.g. economic hardship, discrimination, a shift towards more hostile social environment). The concept of anchoring acknowledges that adaptation and settling processes are complex and can develop unevenly in different dimensions and layers, and may be halted or reversed, which will be discussed further on. The beginning of migration for the SAST participants was often a period of exceptional activity when they made rapid progress in culture learning and establishing new connections, thus acquiring initial resources. Iga’s case exemplifies the increased motivation of

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new arrivals to make a good start: ‘At the beginning I was so motivated that when I sent Ania to a nursery and Maja went to school I went to language school. I had such zeal that I had to do something about this [low English competency], because I did not feel well with this’ (UK04/w/husband and children in the UK/7y). Zuza admitted that in the first period of her stay in the UK she needed to deal with emotions of uncertainly, anxiety and loneliness while intensively improving her language competencies and learning skills at the same time: ‘For sure emotions and I felt very motivated because I had difficulties with understanding English, so during the first three months every day after a hard-working day I always returned to a book and learned English’ (UK20/w/single/9y). Pawel explained that from the beginning he had focused on making social connections, predominantly with non-Poles: It was not that I was sitting at home and afraid of going out, talking to people or if so, then only to Poles. On the contrary, from the very beginning I made the assumption that if I come here, I do not want to feel like in Poland because I will lose everything I can learn here. I am in England, people speak English here, so I am in the best language school in the world and it would be stupid not to make use of this. (UK05/m/single/4y6m)

This initial period of high motivation, activity and energy investment had a major significance for migration trajectories. From the practical point of view, it also seems crucial for possible intervention, when guiding and supporting migrants in making the most of these initial resources can be particularly beneficial and efficient, which will be developed in the last chapter of this book. Among migrants in both groups, the predominant positive identity transformation and general satisfaction with taking on the challenge of migration constituted assets in the second phase of migration. When the first enthusiasm faded, certain resources (including energetic and psychological ones) were becoming used up and migrants experienced difficulties and crises, as seen in Marek’s account: In this period, when everything was collapsing, I realised that if I give up, I will get drowned. I do not have friends here, such as in Poland, I have only acquaintances here. Nobody gives me anything for free, I am away from everything – I must learn ‘swimming’. […] I learned another lesson – next time when something goes wrong do something to succeed, that is fight for this. A positive attitude towards life – it changes a lot in the head. (UK09/m/single/2y10m)



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Marek’s personal transformation in the UK enabled him to go through the tough time and develop a sense of agency as well as openness to new opportunities and changes. Similarly in blogs and online forums, as in the example below, migrants pointed to the adaptation value of a positive mindset, activity, openness to emerging opportunities and orientation on an incremental progress: We have been living in the UK for 1.5 years and during this time we have experienced so many problems that I thought about writing a book (for sure it will be the number one 😊), however I do not want to return, in general I do not miss Poland only my parents. I have learned here not to think too much but do a so-called job and watch when I can climb one step higher, slowly, slowly and in 50 years I will be a Ms Manager as in Poland ha-ha 😊😊😊😊 Everything will be fine, more humour, less thinking about yourself and your confusion and more about what I can achieve and how to do this because here we have great opportunities and we have been given a chance so do not waste it!!! Kisses and go head 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊. (Forum 5, PL)

In a similar way, my interviewee Dariya acknowledged her personal development and resilience after dealing with many adaptation problems at the beginning of her stay in Poland: ‘You know what, there were certain questions every day you needed to think of at least. And this one year of my stay here in Poland has made me quite a tower of strength’ (PL31/w/single/1y5m). Migration thus brought not only adaptation challenges but also opportunities for personal development and life change. It gave the interviewees the possibility of distancing themselves from previous expectations, constraints and experiences as well as a chance to (re) construct identities and set up new goals. From the perspective of Turner’s theory of transition (1974), in the first period of migration the participants were experiencing a liminality when they found themselves outside previous social structures before establishing themselves in new social relations and roles. This experience could lead to the growth of agency and empowerment, as reflected by Lukasz: I deal with negotiations, difficult contracts, tough clients and huge money […] [this] is my biggest success but in fact this is only a beginning for me. I see myself somewhere further. I expected that I would be able to achieve more here than in Poland, but I did not suspect that I would find and achieve what I want to do in my life. I am very pleased with this. I do not think that my mind would be so

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open to think that I – a little man from Pomerania – could visit places such as now, meet such people and receive calls from individuals from the front pages of newspapers. (UK21/m/wife and child in the UK/8y)

Lukasz noted the development of his self-esteem and creativity, which in his opinion would not have been possible if he had not migrated to the UK. Likewise, Artem acknowledged the role of his migration from Ukraine to Poland not only in his personal and professional growth but also in his involvement in social activism: I also still work for the benefit of Ukraine and now, for example, I think that I do quite a lot for Ukraine, also when I go to Ukraine I will be such an ordinary Ukrainian and I do not know if I could break through these hierarchies which exist there, prove to someone from the beginning that I am such and such … whereas here exactly maybe I can do somehow more and maybe more beneficial things not only for myself but also for others. (PL32/m/wife and child in PL/8y)

In a similar vein, Marek saw his larger social engagement, including voluntary activity, as the effect of learning from British society and developing a more socially engaged attitude, which was helpful in his anchoring in the UK: Poles are incredibly creative, a great nation of talented, well-educated people, who develop their wings only in the UK or other countries, when they see that they can and they are not afraid that someone will swipe them in the neck or break their wings. […] Positive attitude towards life – this also changes a lot in the head. Suddenly an individual begins to see that everything is cool and people around make it happen. In addition, I would add belief in yourself, self-confidence. […] This is the next element I started to employ in the UK – not only for myself, but also to do certain things like charity. […] In the UK over time I have learned one of the elements of functioning in a society which in Poland is very marginalised – I am talking about philanthropy. (UK09/m/ single/2y10m)

Artem and Marek’s cases also illustrate the difference in the predominant character of social activity between the migrants from Ukraine in Poland and from Poland in the UK, with the former more involved in nation-oriented and patriotic activities (e.g. supporting democratic changes in Ukraine and its struggle with Russia), whereas the latter were more focused on community activity, including the ethnic community but also neighbourhood or art communities.

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The active attitude in terms of looking for a job, learning new skills, studying English, establishing new social connections and searching for life opportunities was often accompanied by increasing selfconfidence and self-reliance, as highlighted by Sylwia: ‘I have become more mature. […] I realise that nobody will help me here. I will not get a train and go home. I do not have so many mates here and I must count more on myself. In general, I like it – this gives me such self-confidence and self-appreciation’ (UK40/w/husband and child in the UK/3y4m). Sylwia’s words reflected the growth of her maturity and resilience in the face of limited social support from her physically distant family network. Such developments, however, might be contrasted with the opposite phenomenon noticeable among a few – mainly female – Polish migrants in the UK such as dependent housewives. After migration they suffered from disempowerment and a feeling of insecurity due to their lower social position, decreased self-confidence, the language barrier, a sense of dependence, isolation and limited social support in the host country in comparison to their life in the homeland. The layered model of anchoring Analysis of the SAST interviews allowed various types of anchors connecting migrants to the host societies to be differentiated, reflecting the multidimensionality of anchoring. These might be represented as layers, from external footholds related to work, housing and access to institutions (including alternative – non-mainstream – institutions such as ethnic institutions), through anchors embedded in social relations, to deeper internal footholds linked to emotions, cognitive anchors and identifications. As has already been highlighted, work constituted a crucial grounding feature for the participants. In a similar way, Harney (2012) in his research with Ukrainians in Naples showed how migrants create a sense of security, not only through social networks and belonging based on place-making but also through economic activities, even in the context of the informal economy. This layered character of anchoring was particularly visible in the Polish Expats Association’s filmed account by Slawek, who summarised his ‘rebirth’ and initial period in the UK in this way: I forgot about my profession. I forgot who I was. I forgot what I wanted. I started looking for a job. I knew it would not be easy, but I

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found it within three days. I found a job through the job centre. It had nothing to do with my profession – a factory job, a beautiful job. I worked there for precisely six months. Owing to this I got the NI number. I got a bank account. I could start planning. I moved to a different house, on my own. I began organising myself internally. Even my wife came to visit. […] And then I bought a car. I got a contract for a mobile phone and started reading newspapers. And I bumped into an ad of a company looking for someone of my profession. (PEA 2011)

After establishing himself in terms of a job, house and access to formal institutions – that is, setting up external footholds – Slawek brought his wife and children to Birmingham, where over the years he began to feel at home, settled in his social networks and anchored in surrounding diversity despite his strong Polish identity (PEA 2011). Migrants’ engagement and efforts made in establishing external footholds could facilitate the development of internal anchors, including cognitive and emotional ones, as Ukrainian migrant Tatiana’s narrative reveals. Tatiana explained that she managed to attach fully to Poland only when she split up with her husband and actively anchored herself as an independent and self-reliant agent: I came to my husband in Warsaw, to his circle, to his friends. […] I found myself in a totally international circle: Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, French. I did not have contacts with Poles in Warsaw. […] So this was such a borrowed life, not mine, they simply took me, brought me and I did not adapt. I started to perceive Warsaw as my city only when I returned there the second time from Cracow. […] I had Cracow as only mine, from scratch in terms of work, in terms of people. I came not as a student, not as a wife somebody looks after, but as an independent individual who needs to sort everything on her own, do everything on her own. I coped. I found friends there. And because of rational reasons, because of work, I returned to Warsaw. Only now I think that this is my home, this is my city. (PL39/w/ single/8y4m)

Anchoring can be seen as an uneven and layered process involving not only various types of anchors (e.g. material, social, cognitive) but also ones of different strengths (from very strong to shallow). For example, Slawek’s account demonstrated examples of strong anchors such as his family or profession, and some relatively weaker ones, like his relationship with institutions or mates (PEA 2011).



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Anchoring, re-anchoring and un-anchoring The presence of multiple anchors in the host societies, countries of origin and sometimes other states may be understood in the light of the concept of simultaneity, described as ‘living lives that incorporate daily activities, routines, and institutions located both in a destination country and transnationally’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 1003). One of the Polish interviewees in the UK, Darek, exemplified a migrant maintaining simultaneous anchors in various places: living with his wife and her younger sibling in the UK, he kept close connections with his family in Poland, mother-in-law in Scotland and a brother circulating between Poland and Norway (UK22/m/wife in the UK/2y1m). In addition, one of his main life goals was to reunite with his parent in Australia: ‘And exactly also my life goal is to maybe meet [his parent] […] So an anchor in this sense that such a goal that a person aims at something, that he is not only about himself but there is some aim in this respect’ (UK22/m/wife in the UK/2y1m). As Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004) point out, incorporation into a new society and transnational connections to the country of origin and/or to dispersed networks are interlinked and can reinforce one another. In the SAST research this was noticeable when belonging to Polish networks in the UK reinforced links to Poland, or when economic advancement in British or Polish society made possible respectively investments and close links in Poland/Ukraine and other countries. Certain footholds could be parallel when migrants maintained dual anchors in terms of homes, friends and professional activity located in two countries. Complementary anchoring occurred when individuals developed other types of links in different countries, like Zuza – a single professional who distinguished her work and entertainment in the UK from her family and ‘recovery space’ in Poland: ‘In the UK: mainly work at this moment, but also entertainment, acquaintances and friends. […] When I return to Poland, I do not even think about going out. If yes, I meet one of the girls I know. Polish is a rest. Here [in the UK] is my place where I do what I want and I like to. If I fancy dancing, going for a party it is here not in Poland’ (UK20/w/ single/9y). Zuza admitted that only when she visits home, is reunited with her family and looked after by her parents, can she fully relax and feel completely secure in this ‘shelter’: ‘My parents’ home is the

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only place where I come home and really recover. I feel like at home there. I come and I am the daughter of my parents, a child. This is such a shelter, where I come and I can rest. Security … is only in Poland in fact’ (UK20/w/single/9y). Maintaining strong and deep emotion and social anchors in the country of origin, however, could come at the price of settling in the UK, as seen in the following quote from one of the blogs: Above all, I am tired of depression after returning from PL. Thanks to your comments I know that it is difficult not only for me. I have to admit that every trip to Poland, even the shortest, it is scratching my wounds and destroys a whole order in my life. Why is it? Why must it be like this? […] You know what I am afraid of the most in the world? I am afraid of what will be with my parents when they start to need help but I will be here not close to them. I am afraid of this like hell. And this is perhaps the main reason for my feeling deeply low. (Blog 1, PL)

The above quote shows the author’s preoccupation with her parents ageing and how trips to the homeland make her feel low and destroy her state of safety and stability. Conversely, not being settled in the host society caused the migrants to maintain strong footholds in their countries of origin, including solid and tangible anchors such as houses, which were kept regardless of costs and difficulties. Thus, Iga did not feel ready to sell her flat in Poland although she had been living with her family in Birmingham for more than seven years: Sometimes I think of selling this flat [in Poland]. That would be a kind of security in order to pay here for example for a house, but I am not ready for this moment. This is my gateway that just in case. […] This flat is my foothold in Poland. […] I rent [this flat] for a year, every year to other people, so this is quite complicated. Because of it, this is a big problem and the easiest will be to sell it and have peace and quiet, but I cannot yet. I cannot yet close all the doors. I cannot disconnect from Poland completely. This is my safety valve that just in case I have my own place. (UK04/w/husband and children in the UK/7y10m)

This quotation displays a strong emotional and cognitive attachment to Poland while at the same time showing a kind of uncertainty and

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insecurity in Iga’s life in the UK, where she came with her children to join her husband and felt, in a wider sense, isolated due to not being professionally active and not knowing English sufficiently to socialise easily beyond a close network of family and Polish friends. Building or keeping houses in the homeland was even more prominent among the Ukrainian interviewees, of whom as many as 27 out of 40 kept their houses in the home country despite costs and problems, as the example of Tamara shows: ‘The thing is that everything in this flat was destroyed. I was refurbishing it and sometimes simply … because refurbishment is simply expensive … So I earned here and invested there and that is a loss because now when I have been refurbishing it for over two years. If I simply had not done this, I would better have sold it’ (PL22/w/single, child in PL/5y6m). This kind of anchor played an ambiguous role in the process of settling in the host countries because the material link not only reflected but also reinforced cognitive and emotional attachments, preventing migrants from establishing themselves fully in the receiving societies. By contrast, selling flats or houses in the countries of origin by some constituted examples of the reverse phenomenon of un-anchoring. For instance, Lukasz explained how at the outset he intentionally got rid of some tangible anchors in Poland to help himself and his family to settle and immerse themselves in life in the UK: ‘I thought that it will be an easier start and I finished everything during the last two months in Poland. I had to close my company which I ran until the very end’ (UK21/m/wife and child in the UK/8y). Lukasz’s account illustrates active agency which migrants employed to manage their anchors. Similar examples could be found in the blogs and discussion forums, like this one about selling a house in Poland: ‘We agreed the date of signing a contract on Friday and yesterday we bought tickets for a flight to Warsaw on Thursday evening. We only need to rent a car and we are ready to burn a last bridge linking us to Poland’ (Blog (emigracyjny.blog.blogspot.com), PL). Over the years, anchors left in the country of origin could be replaced by those in the receiving state (in terms of property, friends, material objects). This illuminates the flexibility of anchoring. This feature of anchoring thus enables us to capture the opposite phenomenon of disconnecting from previous anchors, evident in moving belongings to a new country, changing citizenship or names, resettling

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elderly parents. A particularly symbolic example of un-anchoring is to move the graves of loved ones, described by Szczepanski in this way: ‘if people moving out [from peripheral territories] even take the graves of loved ones with them, the anchors of our identity, this shows their determination, lack of hope for better and unwillingness to return to family places’ (Niewinska 2012: 3). Whereas the above examples showed the intentional cutting off or abandonment of anchors, they might also be lost – for instance, as a result of a loved one’s death or family breakdown. Ivan’s story exemplifies this different, dramatic, detachment and following withdrawal as a consequence of life-threatening experiences in Ukraine during wartime: With Ukraine, as it is said, I am linked with a post-traumatic syndrome. I am not able to adequately say yet, what links me to Ukraine. For the current moment I think that nothing links me with it because the life of my family is seriously endangered. […] I do not have parents already. If my parents had been [alive], I could have said that they [do]. (PL26/m/ wife and child in PL, other children in UA/1y2m)

In general the process of un-anchoring was more visible among Polish migrants in the UK than among Ukrainian migrants in Poland, due to the more established and settled character of the Poles’ migration, related to the different migration regimes for the two groups and more frequent family migration of Poles to the UK than Ukrainians to Poland. Nevertheless, disconnecting from Ukraine also turned out to be a key factor in the process of anchoring in Poland. This was evident in mentions of a lack of anchors and reference points in Ukraine, especially from the perspective of moving family members to Poland or their death. The realisation of the absence of important social footholds in Ukraine could be a turning point which led to settling in Poland, as in the case of Mariya: Everything pulls [me] here, I simply feel that I am here at home, I want to be here. It can be said everything and people and work and everything. […] When I came here, the girls were surprised: ‘You do not want go home?’ I ask what for? Maybe because Vasyla is here, the son is here, there are no friends there, the son is here, the mother is here, so what for I should return and where? (PL10/w/single, adult child in PL/7y)

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migration in the first place. For example, Monika recalled that she finally decided to migrate after her loved ones passed away: In sum, we did not have too much to leave [in Poland] since neither a flat nor too many family members because my parents are dead, husband’s parents are dead, the grandma is dead so only a brother and cousins left in my case. This might help me to decide, because we could have moved out earlier but I was very attached to the family, so it would not have been so easy. In the situation when we had lost the closest people, this decision was not so difficult. (UK10/w/husband and children in the UK/1y3m)

Marta, like Monika, emphasised that a lack of strong anchors in Poland facilitated not only her emigration but also adaptation and settling in the UK: So changes … if I must compare … maybe it is easier for me to live here and not to think about return to Poland, because I do not have a family in Poland. My parents died – my mother six years ago, my father 20 years ago, my brother seven years ago. I simply do not have close family in Poland. I am simply alone so I do not have such a dilemma, I can hear frequently about – for example parents getting older and you are torn. Nobody keeps me in Poland, so maybe it was easier for me to find my new place here and try to create home and resettle my family here. I am not torn apart like some others. (UK37/w/ single parent with children in the UK/2y)

Marta’s metaphorical expression of (not) being torn apart reflects the challenge faced by migrants who have crucial social anchors in different countries. Anchoring practices, objects, spaces and the importance of local context Besides anchors related to social networks and the ethno-cultural safety net, the concept of anchoring allows us to acknowledge other dimensions, that need to be examined, such as practices, objects and spaces, which are usually underestimated in the literature on migrants’ adaptation and ‘settlement’. The significance of daily practices is highlighted by Giddens (1991: 167), who argues: ‘The development of relatively secure environments of day-to-day life is of central importance to the maintenance of feelings of ontological security.’

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Establishing security and stability through everyday practices was particularly noticeable in family and homemaking activities among Polish migrant families in the UK seeking or aspiring to create a ‘real home’, ideally by buying a house to secure greater stability. In a parallel way, Hage (1997) defines homemaking as creating the feeling of being ‘at home’ through the provision of security, familiarity, community and possibility. As Duyvendak (2011) points out, homemaking is not only an important part of migrants’ adaptation and ‘settlement’ but also an ideal and matrix for constructing identity and community. Boccagni (2017) emphasises the temporal dimension of homemaking and the interplay between the changing material bases of home and the meanings attached to it related to individuals’ changing life courses. Boccagni perceives migration as a major turning point in people’s biographies, including homing processes, and points to the tensions between migrants’ aspiration to stability and an idealised home, and their frequent sense of dwelling temporariness at present. He highlights that feeling at home in a place is a question of time spent there, of domestic routinisation, of individual and family ‘re-grounding’. In the SAST participants’ narratives, home was not only a place but the foundation of identity and a set of practices which integrated family members and reproduced gender roles and family structures, including power relations (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2018a). In the case of Polish migrants in the UK, a key part was made up of traditional home cooking, celebrating important events (such as birthdays, religious festivals, First Communions) and receiving visitors. In addition, the rhythm of a day, daily routines and repeated household chores, transporting children to school and after-school classes gave migrants (especially mothers who did not work) a feeling of control and predictability, contributing to their safety and stability as well as helping them to maintain self-esteem as good parents and spouses, as Paulina explained: You know, I like a well-kept [house], because if I am at home the whole day. I also like to have real flowers in a vase and I have. You know, if I sit at home whole days, this is my duty as I say. Nobody tells me that I must do this because my husband says that I should stop running with this rag. I just like it. I have taken this from my home. My mother always liked order and I have inherited this from her. I think that my home is such my refuge. I feel so secure. (UK02/w/ husband and children in the UK/4y)

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In addition to providing for families, DIY activities, redecorating homes and driving families around played a similar role for male interviewees. The leisure activities of the family-focused migrants were usually arranged around families and included spending time outdoors, visiting friends or attractions and calling those who remained in Poland. Homemaking by Polish migrants in the UK was closely related to ‘doing family’ and ‘doing gender’ – that is, reproducing social structures and performing gender roles (West and Zimmerman 1987). Conforming to heteronormativity, patriarchal norms, gender roles and the conventional family, the women remained predominantly concentrated on housekeeping activities, whereas the men focused on their roles as the main breadwinners, which provided them with a stable point of reference. Regularity and predictability represented significant features of daily practices highlighted in the context of security and stability by migrants like Robert and Bogdan: ‘Besides work and travelling … I try everything to be regular’ (UK38/m/single/4y9m) or ‘I do not like when something disrupts my daily schedule. I have my daily schedule and when something happens unexpectedly, this irritates me very much’ (UK11/m/wife and child in the UK/7y). As van Tienoven, Glorieux and Minnen (2017) showed, individuals tend to keep their everyday life marked by a rhythmic, temporal structure that is brought into effect by the modality of repetitive action. Some grounding homemaking routines were constituted by the continuation of daily practices from pre-emigration, as in the case of Yuriy’s housekeeping chores, the same in Poland as they were in Ukraine: ‘Cleaning, but this does not depend on a country – here or there. I come after work and start cleaning, relax myself – I like it. I do vacuum cleaning, washing up’ (PL01/m/ partner in PL/8y). The appreciation of routines, the established order of activities and daily rituals was also stressed by Roksana: ‘Job, work is important for me, I like work, I like working, I like when it is clean. I like cleaning. It is simply a habit. You go to work, you have such a schedule, you get up, drink coffee. You do the same, go to work, return, take a shower, cook food, wait for husband, the Internet, going to sleep. I like this’ (PL07/w/husband in PL/4y3m). The process of settling was associated with introducing and maintaining order and structure in migrants’ lives, contrasted with chaos and lack of regularity, as in Illya’s account: ‘There is already no need to run to deal with some documents, no need to resolve so many things as before. Life

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has become more ordered, maybe not predictable but for sure more peaceful. At the beginning it was so chaotic, all the time I needed to do this, do that, arrange something, go somewhere, go to work or go somewhere after work’ (PL02/m/wife and child in PL/1y). The interviewees both in Poland and in the UK tried to rely on a set of stabilising practices. Consumption and leisure activity also played a substantial role in migrants’ lives, particularly in the case of the single people, who combined intensive work with absorbing hobbies (e.g. doing sports, going to the gym, travelling, going out, being involved in voluntary work in ethnic institutions or artistic activities). Some places, such as parks, gyms or well-being centres, represent urban spaces of anchoring for migrants and non-migrants, as demonstrated in my ethnographic research into health and wellness-seeking behaviours in diverse communities (Grzymala-Kazlowska 2020). The significance of physical activity and sports was visible in the narratives of both Polish and Ukrainian migrants. The Poles, for example, admitted: ‘Sport is important to me. […] This is my greatest love in the world’ (UK03/w/ single/1y6m) or ‘Of course, sport has been always important in my life and now at the workplace we have a gym, so I go there a couple of times a week’ (UK20/w/single/9y). The role of sports was similarly acknowledged by the Ukrainians: ‘after work if I am able, there are rollers because I play sport. In the winter, when it is cold, skates. And over and over again: work, sport, work, sport and nothing more. At weekends only sport. […] Simply I forget about everything, all problems when I go rolling. This is such a pleasure for me’ (PL28/w/husband and children in UA/8y), and ‘And first of all, bicycle trips, I love bicycle most of all and I spend lots of time on it, also during winter’ (PL/m/wife in PL/3y10m). Some interviewees continued their physical activity from the country of origin, which gave them a sense of continuity and stability, as Kateryna pointed out: ‘Likely there is no lifestyle change in my case. We play sport, run sometimes. I go to do workout, I do not know. Exactly the same as in Ukraine. […] I can afford better-quality sport clothes [in Poland]. I did not pay attention to this there. Here the society forces you to give more significance by clothes’ (PL37/w/partner and child in PL/7y6m). Other participants like Gleb became more engaged in sports while living in Poland as a part of their new lifestyle: ‘In general the two most important

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changes [since he moved to Poland] are that I started riding bicycle everyday […] and yoga’ (PL34/m/single/3y6m). Olena explained how she took advantage of sport’s beneficial role for fighting stress, particularly in the period of initial adaptation: ‘I was stressed over a year for sure, only sport saved me’ (PL38/w/single/5y). Anna (UK19/w/ single/7y11m), a busy Polish professional working in Birmingham, explained that her life was focused on work, sports and her appearance in the context of the absence of a partner or family, which can be seen earlier where she described her activity at the gym and preparations for competitions. Anna’s words displayed ways of producing safety and stability through sports, which also helped her to stay connected to others, set up achievable goals and take control over her body and leisure time. In contrast to all the other participants who indicated that sports activity was their lifestyle choice and resilience strategy, Taras explained that he did sports to prepare himself to fight in the war in Ukraine: The Internet and what is more I do sport actively because the war is approaching. […] I do not know, now everything is different to me, I am a realist I can say, I live today’s day and now simply there is sport and training preparing for the army. Therefore, I keep myself fit because of the war. I do not know, maybe I will go, this is the biggest problem now that I am looking for a job and getting prepared for the army, so it is not known what and how. I cannot promise that I for instance will work all this year because it is not known what will be in Ukraine. (PL27/m/wife in PL, child in UA/6y)

Taras’s words reveal uncertainty and insecurity related not only to his unsettled life in Poland but also anxiety linked to the violent conflict and political instability in Ukraine. Artistic activity represented another way of establishing security, in the activity itself and also through connecting to people and places, including mixing with diverse individuals and establishing new footholds. This remained more noticeable among Polish migrants in the UK than among Ukrainian migrants in Poland, which can be explained by the former’s more settled character and the greater opportunities for this type of engagement. Maria represented an example of intellectual and social engagement with diversity through her installation projects: ‘I am a visual artist […] I build spaces. These are installations. […] I

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want people to be engaged, not only to watch, and most of my projects have such sociological subtexts, but also cultural. Here in Birmingham I have done a few of these projects, which look at different aspects of culture mixing and multiculturalism’ (UK13/w/single/10y). Pawel was involved in organising music and artistic events, which was his method of socialising: We form a [music] collective and organise events. […] My ideas are not only limited to music. I want to present our culture during the event which I am the author of. Not only Polish, but from the whole region of Central and Eastern Europe. Why do I do this? First of all, I like it but such actions make nations, communities – Polish, English and all others, because there are many in England, come closer. […] So as far as cultural issues are concerned, the UK is a place where I could place many such anchors. (UK05/m/single/4y6m)

The arts gave the interviewees the opportunity to transgress Polishness in terms of social connections, culture and identity in addition to the adaptation and therapeutic role of the arts (e.g. through expressing one’s own emotions). Also among the Ukrainian migrants in Poland, Yuriy provided an example of a migrant anchored in the arts as a central element of his identity and life: Arts, I cannot live without. Arts as a film, arts as a dance, arts are an inseparable part of me which combines simultaneously Polish, Ukrainian and world arts which is everywhere and it all blended in me. […] I watch [arts] a lot and sometimes I take part in an active way, as I said I went to a theatre workshop, from time to time I participate in some artistic projects or organise them […] plus additionally I dealt with it as a arts manager. (PL20/m/single/5y)

Pets and activities related to them also played a prominent grounding role in the lives of some interviewees. Maria was given rodents by her friends so she would not feel lonely when she moved from a shared house to her mini flat (UK13/w/single/10y). To Marek, his dog represented the central feature of his life both before and after migration, so bringing the pet to the UK allowed him to preserve the feeling of continuity: ‘The closest person for me is my dog that has been with me for eight years. We were separated only for one month when the dog was without me in Poland. Immediately, I arranged his transport to the UK because I could not imagine life without him. Street foundling’ (UK09/m/single/2y10m). Similarly Illiya, who



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relocated from Ukraine to Poland with his family and their dog, could not imagine himself leaving the pet behind: She [the dog] also likes others but she cannot stay without me and she must be with me all the time and is here in Poland. I could not imagine a possibility of leaving her in Ukraine. As I mentioned, when we were crossing the border, if there had been a situation that the dog would not have been allowed to go with us despite we arranged all the formalities, I would have stayed with her. (PL02/m/wife and child in PL/1y)

In contrast, Marta bought a new dog in the UK to help her children settle and cope with a family breakdown which took place shortly after migration: We bought a dog. […] I mainly thought of my son […] that he would have such a pet – friend, but it is simply a family member. […] Earlier, we always had pets at home. We also have a rabbit in Ola’s, my daughter, in her bedroom and this is kind of taming reality, certainly, kind of casting a spell over reality with these animals. In Poland, we had four cats, one died of cancer, so we had three and we gave them to family and friends, which was a very tough experience for the children – so negative. […] I tried to compensate them for it – firstly with the rodent and then with such a real ‘pet’. (UK37/w/single parent, children in the UK/2y)

So in Marta’s case, the new dog was also supposed to replace the animals the family had prior to emigration. The migrants’ narratives also encompassed different types of material objects which helped them to recover a feeling of safety and continuity. Portable material objects of practical or sentimental importance provide a semblance of home (Basu and Coleman 2008). In a similar way, Kaiser (2008) showed how Sudanese refugees sought agency and reconstructed familiarity in their temporary homes through objects. The most popular objects carrying symbolic and emotional value brought by the SAST participants to the UK included photos or religious pictures. In addition, Ukrainian migrants travelled with different types of amulets such as ‘Ukrainian soil’ or mascots like Iryna’s teddy: ‘I have such a teddy, which is ten years old and I take it everywhere’ (PL16/w/single, child in UA/4y). Marek attached special importance to his dead friend’s jacket (UK09/m/single/2y10m); Halyna, to her father’s watch: ‘I always have a watch, not on my wrist, but somewhere,

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it is from my father and I always carry this watch with me’ (PL14/w/ single, child in PL/3y). To my participants, rented or owned houses represented the main examples of significant material objects, followed by cars, phones and laptops with access to the Internet. For example, Jan, like some other migrants, expressly appreciated the freedom and independence that the first car bought in the UK gave him: ‘I like my car and this is important to me. I bought the first one in England and it means that I feel independent and I can pop in at friends. […] A car means independence for me, in addition, a smartphone is significant to me to have contact. I am addicted to Facebook’ (UK33/m/partner and child in the UK/5y10m). For Jan and other interviewees, phones and computers were objects of crucial importance: means of communication and access to culture, electronic media and practical information, as Piotr explained: ‘Attached is the wrong word, but my laptop serves me for contact with the world, for everything at the moment’ (UK25/m/ single/10y). Not only did technological devices enable the migrants to sustain relations, but the practice of using technology became a vital part of their lives, contributing to their feeling of continuity, familiarity and safety. Similarly, Williams, Anderson and Dourish (2008) demonstrated how the mobility of transnational Thai migrants was spatially, temporally and technologically anchored or moored, referring to Hannam, Sheller and Urry (2006). The term ‘anchoring’ can also be used in relation to geographical spaces that migrants become familiar with and attached to (e.g. Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2009; Vertovec 2010b). Places of birth or childhood, as well as the graves of loved ones in the countries of origin, constituted examples given by my interviewees from both groups, which might be illustrated by Dariya’s picture of her private homeland: There are still places I miss. I have been always attached to nature. I am such a sensitive person to nature. And there are such places as my forest, my river, in general, this my village I grew up in. It is really lovely because there is a Polish church. This is not a church which is used, rather ruins but even these ruins are very beautiful. And this landscape, I got used to from my childhood. I miss this a lot … Also the graves of my ancestors because I was very close to my grandmother, emotionally because she brought me up. Unfortunately she is dead



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now. And when I come home, I run firstly to the cemetery. (PL31/w/ single/1y5m)

Dariya’s case also highlights the significance of places of nature in migrants’ narratives. Roksana’s emotional attachment to her place of origin was symbolised by the above-mentioned soil she brought from Ukraine and always carried with her: ‘Soil. I simply love Ukrainian soil, really. Once when I was going to Poland, I put a bit in my handbag’ (PL07/w/husband in PL/4y3m). There were also visible attachments to local spaces and communities in the host countries, representing a type of ‘emplacement’ through which migrants were becoming urban actors immersed in the city’s everyday life (Williamson 2016). Based on his research with migrants in Lisbon, Buhr (2018) demonstrated the significance of place and locality for integration as urban praxis, where new residents learn to navigate the space and use resources and infrastructure. My SAST interviews from Birmingham displayed the mechanics of emplacement in the context of the urban diversity encountered across the city, with residents coming from over 170 countries and varying in terms of age, immigration status, economic and social position, culture, religion and educational backgrounds (Phillimore 2013). Despite sporadic tensions and intolerance in mixed areas of the city, superdiversity is perceived largely positively there and attracts individuals with diverse ethnic, religious and national backgrounds, particularly to locations where positive place-making is happening – that is, places characterised by a shared neighbourhood identity based on diversity, difference and/or newness and where those with ‘visible’ differences blend in (Pemberton and Phillimore 2016). The Polish migrants interviewed in Birmingham talked about their attachment to local neighbourhoods and support from other more established residents. Parks were identified as spaces of special importance, like the places of nature being a place of anchoring in a superdiverse city (Neal et al. 2015). Wojciech pointed to mountains in Scotland and Wales which reminded him of his beloved Tatra in Poland: ‘My Tatra mountains, there is such mysticism. […] I go with my brother to these mountains in Scotland or Wales, to me the Tatra mountains in Poland are exactly such a safety valve’ (UK31/m/ wife and children in PL/1y4m). Kuba revealed that when his wife left him, taking their son, he sought relief in Irish nature and Polish

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books (UK18/m/single, a child in another part of the UK/8y). Visiting important places of nature was sometimes combined with physical activity, like Marcin’s fishing: ‘We are organising ourselves and going fishing. This is a very important issue to me – we go fishing in the North Sea, Irish Sea’ (UK32/m/wife and children in the UK/9y6m), or cycling, as in the case of a number of Polish and Ukrainian migrants. While the Polish migrants in the UK held mixed opinions about Birmingham as a city, with some criticising the dirty streets, high levels of ethnic diversity and deterioration of some neglected parts of the urban fabric (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore 2019), the Ukrainian participants largely found Warsaw appealing because of the variety of opportunities, and they predominantly declared that they liked the city, with some holding particularly warm positive attitudes, like Nadiya: ‘I will say honestly this, I do not know why it happened that Warsaw has such a meaning in my life now. I am myself surprised I say honestly’ (PL18/w/partner and child in UA, child in PL/1y10m), and Kateryna: ‘Warsaw is our home’ (PL37/w/ partner and child in PL/7y6m). Artem indicated that he felt connected to particular localities through his activities – running and ecological involvement – rather than to the city or country as a whole: ‘These are rather local issues to me, not national. If you are talking about Poland, this is a national issue for me, as such more general, but this running, some sort of ecology … If I talk, for example, to a newsagent next to my building, this is a local issue to me, not an international relation because I am Ukrainian and she is Polish’ (PL32/w/wife and child in PL/8y). Tatiyana’s account also highlights attachments to certain local spaces: Warsaw is a home. […] This particular estate I live in. […] Home is a home, everything is yours there, you can come there, put on home tracksuit, wash off make-up, be yourself, do not perform any social roles. I am a home-bird. I like my home […] I have everything close to me. I have a park, a shopping centre, tram stop, bus stop. I have a swimming pool. I have the gym, shops I go to everyday. Simply I carry on a normal life. (PL39/w/single/8y4m)

Tatiyana presented Warsaw, especially her neighbourhood, as home, where she felt settled, happy and secure. Similarly, the Polish participants in the UK gave examples of their attachment and establishment in



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local communities, particularly if they had built close relations with neighbours and/or settled in terms of owning houses.

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The significance of cognitive, emotional and spiritual anchoring Cognitive, emotional and spiritual anchors constitute crucial yet relatively underestimated anchors in previous research into migrant adaptation and settling. The SAST study, therefore, sheds light on these types of anchoring. For example, Olena decided to settle down in Poland after realising that this was her place in the world, which she explained in this way: I decided that I want to stay here when I came the first time because I felt like a stranger at home, whereas here I suddenly started feeling like someone from this place. Such a nonsense. Although I could not speak Polish. […] It turned out that no, that in this different place there is something like I am and it suits me and this was such a surprise for me. I began to substantially change my life, people I maintained relation with I withdrew from and started looking for something different. (PL38/w/single/5y)

Olena appreciated the greater diversity and tolerance of life choices in Poland, where she believed she fitted better in terms of her interests and aspirations: I do not feel like a stranger here. I do not know, maybe this is my personal. I think that a lot depends on a person how they perceive it. I think that because everybody there wanted to be like others and did not stand out and everybody was afraid to be different. But here each person is perceived as they are, more than at home at least. And here are people with similar interests and nobody laughs at my interests that I, for example, like travelling. Because in my place [in Ukraine] this is not understood: ‘Why do you go everywhere?’ even such basic things. (PL38/w/single/5y)

Roksana’s account illuminated the importance of emotional attachment in settling in addition to other forms of anchors (cognitive, habitual, material, institutional): When I come to Ukraine, I stay there a week or two and I say that I want home, like here is my sweet home, because I do not work one month here, a month there, I am here permanently. […] I love Poland, I really love Poland. I did not know that such love for another country

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can stick to heart. Maybe it is simply because I live 350 kilometres from Warsaw, very close to the border with Poland. (PL07/w/partner in PL/4y3m)

The emphasis on affective aspects of anchoring resonates with YuvalDavis’s (2006) ideas about belonging and ‘home’. She points out that when we talk about ‘home’ we usually refer to a place we have an emotional attachment to, embodying the everyday and normative where we typically feel most safe and secure. The home usually includes individual, familial and communal dimensions (Allen and Ogtem-Young 2017). A deficit in sufficiently strong and deep cognitive and emotional anchoring in a host country may result in ontological and emotional security not being fully established and sustained. This can be visible in the following passage from one of the blogs: And I am tired of my internal dilemmas and a kind of I feel bad but at the same time I would not return to Poland not for all the tea in China because I feel simply fine/better here. Notwithstanding, there is a strange chapter in my life/heart I cannot close and it returns to me like a boomerang in each festive time. Why? After all I have a family here, my own closest family. I have friends of different nationalities, I exchange recipes for cupcakes, seeds of spring flowers. I have my life here, I have a great job and plans for the future. I have everything but despite this I feel sometimes as if I did not have anything. Sometimes I feel as if I have lost my life and chosen a wrong way, the way without a return. And oddly enough I feel like this in every festive time. Un/happy festive time, festive time of emigrant. (Blog 1, PL)

In another part of her blog, the author explicitly refers to being anchored in her Polish identity while at the same time experiencing a kind of alienation and a sense of homelessness, despite having a successful family, professional and social life in the UK: After all, I have a great job here I envy myself (!), we have an arranged life, we are not lacking anything, we are considering buying a house, the kids speak English, I have more English/English speaking friends than Polish and I know English almost equally as Polish. But … I will always be Polish. I will always be different. Always not from here. I probably never feel anywhere as at my place. I do not have my place



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on the earth. And in general I cannot speak well either in Polish or in English. Seriously. (Blog 1, PL)

As has been illustrated in the previous chapters, cognitive and emotional anchoring could be related to immersion in the new language, culture, social networks and attachment to certain socio-geographical spaces, that is, footholds in the external world. However, it is also worth underlining other, internal, dimensions of anchoring. These may be someone’s professional identity – even if migrants did not practise their occupation while abroad, as in the case of some teachers or a policeman interviewed in my SAST research, their professional identities could remain their central point of reference. Another example is anchoring in internal values or beliefs. For some participants the sense of agency and self-sufficiency constituted significant grounding features which might be developed as a consequence of mobility and adaptation. For instance, Kuba represented an individualistic migrant focused on his own freedom and independence: So far I do not have any family life mainly because I do not want to tie up with anybody. I want to be alone and focused on my passions. […] It is important to have work, besides this what is my hobby and my passion. My mainstay is the feeling of freedom, independence […] in opinions, freedom in sexual life, in everything. This is the most important value above all. (UK18/m/single with a child in another part of the UK/8y)

Apart from the cultural and social role of church and religion described in the previous chapters, spirituality provided another type of anchoring. Religious beliefs, practices and attachments to faith constituted significant anchors in the interviewees’ lives. That was particularly explicit in the case of Polish migrants in the UK. Even though some participants did not practise religion, they felt a kind of affiliation with God, religious traditions or sacred spaces. Pawel shared his experience of familiarity and continuity while visiting churches which brought him a feeling of peace, reassurance and safety: ‘I like churches. Even though, for many years I have been an opponent of the Church as an institution because – I see them – as a big corporation. I like the atmosphere of churches. I like these places, coming there and calming down. Maybe because in Poland whether I wanted it or not, I had to go to church’ (UK05/m/single/5y).

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The role of religion, which offers the possibility of participation in a community but also provides clear points of reference and emotional support, was highlighted by Oryna: Religion is important, but at home I went to church every weekend, here a bit more rarely but I go. There, when there is something wrong in my heart, not nice, different things happen in life, simply it can be sad, the sun does not shine and so on, I go to church. I start to feel differently there, peaceful, kind of joy, I do not know, and even stability … (PL19/w/single, adult child in Italy/3y)

These functions of religion led to an increase in religiosity among some migrants. For example, Marek reflected on change in his life priorities in the UK in the following way: ‘Sport, religion – it is essential what has begun to occur in my life’ (UK09/m/single/2y10m). His case is particularly interesting since he converted to Islam in England. What is also notable is that Marek’s rationale for the conversion referred to clearer and stricter rules in Islam in comparison to Catholicism: I have changed my denomination from Christianity to Islam – intentionally and recently. […] I liked some life principles, most of all, some regulations which you can find in the Koran. They help to take control over life when it begins to be a chaos. […] Over years religion was in my life and it was not. It is Islam that has come and knocked on my door – as I called it. When I converted to Islam, I realised that Islam is simply the update of Christianity. (UK09/m/single/2y10m)

The above quotation illustrates Marek’s emphasis on security and stability, which he believed Islam brought to his life. Faith could also give a sense of positive self-esteem, as revealed by Dorota, quoted in Chapter 5 (UK06/w/husband and children in the UK/4y4m). Like the research by Ogtem-Young (2018), this example also demonstrates how faith provides resilience mechanisms which may be mobilised to cope with discrimination and prejudices. This chapter shows an essential need to recover the sense of safety and stability after migration, and the mechanisms of migrant adaptation and settling through the lens of multidimensionality, simultaneity, processuality and flexibility of anchoring. The proposed model of anchoring outlines different layers of anchoring, from external footholds related to the legal and institutional frameworks and work opportunities, through more complex anchors embedded in social relations, to deeper

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internal anchors, such as constructed familiarity and closeness. This part of the monograph shows the multidimensionality of adaptation processes, the complexity and dynamics of anchoring, and the uneven and relational character of settling (understood more as searching for stability rather than putting down roots in a new country). This chapter demonstrates the flexibility and reversibility of anchoring, including the processes of re-anchoring or un-anchoring (e.g. through selling houses in the country of origin, the relocation of loved ones, changing names). It argues that although the migrants were active agents endeavouring to establish themselves and reach a relative state of safety and stability, they were also constrained by their existing anchors and their limited resources. The migrants could remain reluctant to establish new anchors, especially strong ones, viewed as potential obstacles to taking advantage of new opportunities.

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7 Insecurities, constraints and inequalities in anchoring

Whereas the previous parts of the monograph focused on the positive functions of anchoring – that is, recovering the feeling of safety and stability – this chapter aims to discuss negative aspects of certain anchors that disadvantage migrants, producing insecurities and reinforcing exclusions. In contrast to the former chapter underlining migrants’ agency, this part concentrates on constraints and inequalities in the processes of anchoring. Aggravating and dysfunctional anchors producing insecurities The SAST research demonstrated that certain anchors restricted the participants because of those anchors’ largely involuntary and aggravating character. These could be, for instance, health issues (physical and/ or mental) or addictions (e.g. alcohol abuse). Despite their negative impacts, they might represent the key points of reference, ground individuals and constitute major features structuring particular migrants’ lives. A few interviewees reflected on the negative effects of serious illnesses or accidents for their position and migration trajectory. Barbara, the mother of a disabled son with various medical conditions, built her whole narrative around the impact of having a child with developmental difficulties on her life and her caring duties. She began the interview in this symptomatic way: ‘I gave birth to three children, the last child was born ill. Unfortunately. Currently he is 21 years old, I had to sacrifice for him since he was born with a developmental

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problem, with heart problems. […] Thus, in general, I needed to devote a lot of time to him’ (UK24/w/husband and child in PL, other children in the UK/1y5m). Despite family support, Barbara presented herself as the main carer, strongly attached emotionally to her son, and placed his care in the centre of her life. For some homeless participants, alcohol constituted a major framing element, as for Zenon, who even visually located his addiction in the centre of the diagram he drew, just next to the word ‘I’ in the middle of sketch. Alcohol, present before and after Zenon’s migration to the UK, remained a constant key feature of his life. In contrast, Roman’s alcohol problem began in the UK after the unexpected death of his mother in Poland while he was working abroad – something he could not come to terms with: To be honest I did not have a problem. Then, I became homeless when I lost all these jobs. I started to escape from everything, escape, as I say, in alcohol. […] I hope I will not sink, therefore I want to move away from this city, from all this, because, frankly speaking, wherever I hang around, particularly in such places as this [drop-in centre for the homeless] people encourage me to alcohol. (UK28/m/single/3y9m)

Roman’s case can be analysed through the lens of the biographical trajectory. The above-mentioned events had distorted and interrupted his planned life, leading to a state of being overwhelmed, a belief that he could not rely on his own plans and control external forces, a feeling of distance from others and himself, and long-term suffering and breakdown of self-orientation (Riemann and Schutze 1991). Roman’s words also showed the prominent role of social, cultural and environmental factors in alcohol abuse, in addition to personal problems and stressors which triggered addiction. This illustrates how such an addiction limits individual agency and hence the ability to establish and manage more adaptive types of anchors. Dysfunctional anchors might be related to holding certain cognitive convictions which hindered adaptation and the generation of social capital. For example, this could include a belief that someone is not able to learn a new language or a conviction that the social environment outside one’s own group is hostile and unwilling to enter a relationship. Galasinski and Galasinska (2007) analysed the case study of an unemployed Polish migrant in the UK who felt un-anchored in the surrounding external world, unable to recognise his agency,

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which was interpreted by the researchers as a defence mechanism to deny responsibility for possible failures. These authors concluded that failure in external anchoring results in a sense of disconnection, loneliness and lack of control. As demonstrated earlier, being too strongly anchored in one’s own culture and keeping persistent anchors in the country of origin could initially contribute to a feeling of safety and stability, but it hampered migrants’ capacity for settling and their motivation for development. Remaining anchored in the past prevented individuals from adopting a more proactive and pro-future approach. Preoccupations with family life and limited tightly knit social networks turned out to prevent the migrants from establishing new social connections and going beyond their own ethno-social worlds. As has been previously discussed, the reproduction of idealised traditional ways of cognitive anchoring, for instance, in the patriarchal family, produced insecurities among my single participants due to pressures and difficulties with meeting expectations. The fear of losing material and social anchors (e.g. in the community of origin) could lead to anxiety and to focusing on reinforcing existing anchors rather than establishing new footholds, something which is also characteristic of the conservation of resources (Hobfoll 2001). Anchors might be thwarted but also imposed, for instance, by legal regulations and formal statutes such as restraining orders, short-term visas or permits. Constraints, inequalities and exclusions What is crucial is that the process of anchoring and capacity for it was visibly marked by different constraints, inequalities and exclusions. As Bauman (1997) argues, contemporary individuals are short of tools for building stable identities which could prevent them from drifting in the ‘liquid’ world. This notion can be applied to migrants who may particularly struggle to rebuild relative safety and stability after moving out of their countries and disconnecting from previous anchors. In addition, the SAST research demonstrated profound differences in anchoring across the participants due to unequal resources, constraints and opportunities. Anchoring, like mobility, reflects limiting structures, hierarchies of power and positions (Tesfahuney 1998). Drawing on Cooper’s work (2008) on the inequality of security, the SAST research showed how individuals’ positionality influenced their levels of exposure

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to risk and uncertainty as well as their ability to navigate through and deal with it. Differences in economic, social, cultural and symbolic resources – understood in line with Bourdieu’s notion of capital – and other resources such as cognitive, emotional or health (Hobfoll 2001) contributed to unequal limitations and possibilities among the migrants interviewed. Von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann (1994), in addition to highlighting differences in individuals’ capacities to draw on their resources, and positionalities specific to gender, age, class and status, points to differences related to the wider constraint and opportunity structures people are placed in. As Heyse (2011) shows on the basis of her life course and intersectional analysis of the experience of Ukrainian and Russian female migrants in Belgium, life prospects and limitations were less structured by individual capacities and motivations than by policy and structurally determined factors such as legal status and migration type. Dissimilarities in the migration regimes and institutional frameworks of the two receiving countries contributed to differences in Polish and Ukrainian migrants’ strategies outcomes. This structural and policy impact was, for example, visible while comparing less cognitively, emotionally or practically settled Ukrainian migrants in Poland to relatively more established Polish migrants in the UK. As von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann (1994) highlight, even though migration can be perceived as a response to insecurities in the sending countries and a way to ensure greater life security, as was noticeable in the SAST narratives, migration at the same time itself produces new insecurities connected with the ambiguities of migrants’ cultural, social and legal statuses, or tensions between host countries’ ideologies and institutions and those prevailing in the countries of origin. A need to reconfigure social relations, a loss or diminution of social networks as a result of migration (for example because of separation from family and friends), combined with restricted public safety net due to barriers to access and the shrinking of the welfare system, made migrants particularly exposed to insecurities and instability as well as exacerbating existing disparities both between them and settled populations and among themselves. Contemporary society, characterised by accelerating changes, risks and complexities accompanied by the neoliberal ideology, produces high levels of uncertainty, insecurity and instability, to which migrants

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are particularly prone due to their positionality as well as personal transitions and migration-related life disruption. The previously revealed temporariness and indeterminacy, particularly visible in the case of some Ukrainian participants, resulted from legal constraints coupled with wider societal conditions. Nevertheless, on the basis of her research with Ukrainian migrants in Spain, Gorodetska (2014) argues that migrants might actually choose the position of ‘temporariness’ and ‘liminality’ as ‘marginalised’ members of the host society or the status of ‘in-between’, as it might enable them to remain open to new opportunities and save them the trouble of difficult choices and decisions. In order to recover their feelings of safety and stability, migrants may remain anchored in their cultures and home societies – also in hope of the improvement of their status and prosperity there – which can compensate for sacrifice, discrimination and exploitation abroad. The SAST study revealed that this type of strategy was most clearly observable among those participants who had been otherwise strongly constrained in their pre-migration lives as well having limited options abroad. As has been shown, work constituted one of the key spheres of anchoring, so, conversely, it could represent a major area of uncertainty. The unpredictability and uncertainty of self-employment or temporary employment were indicated by interviewees such as Igor, describing his experience of work instability in the UK as frustrating: The situation was changeable at work. I was most irritated, because one year later … I joined another company and there were moments, that for example, there was work and we performed it. Then, there was no work, so they fired us not saying let’s say when they would call us or when we should come to work or nothing. (UK27/m/estranged from wife and children in the UK/7y4m)

Igor admitted that it was difficult for him to cope with the situation of unpredictability and precariousness, of not being regularly occupied and able to secure sufficient income to cover the substantial costs of staying abroad. In addition, renting accommodation in the private sector meant that migrants might face uncertainty and needed to comply even with unexpected and short-notice decisions by landlords. This was especially threatening in the case of other difficulties such as losing a job or illness, when migrants generally could not count on landlords’ leniency. Igor noted that this chaotic and stressful situation



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contributed to his alcohol problem, which further reduced his chances of sufficiently paid and protected employment and life stability. The Polish interviewees particularly complained about jobs commissioned by work agencies as difficult to predict and control. Renata also underlined limited social welfare rights in the case of work through agencies. All I know and I have been told, is that you can only find a job through an agency. I think that it is not true because, first of all, a lack of stability, a lack of certainty that when I am on leave for whatever reason, there [when you have a proper employment] I can always come back to work or there is a period of termination of my employment if somebody is not satisfied with the way I undertake my duties. (UK17/m/single/2y6m)

In consequence, some migrants tried to avoid agencies, but neither knowing English and employment law in the UK nor possessing sufficient social and cultural capital, became even more vulnerable to exploitation while undertaking random, sometimes risky and undocumented jobs, as Damian’s story illustrates: There [later] I was employed as a car mechanic by a Pakistani. Then I left them and later I worked again. I worked for them about two years but with breaks – I was leaving and returning. […] From Monday to Saturday an English mechanic earns good money here, but in Indian or this type of garages, not only do you earn little, but also they cheat you. This is a risk. I have worked for them a bit and I do not trust these colleagues. (UK23/m/separated with family in the UK/5y6m)

Notably, Damian applied the stereotypical and racist lens to demonstrate his point while giving examples of exploitation. Precarious employment was even more visible in the case of the Ukrainian migrants in Poland, due to their generally more temporary migration and less formal economic activity. Mykyta recalled that he was deceived by his employer, who did not pay his contribution to cover his access to the health system: I was looking for a legal job to be able to go to hospital without any problem, for somebody to pay ZUS, and half a year ago one chap told me that he would arrange an employment contract for five years and I gave him 400 zlotys every month to pay ZUS for me. Then I went to hospital to check whether they pay or not and they at hospital tell me that ‘You are not insured.’ I went to ZUS, they checked in a

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computer and they said, ‘No, you are not registered in ZUS.’ He collected this money from me and did not pay for this ZUS. I approached him if not I will go to the Labour Inspectorate and you will be fined and he gave me back all this money two weeks later. (PL09/m/single/1y)

The above excerpt reveals that Mykyta was probably not properly employed in legal terms which he might accept, otherwise his contribution to health insurance (ZUS) would be deducted directly from his salary instead of him paying the employer. Despite this, Mykyta’s proactive attitude and efforts to check his access to the health system and ZUS contribution, combined with his knowledge of the relevant institutions and courage to challenge his employer, led to the retrieval of his money, which other migrants might not have been able to achieve. Insight into migrants’ vulnerability in relation to more established residents and state institutions is gained in this account by Roman, a Polish migrant in the UK who apparently accepted the blame when pressured by the other suspect in his court case and enforcement agents: Recently I also had a problem because after getting drunk I fought with one chap in a street where I completely did not remember anything from this situation. He bit my ear off. […] I came around only in hospital when a surgeon began to stitch the ear and I only felt pain that something is wrong. Recently I had a court case. I did not remember the whole situation – this is what I can say. They asked whether I am guilty or not. I said that this film may be interpreted in different ways that he [the other person involved] said something, that he used racist words and so on – and this could start everything. […] I told them, ‘OK, have it your way that I will be guilty to simply have it faster.’ Let’s say I am guilty and let them do what they want. I simply do not care what they do me whether they punish me or I will have to pay or do social work. […] I could say that I am not guilty but to make it quicker … to make them get off my back. (UK28/m/single/3y9m)

Roman’s unemployed status, emotional distress, alcohol problem, low self-esteem, uncertain housing situation and social support limited only to acquaintances from a drop-in centre for the homeless contributed to his low sense of agency and passivity in spite of his intelligence and good level of English. Migrants such as Roman or Damian were more exposed not only to exploitation and unfair treatment but also to risks. Roman’s words also illustrate the other problems he particularly experienced due to his ethnic and socio-economic

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position: prejudice and racism. The lower their socio-economic position, the more direct open and aggressive hostility the migrants faced, which the testimonies of the homeless and lower social class interviewees showed particularly clearly. Migrant workers, especially those who could be categorised as middle class, encountered rather less open racism in daily life but could experience greater social distance, leading to alienation and a feeling of inferiority fuelled by their lower self-esteem in response to the assumed diminished perception in the eyes of the host society, as Cooley’s looking-glass self-concept (1902) explains. This refers to the process of imagining how one appears to others, reacting to what one believes the judgement is and developing oneself accordingly (Yeung and Martin 2003). The negative representations of Polish migrants presented in the media and used by politicians in the pre-Brexit debates at the time of the SAST research contributed to identity challenges and insecurities. More educated and better socially situated migrants with higher levels of language competency were particularly aware of subtle forms of stereotyping and prejudice but might not be subject to direct racial discrimination and stigmatisation by the people they interacted with. Pawel’s words shed light on this process: I have such a feeling and I was not always wrong that Poles are perceived worse here than other nations – I am sure that this holds for some. It happened to me many times to talk to people and after some time somebody asked me where I come from and until I answered it was said that from Germany or France. I do not know why? Then I said from Poland and watched reactions. I remember like today that often there were reactions that a person tried to hide these emotions to not show me that he is now looking at me a bit worse because I am from Poland so that I do not have such a contact with him as I had previously. (UK05/m/single/4y6m)

According to Pawel, the difference in social attitudes towards migrants from Poland and those from Western countries and the negative stereotyping of the former, hindered his possibilities of establishing close social relations beyond the ethnic community. In the same vein Maria pointed to the intersectionality of class, cultural and ethnic exclusions, where even Poles with high cultural capital and from previous privileged socio-economic positions in the country of origin are constructed as subordinate in England and expected to

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perform ascribed roles of ‘migrants’ or lower-graded workers in the hierarchical British society: When the cleaning of these houses started, I felt less a human being. As one lady told me once … she was at home and did not want to leave me the keys. She was sitting and reading a paper. She looked very bored. […] I began to talk to her. I was cleaning her house but I was not born as a cleaner. It happened that my family used to have money and there was always a maid at home. The housekeepers were a part of the family. There was Teresa, everyone knew her, liked and normally chatted with her. I unconsciously said something to this lady, asked since it was interesting such a big house. She told me that I am paid to clean, not talk and speak to her. This was one of the greatest shocks and very slow discovery of such large social differences in the UK and that because I have an accent this locates me basically lower in this society. […] I also started to realise that I am a Pole in England and that was this: ‘Oh! How nice … you are from Poland. Do you want to clean a house?’ (UK13/w/single/10y)

Maria particularly experienced her assigned inferior positionality when working in a pub in a remote affluent community, where she was kept at a distance by established residents not only because of her different ethnic origin but also due to her different socio-economic characteristics; she contrasted this with more open attitudes in diverse urban settings. The SAST narratives confirmed Favell’s observation that: ‘even highly skilled movers – a much larger part of East–West migration than is ever recognised – continue to complain of prejudice and glass ceilings, even to West European foreigners’ (Favell 2013: 57). Pawel and Maria’s thoughts might be related to the other important dimension of inequality, apart from the inequality of redistribution and the inequality of opportunities – that is, the problem of recognition (Fraser 1998). Drawing on Berlin’s elaboration (1969) of negative liberty related to the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints, and positive liberty linked to the possibility of acting and pursuing one’s own goals, Bauman (2001b) distinguishes between negative recognition, that is, protection from having an identity we do not want imposed on us, and positive recognition, that is, the capacity to choose the identities we want and to be acknowledged. Referring to the above excerpts, Pawel and Maria might be perceived as having certain (Polish, low-skilled migrant) identities imposed on them and as being denied



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recognition on their own terms (for example in these cases, through the prism of their European and cosmopolitan and artistic identities). Migrants’ positionalities and experiences depended not only on their characteristics and attitudes, but also on the social context and groups migrants interacted with. Tatiana pointed to the difference in the way she was treated by her Polish middle-class colleagues and randomly encountered Poles of lower social standing: I do not feel like a foreigner. And it surprises me, I have very intelligent, very normal colleagues here, a very friendly environment in the workplace, it sometimes surprises me when I go to the gym or to a masseur they treat you … because of my accent and from the beginning say: ‘What a pretty Ukrainian lady! Do you work as a cleaner here?’ This is so strange to me because I do not feel different at all, I do not feel like a stranger. […] And this shows that Polish society is diverse in terms of social class, education levels and ways of conduct. Poland is diverse and I am lucky that since the beginning I have joined the same social class, at the same level from which I started. (PL39/w/ single/8y4m)

Some UK interviewees directly referred to the aforementioned adverse media coverage and prevailing negative depiction of Polish migrants by politicians which was visible at the time of the research in 2015 and culminated in the 2016 EU referendum. Monika not only reflected on the negative representation of Polish migrants in the UK but also revealed her fears about disadvantageous future political developments, which proved to be plausible: If we achieve in the UK what we want, that is good, normal work, stability and it will be good, because I do not like that when I go to hear: ‘Look, a Polack!’ I do not know how it will be here in the future because in spite of a fight against racism, there is this racism. The worst is that it is heard from the government and the upper political class. It is not known how it will function, the more that the UK also wants to exit from the Union. It is not known what status we will have here. If a person feels unwanted, they will not rather stay here, but I think that I want to stay here for a really long time but if in the future it is, as I say different, I would like to move from the UK to Australia. My closest family member is there and she is alone because our mother is not alive so I maybe would like to be the closest to her. (UK10/w/ husband and children in the UK/1y3m)

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Monika’s words bring to mind Yuval-Davis’s (2006) reflections on the relationship between social positions, identifications, feelings of attachment, and political and emotional aspects of belonging – for example, how political processes may threaten emotional bonds that migrants developed with their host countries. Yuval-Davis refers to the notion of the politics of belonging to demonstrate how boundaries between groups and identities are demarcated and (re)created, what the mechanisms are through which individuals and groups are constructed as belonging or not-belonging, and how this is legitimised. From this perspective, the changes reflected on by Monika could be seen as processes of questioning and redefining boundaries – who may belong and who not. Similarly, Paulina expressed her anxiety about the shifting political landscape and how this can affect the position of Polish migrants in the UK: As is known, the arrival here has changed things for better and I hope that it shall be given to us that we may stay here further unless they will crack down on Poles. […] We live here such a quiet life. I hope that there will not come again any bang that something will happen but we never can be sure about this in legal terms. (UK02/w/husband and children in the UK/4y)

The quotes from Monika and Paulina reveal that despite a seemingly stable legal and institutional framework in the case of Poles in the UK at the time of the research in 2014 and 2015, some way ahead of the 2016 EU referendum, Polish migrants actually already began to experience some sense of insecurity and uncertainty related to their status, which added to their personal unsettlement and could hamper the establishment of stronger anchors in the UK, such as buying houses or investing in business. Paulina’s further life story after the interview for the SAST project illustrates the fragility of her newly established anchors and relativeness of her settlement in the UK when, several months later, Paulina’s husband, the family’s breadwinner, lost his job and struggled to find another one. Not having resources to cover the high costs of living abroad and witnessing the growing political hostility and anti-immigrant attitudes, the family returned to Poland. Although neither the Polish migrants in the UK nor the Ukrainian migrants in Poland kept complaining about the host societies’ attitudes – on the contrary, both groups of migrants rather focused on positive

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aspects of intergroup relations, which might play an adaptive role – the opposite tendencies could be observed in the general socio-political context in both receiving countries. Whereas anti-immigrant resentment was unfolding in the UK, Ukrainians in Poland noted increasing openness towards them, as Sofija pointed out: ‘In my opinion Poles have better attitudes towards the newcomers from the East [the former Soviet Union], but in those days in the past] not so much. At times there were such unpleasant … I did not feel any aggression in relation to me but I have always had complexes’ (PL06/w/partner in UA/5y2m). Sofija’s quote illustrates the relationality of positionality, according to which Ukrainian migrants were relatively better treated than migrants from more distinct, particularly non-European, states. However, even though being constructed as relatively close and accepted, Ukrainians’ local belonging and established status were challenged, as this social media entry manifests: I had a feeling that for Polish doctors we are interesting cases because we do not come from here. Poles always pronounce my name several times. […] Then, a question follows: Where am I from? With distrust: How much time? Do I work? Where? And in a way they expect that casting down my eyes I will say, ‘I work as all that is I clean.’ And they expect that I will offer them my service. When I tell them that I am a journalist the distrust turns into surprise. When I tell the story of my illness, where I mention that I had a lot of stress, particularly during the defence of my PhD in the winter, this surprise turns in distrust again: ‘So young and PhD?’, ‘And have you done this PhD in Poland?’, ‘No, in Ukraine’ and then there is a facial expression showing their content because among Poles it is perceived as worth less than those [PhDs] done in Poland. […] With Ukrainian doctors I simply say what is wrong but here I feel that I should provide some evidence that I am a human and only then I may say what is wrong. The worst is that I like Poland, I live here comfortably and maybe because of it I am so sensitive when somebody reminds me that I am not fully one of them. (Facebook 11, UA)

The above quote shows how the stereotypes and expectations of the receiving society impact migrants’ belonging and prevent them from stronger emotional and cognitive anchoring. For example, the Ukrainian participants complained that they were associated with the domestic work sector and the term Ukrainian is used as a synonym for a cleaning lady or domestic help.

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The similarity of the languages and cultures constituted an advantage which helped Ukrainian migrants to integrate with Poles but simultaneously made them more aware of even more subtle manifestations of prejudices as well as power inequalities and social distance despite close contact. This led to contradictions, ambivalences and confusions, as Yuriy’s account uncovers: Cultural closeness – this is clear, it does not even need to be explained. I do not feel like a stranger but I am not a countryman either. Exactly, it should be stressed that I do not feel like a stranger because I fit in in the society – easily – in my opinion – easily I can find a job, speak [Polish] fluently, I study permanently, I learn something every day, so I am not excluded from everyday life which passes. But I do not feel like a countryman because, on one hand, as I have said there are some things in Poland that show that you are a foreigner. For example, obtaining a mortgage or looking for a job – these themes are always mentioned: ‘Have you got a degree in Poland or haven’t you?’ (PL01/m/ partner in PL/8y)

As Yuriy stressed, despite cultural closeness, fitting in perfectly and his Polish language fluency, he did not feel that he belonged to Polish society. He described his experience of tension and emotional insecurity while in Poland, in contrast to feeling safe, familiar and ‘at home’ in Ukraine: ‘Acquaintances, people, I feel emotionally attached to, national and cultural closeness, identity. When I just cross the [Ukrainian] border, immediately I feel easier, I am just not emotionally strained, I am more open, sincere […] things are more our own, so closer.’ It was not surprising, therefore, that in spite of eight years spent in Poland, Yuriy admitted that he never fully rejected the thought of returning to Ukraine and mitigated his ambivalent status with the aid of an ethno-cultural safety net: ‘Never have I fully felt like a part of [Polish] society. I still do not feel because I read Ukrainian news, I am more interested in political life in Ukraine than in Poland. […] I am involved in the life of Ukrainians here in Warsaw – organising different projects for Ukrainians in Poland. I cooperate with Ukrainian non-governmental organisations.’ Yuriy’s account thus gives insight into the challenging nature of belonging, with its key aspects of emotional attachment, feeling ‘at home’ and ‘safe’ (Ignatieff 2001). As Yuval-Davis (2006) notes, belonging tends to be naturalised and it particularly becomes articulated and politicised when it is threatened in some way. The SAST data demonstrated that belonging was more

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clearly realised in comparison to the experience of non-belonging, as Zoya pointed out: ‘My flat in Poland is a comfortable place to live. […] It is difficult to say that it is my home because to me home means a place where my parents live’ (PL04/w/single/8y). Similarly, Yulia indicated that she continued feeling at home in Ukraine, accompanied by the changeability and ambiguity of her emotions towards Poland: ‘The point is that I was born here [in Ukraine] – homeland and here [in Poland] the point is that I have got used to. […] It is difficult to describe but it is different, I come [to Ukraine] and I feel at home, whereas here it varies’ (PL05/w/partner in UA/5y2m). The migrants’ narratives presented an example of a disrupted or fragile sense of safety and a feeling of being torn apart. Certain Polish participants in the UK revealed that they missed the unquestioned and strong grounding in Polish culture and society prior to migration. They pointed to the anchors they had lost and connections that had weakened. Being in a state of unsettlement or quasi-settlement was experienced through restricted and provisional life, limited social contacts and socio-political participation. Kinga characterised her existence abroad as a ‘convent life’ despite her successful professional life and high salary: There were no important events and it has not changed a lot because I still have been living such a ‘convent’ life in fact. […] I am such a simple person that has such anchors as a family. There can also be faith but this can be maintained everywhere in the world. One and another. I do not have such different anchors. I do not live in order to work but rather I work in order to live. It will be empty on this side. I do not have footholds linked to the UK although I like it but I do not have. (UK03/w/single/1y5m)

Similarly, Marek concluded that in the UK he had a relatively limited and modest life (UK09/m/single/2y10m). Likewise Renata highlighted her restricted social contacts, with days filled with work and occasionally going out with acquaintances: I do not have such a social life. It can be said that my main entertainment is reading Polish books, watching films, not only Polish, English too, listening to English radio. I wonder whether I really want it or not. Moving to Birmingham, I thought that is a bigger city, bigger threats but also greater opportunities. But it turns out that there are barriers as if somebody builds a glass wall in front of me. (UK17/w/single/2y6m)

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Renata’s words also shed light on her experience of barriers and a glass ceiling in her professional life. Kinga, Marek and Renata’s accounts demonstrate loneliness and isolation, particularly experienced by single migrants who had been living in the UK a relatively short time and without families. But even interviewees with families sometimes felt separated from wider British society and lacking enough social and institutional support they could rely on as in Poland, as shown by Iga’s insight into her feeling of alienation and disconnection: ‘Unfortunately until now I have been feeling not right. I am not able to integrate and I am not able to feel … I will never feel in my own place here but only if I could feel in the right place here, if this place could be at least a bit mine. Without language, this is a massacre. I am an example that this simply makes a person unhappy’ (UK04/w/husband and children in the UK/7y). Ewa, like Iga, did not consider the UK her home and felt like a stranger, not only because of insufficient social closeness but also cultural isolation resulting from her low level of English: In the UK there is my family I have set up. I will write [on the diagram she was drawing] my family. How to tell this? … Such stability is here. In Poland I do not have anything apart from my family which will attract me to Poland. It is known – longing. But I always remember nicely my holiday in Poland. I am now just going [there], in two weeks and I miss this environment. I have my family here. I live here but I feel foreign. I have been here over eight years and I feel not in my place. (UK14/husband and child in the UK/8y)

To sum up, this chapter concentrated on possible disadvantaging anchors, particularly those of an involuntary and aggravating character such as those related to illnesses or substance abuse. This part shows an ambiguity in establishing certain footholds and the countereffects of maintaining some anchors, including new types of insecurities produced, for example, by too strong grounding in the ethnic community and closest family circles. The chapter analysed possible constraints, inequalities and exclusions in the processes of anchoring, demonstrating the impact of wider structures on migrants’ positionality, experiences and capacities for agency.

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Conclusions: from theory to practical applications?

This monograph demonstrates the centrality of safety and stability in the narratives of Polish migrants in the UK and Ukrainian migrants in Poland. The presence of the references to security and stability, as well as the spontaneous usage of metaphors related to anchoring, support the relevance of the proposed concept and significance of safety and stability when seeking to understand migrants’ adaptation and settling. The concept of anchoring – understood as establishing and managing footholds which migrants use to recover their sense of stability and security – underlines the importance of anchors which provide a base for identity and settling while individuals endeavour to satisfy their psycho-social needs. It also highlights the multidimensionality of anchoring, which can encompass establishing social, cultural, institutional, economic, material, legal, habitual, cognitive or spiritual anchors. Not only are there different spheres in which migrants anchor, but their anchors might have different strengths and characters. For example, individuals may maintain strong and deep anchors in their ethnic communities while establishing weak and shallow ones in a receiving society. The process of anchoring in a new country is uneven in various domains such as the labour market, civic engagement, social networks and state institutions. The SAST study demonstrates the process of anchoring over time with different layers of anchoring, from external footholds related to the legal and institutional framework and work, through to more

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complex anchors embedded in social networks and deeper internal footholds, linked to familiarity and constructed closeness. Anchors differ in terms of their role in adaptation and settling, including their strength and impact. They vary in degree of flexibility and the extent to which they can be subject to change; for example cognitive anchors might be more easily subject to change than physical constraints or psychological dispositions (Dweck 2008; Lau et al. 1990). From the practical point of view, therefore, it is important to identify migrants’ cognitive anchors and examine their role in adaptation and settling to help facilitate those which are advantageous and discourage those which are adverse. Anchoring also captures the simultaneity of anchors and their possible transnational feature, when migrants maintain tangible, cognitive and virtual anchors spanning state borders and connecting them to different geographical places and unlocalised spaces. The approach adopted emphasises migrants’ agency in establishing footholds, yet acknowledges that they are constrained and limited by different opportunity structures, barriers and obstacles. The processes of anchoring reflect inequalities related to migrants’ intersecting positionalities related to their individual characteristics and resources, legal statuses and contextual settings. Anchoring includes not only establishing new anchors but also moving, reusing, changing or abandoning previous ones. Some anchors may be transferred from the countries of origin to the new ones while others need to be created. Certain persistent anchors can prevent migrants from inclusion in a new society and developing a sense of belonging, even if providing stability and safety and being particularly useful as resources for initial adaptation. Over time some anchors linking migrants to their home countries or other states might become lost or broken. The concept of anchoring thus allows us to theorise the dynamic of anchoring and the reverse processes of un-anchoring when, for instance, some anchors established in the new society may be weakened or abandoned, which may be (but need not be) accompanied by re-anchoring in the country of origin or other replacement forms of anchoring. The SAST research shows not only the changeability of anchoring but in some circumstances the fragility of ‘settlement’, when life events, such as family breakdown, the death of loved ones or the loss of employment, could become turning points and weaken migrants’ links

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CO N C LU S I O N S 151

to a given society. This also became noticeable after the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, which can be seen as such an unsettling event (Kilkey and Ryan 2020), when some of the interviewees I approached for a follow up began to feel more like strangers than they had before and re-evaluated the strength of their ties to the UK. On the other hand, as the research by McGhee, Moreh and Vlachantoni (2017) demonstrated, the consequences of the EU referendum might lead in some cases to the phenomenon of non-deliberate determinacy, when migrants adopt a more strategic orientation and began to ground themselves more strongly in the receiving society, while others start to apply even more the strategy of intentional unpredictability, weaken their links with the UK and develop alternative footholds in different places in Poland and other countries. Although in both the groups studied the concept of anchoring proved to be more relevant than the framework of ‘settlement’ and integration, it was particularly useful in analysing the mechanisms of adaptation and settling taking place among those involved in circular and temporary migration. This was more predominant among Ukrainian migrants in Poland due to the physical proximity between Poland and Ukraine and the migration regime limiting free movement of Ukrainians to Poland and hindering their processes of settling. Investigation into the processes of anchoring/re-anchoring/unanchoring also has practical implications for helping individuals in realising, establishing, strengthening or replacing their anchors, drawing on the approach for the therapy of cancer patients described by Little, Paul, Jordens and Sayers (2002). In the face of such life-threatening and traumatic experiences as cancer, individuals were encouraged to seek relatively stable points of reference (such as beliefs, values or professional identities) to restore their sense of continuity and integrity despite physical, mental and social changes which could otherwise lead to problems with socio-psychological functioning, social alienation and an identity crisis. This concluding section of the monograph, therefore, opens a discussion of possible practical and policy applications of anchoring. It demonstrates the particular importance of the first period of migration, with first encounters and exchanges providing significant experiences which may constitute potential ‘roses’ and ‘thorns’, encouraging or hindering settling and belonging (Lindenmeyer and Phillimore 2018). The book also underlines the importance of cognitive anchors (both

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adaptive and adverse), which may be changed when reflected upon by individuals willing to learn, develop and be active, especially when adequately supported. Possible further applications are proposed, based on the principles of cognitive and behavioural therapy to assist migrants in adaptation and settling in the sense of establishing themselves in the receiving society and better satisfying their needs of safety and security. The concept of anchoring proved to be useful in the SAST study of the adaptation and settling process among migrants in their 30s and 40s, that is, at the age when people tend to seek stability. However, due to the specificity of this group, further research is needed to examine the concept with different categories of migrants in regard to age and in terms of other features such as ethno-cultural background, migration type and status (e.g. refugees). Moreover, the theoretical and practical significance of the concept of anchoring seems to go beyond migration studies. This approach might be useful for theorising the recovery of individuals’ safety and stability after major changes and crises, as well as capturing the wider problem of settling and adaptation to life in the complex and changeable world, particularly in the case of those, such as the homeless, who experienced traumatic life changes and remain not grounded or socially connected.

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Appendix: characteristics of interviewees

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Table 1  Characteristics of the Ukrainian migrants interviewed in Poland Symbol

Gender

Length of residence

Age

Family situation

Work

Polish competency

Place of residence

PL01

m

8y

early 30s

Warsaw

m

1y

early 30s

manager, PhD student professional (IT)

very good

PL02

limited

Warsaw

PL03

m

8y

early 30s

professional (scholar)

very good

Warsaw

PL04

w

8y

mid 30s

Ukrainian partner in PL Ukrainian wife and child in PL wife from another former USSR country and child in PL single

very good

Warsaw

PL05

w

6y

early 30s

single

very good

Warsaw

PL06

w

5y 2m

late 30s

Ukrainian partner in UA

rather good

Warsaw

PL07

w

4y 3m

early 30s

Ukrainian husband in PL

professional (analyst) accountancy, PhD student call centre for international clients cleaning

rather good

Warsaw

m

4y

early 30s

Ukrainian wife in PL

PL09

m

1y 10m

early 30s

single

PL10

w

7y

early 40s

PL11

w

7y

mid 40s

PL12

w

6y 9m

late 40s

PL13

m

3y

mid 40s

divorced, adult child in PL Ukrainian husband and children in UA Ukrainian husband and children in UA Ukrainian wife and children in PL

PL14

w

3y

late 30s

PL15

m

4y 5m

early 30s

PL16 PL17

w w

4y 8y

mid 30s mid 30s

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PL08

divorced, daughter in PL single divorced, child in UA partner from another former USSR country in PL, children in UA

manual worker (construction) manual worker (construction) housekeeping

rather good

Warsaw

rather good

Warsaw

rather good

Warsaw

cleaning

very good

Warsaw

cleaning

very good

Warsaw

telemarketing for international clients carer for the elderly manual worker (warehouse) cleaning cleaning

rather good

Warsaw

rather good

Warsaw

rather good

Warsaw

rather good limited

Warsaw Warsaw

Table 1  Characteristics of the Ukrainian migrants interviewed in Poland (cont.) Gender

Length of residence

Age

Family situation

Work

Polish competency

Place of residence

PL18

w

1y 10m

early 40s

cleaning

rather good

Warsaw

PL19

w

3y

mid 40s

cleaning

rather good

Warsaw

PL20

m

5y

early 30s

Ukrainian partner and child in UA, daughter in PL divorced, child in Spain single

very good

Warsaw

PL21

m

3y

early 30s

single

professional (lawyer) retail trade

rather limited

PL22 PL23

w w

5y 6m 3y 6m

mid 40s mid 30s

PL24

m

3y 10m

early 30s

divorced, child in PL Ukrainian husband, child in UA, child in PL Ukrainian wife in PL

PL25

m

6y

early 30s

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Symbol

Ukrainian wife and children in UA

housekeeping manager

rather good rather good

small town in Mazovia Province Warsaw Warsaw

consulting (international trade) manual worker (warehouse)

very good

Warsaw

very good

small town in Mazovia Province

m

1y 2m

mid 40s

PL27

m

6y

late 40s

PL28

w

8y

late 30s

PL29

m

5y 4m

early 30s

PL30

m

6y

early 30s

PL31

w

1y 5m

early 30s

PL32

m

8y

mid 30s

PL33

m

1y 6m

mid 30s

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PL26

Ukrainian wife, child in PL, children in UA Ukrainian wife in PL, child in UA

Ukrainian husband and children in UA Ukrainian partner in UA Ukrainian partner in PL divorced Ukrainian wife and child in PL Ukrainian wife and children in UA

analyst

rather limited

Warsaw

unemployed (6 months), previously co-ran small business housekeeping

rather good

Warsaw

rather good

Warsaw

caretaker

rather good

Warsaw

manual worker (construction) casual work (translation, private teaching) manager

rather good

Warsaw

rather good

Warsaw

very good

Warsaw

manager

rather good

small town in Mazovia Province

Table 1  Characteristics of the Ukrainian migrants interviewed in Poland (cont.) Gender

Length of residence

Age

Family situation

Work

Polish competency

Place of residence

PL34

m

3y 6m

early 30s

single

very good

Warsaw

PL35

m

5y

mid 30s

very good

Warsaw

PL36

w

10y

late 40s

cleaning

rather good

Warsaw

PL37

w

7y 6m

late 30s

Warsaw

w

5y

mid 30s

manual worker (construction) analyst

rather good

PL38

divorced, second Ukrainian wife in PL, child in UA Ukrainian husband in UA, children in PL Ukrainian partner in PL, child in PL divorced

casual work (music, photography, sales assistant) PhD student, self-employed

very good

PL39 PL40

w m

8y 4m 2y 9m

late 30s late 40s

trade market research

very good very good

small town in Mazovia Province Warsaw small town in Mazovia Province

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Symbol

divorced Ukrainian wife, children in PL, child in UA

Table 2  Characteristics of the Polish migrants interviewed in the UK Gender

Length of residence

Age

Family situation

Work

English competency

Place of residence (*borough)

UK01

w

8y 9m

late 30s

Birmingham*

w

4y

early 30s

professional (engineer) housewife

rather good

UK02

very limited

Birmingham*

UK03

w

1y 21m

early 30s

Polish husband, children in the UK Polish husband, children in the UK single

very good

Dudley*

UK04

w

7y 10m

early 40s

rather limited

Birmingham*

UK05

m

4y 6m

early 30s

rather good

Birmingham*

UK06

w

4y 4m

early 30s

rather limited

Birmingham*

UK07

m

5y 9m

mid 30s

rather good

Birmingham*

UK08 UK09 UK10

m m w

6y 5m 2y 10m 2y 3m

mid 40s late 30s late 30s

rather limited very good rather good

Birmingham* Birmingham* Birmingham*

UK11

m

7y

early 40s

very good

middle sized city in West Midlands

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Symbol

Polish husband, children in the UK single Polish husband (UK07), children in the UK Polish wife (UK06), children in the UK single single Polish husband, children in the UK Polish wife, child in the UK

professional (engineer) housewife casual manual worker housewife cook looking for a job (2 weeks) cook advisory service housewife professional (scholar)

Table 2  Characteristics of the Polish migrants interviewed in the UK (cont.) Gender

Length of residence

Age

Family situation

Work

English competency

Place of residence (*borough)

UK12

w

8y

mid 30s

Birmingham*

w w

10y 8y

early 40s mid 30s

carer for elderly people officer at NGO housewife

rather good

UK13 UK14

very good rather limited

Birmingham* Birmingham*

UK15

w

5y

early 30s

housewife

rather limited

Birmingham*

UK16

w

5y 5m

late 40s

casual worker at bar

very limited

Birmingham*

UK17

w

2y 6m

early 40s

Polish husband, children in the UK single Polish husband, child in the UK Polish husband, children in the UK Polish husband and one adult child in Norway, another adult child in Birmingham single

rather good

Birmingham*

UK18

m

8y

mid 30s

unemployed (1 month) manual worker in manufacture

rather good

Birmingham*

UK19

w

7y 11m

early 30s

very good

Birmingham*

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Symbol

single, divorced, child in another part of UK single

officer in public institution and self-employed

w

9y

early 30s

single

UK21

m

8y

early 40s

UK22 UK23

m m

2y 1m 5y 6m

early 30s late 40s

UK24

w

1y 5m

late 40s

UK25

m

10y 5m

early 40s

Polish wife, child in the UK Polish wife in the UK divorced, children in the UK Polish husband and child in PL, children in the UK single

UK26

m

1y 7m

late 40s

single

UK27

m

7y 4m

early 40s

UK28

m

3y 9m

early 30s

separated, children in PL single

UK29

m

1y 6m

late 30s

UK30

w

8y 5m

late 40

UK31

m

1y 4m

early 40s

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UK20

Polish girlfriend in the UK single, children in PL and the UK Polish wife, children in PL

professional (engineer) businessman teacher unemployed (2 months) cleaning skilled worker (technical service) unemployed (2 months) unemployed (6 months) unemployed (9 months) unemployed (5 months) unemployed (7 months) manual worker

very good

Birmingham*

very good

Solihull*

very good rather limited

Birmingham* Birmingham*

rather limited

Dudley*

rather good

Birmingham*

rather limited

Birmingham*

rather limited

Birmingham*

rather good

Birmingham*

rather limited

Birmingham*

rather good

Birmingham*

very limited

Birmingham*

Table 2  Characteristics of the Polish migrants interviewed in the UK (cont.) Gender

UK32

m

UK33

m

UK34

m

UK35

m

UK36

w

UK37

w

UK38 UK39

m w

UK40

w

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Symbol

Length of residence

Age

Family situation

Work

English competency

Place of residence (*borough)

9y 6m

early 40s

Polish wife, children in the UK

rather good

5y 10m

late 30s

Polish girlfriend, child in the UK

2y 1m

early 40s

rather good

medium-sized city in West Midlands medium-sized city in West Midlands Sandwell*

4y 6m

early 30s

5y

early 30s

Polish wife, children in the UK Polish wife, children in the UK boyfriend in the UK

co-owner and CEO of a company skilled worker (technical service) professional (IT)

2y

early 40s

4y 9m 2y 3m

late 30s late 30s

3y 4m

early 30s

single, children in the UK single single, children in the UK Polish husband, child in the UK

rather good

manual worker (warehouse) teacher

very good

Birmingham*

very good

teaching assistant

rather good

small town in West Midlands Birmingham*

teaching assistant skilled worker quality controller casual work (housekeeping)

very good rather limited

Birmingham* Sandwell*

rather good

Birmingham*

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Index

acculturation stress 22, 35, 108–109 adaptation phases 108–109, 110 agency 21, 23, 29, 31, 32, 33, 63, 70, 71, 72, 87, 95, 98, 99, 114, 111, 117, 125, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 140, 148, 150 Ager and Strang’s model of integration 21 anchoring effect/technique 26 in cancer therapy 27, 33, 151 practical applications of 9, 33, 42, 110, 149, 150, 151–152 vignettes 27 see also re-anchoring; un-anchoring anti-immigration discourses and attitudes 2, 12, 77, 78, 79, 109, 135, 141, 143, 144–145 Archer’s theory of agency and structure 21, 32 assimilation 21, 24, 44, 45, 46, 59, 76, 109 assimilation/assimilationist approach 2, 11, 13 attachment theory 18, 19–20

Bauman 3, 4, 27, 28, 103, 136, 142 belonging 5, 15, 17, 18–19, 20, 22, 28, 30, 31, 37, 81, 84, 95, 130, 144, 145, 146, 150, 151 Berry 22, 24, 44 borders 2, 3, 12, 14, 18, 32, 44, 46, 47, 49, 71, 104, 125, 130, 146, 150 Bourdieu’s reflective approach 40 Bowlby’s development theory 19 Card of the Pole see Karta Polaka Castells 12, 17, 27, 28, 81, 82 church 67, 74, 86, 97, 99, 126, 131–132 circular migration 7, 45, 46, 53, 57, 60, 65, 73, 151 citizenship 8, 11, 17, 18, 21, 29, 31, 53, 54, 62, 76, 80, 117 cognitive and behavioural therapy 152 Common Basic Principles for Immigrant Integration Policy 2 conservation of resources (COR) theory 22, 109, 136

186 I N D EX

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constructing closeness 46, 47, 64, 69, 71, 133, 146, 148, 150 constructing otherness 4, 80, 82 Cooper’s inequality of security 136 discrimination (prejudice) 13, 16, 22, 76, 109, 132, 138, 141, 142 see also racism; stereotypes and prejudices displacement 19 embeddedness 20 embedding 18, 20, 25 emotional labour 66 emplacement 18, 19, 30, 31, 127 ethical problems in research 37, 38, 39, 41 ethnic institutions 8, 65, 67, 74, 86, 87, 112, 113, 122, 146 EU Europe 2020 Strategy 2 European referendum (Brexit referendum) 1, 9, 78, 99, 143, 144, 151 European Union 1, 8, 9, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 104, 143, 151 Favell 10, 11, 12, 18, 142 fluid mobility/fluid migration 6, 44, 45 friends 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 75, 76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 103, 110, 114, 115, 117, 118, 121, 124, 125, 126, 130, 137 friendship 59, 85, 88, 89, 94, 96–97, 110, 115 gender 35, 82, 99, 100, 120–121, 137 Gergen 3

Giddens 3, 4, 119 Glick Schiller 3, 12, 14, 18, 19, 29, 46, 115 Global Compact for Migration 2 global flows 12 globalisation 1, 4, 14, 28, 58 Goffman’s frame of reference 108 Grillo 13 grounded theory approach 35, 36, 43 Hobfoll 22, 92, 109, 136, 137 home 18, 23, 28, 33, 47, 49, 52, 54, 56, 59, 67, 69, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 118, 119, 120, 125, 128, 129–130, 142, 146, 147, 148 homelessness 33, 35, 42, 43, 97, 100, 130, 135, 140, 141, 152 homemaking 30, 82, 99, 120, 121 identity 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 39, 41, 45, 51, 52, 69, 70, 71, 74, 79, 80, 82, 83, 91, 95, 108, 109, 111, 118, 120, 124, 127, 130, 131, 136, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 149, 151 concept 17 critique 17–18, 30 in-betweenness 48, 59, 138 incomplete migration 6, 45 indeterminacy 4, 138 individualisation/individualism 3, 24, 82, 84 individualist approach 2, 3, 4 inequalities 4, 9, 12, 13, 15, 58, 66, 72, 90, 109, 134, 136–146, 148, 150

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I N D EX 187

integration 9, 16, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 41, 45, 46, 52, 74, 76, 77, 80, 81, 89, 92, 108, 127, 148 critique 2, 5, 9, 10–12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 44, 45, 46, 59, 151 definition 2, 10, 11, 16, 17, 21, 32 intentional unpredictability 14, 46, 57, 71, 75, 84, 138, 151 Karta Polaka 7, 47, 54, 62 language competency 2, 9, 21, 31, 42, 43, 48, 49, 50–51, 52, 53, 55, 69, 70, 73, 77, 78, 86, 87, 88–91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 110, 113, 117, 130, 131, 135, 139, 140, 141, 146, 147, 148, 154–162 late modernity 4 layered model of anchoring 70, 87, 109, 113–114, 131, 132–133, 149–150 Lianos 4, 5 liquid life 103 liquid migration 14, 46 liquid reality 3, 27, 136 local community and neighbourhood 15, 16, 67, 69, 70, 77, 79, 81, 87, 91, 92–95, 96, 97, 99, 127–129 mainstreaming 16 Maslow’s theory of needs 22, 102 maximum variation sampling (MSV) 35 meaningful encounters 70, 88, 89, 91, 92, 97 metaphor 3, 9, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 35, 81, 103, 149 methodological nationalism 12

Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) 16 migration and integration policy 2, 3, 47, 53–54, 77, 136, 137, 143, 144 migration studies 2, 9, 10, 12, 25, 28, 33 moorings 15, 126 multiculturalism 2, 3, 13, 124 neoliberal paradigm/doctrine 2, 3, 4, 137 neurolinguistic programming (NLP) 26 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 42, 74, 87, 95, 97, 98, 146 Office for Foreigners 6, 7 Okolski 8, 45 ontological security 3, 4, 119, 130 Phillimore 10, 22, 42, 88, 127, 128, 151 politics of fear 4 precariousness 3, 55, 138, 139, 140 racism 13, 80, 132, 139, 140, 141, 143 re-anchoring 21, 115, 133, 150, 151 refugee crisis 1 religion 3, 12, 13, 16, 17, 66, 67, 70, 78, 99, 131–132, 147 resilience 22, 111, 113, 123, 132 risk 4, 11, 137, 139 rootedness 20, 25 roots 9, 15, 25, 31, 44, 50, 59, 73, 99, 102, 133 school 38, 65, 74, 75, 86–87, 91–92, 93, 95, 99, 102, 107, 110, 120

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188 I N D EX sedentarism v. mobility dichotomy 15, 33, 108 settling within mobility 33, 59, 60 simultaneity 14, 44, 71, 115, 132, 150 sociabilities 19 social capital 13, 17, 64, 66, 72, 75, 83, 96, 135, 137, 139 social cohesion 1, 2, 10, 12–13, 15 social networks 3, 4, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 28, 31, 45, 51, 59, 70, 75, 82, 83, 84, 89, 98, 99, 115, 131, 136, 137, 147, 149, 150 social remittances 17, 63, 64 social ties 66, 92 stereotypes and prejudices 48, 55, 80, 141, 142, 145, 146 superdiversity 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, 16, 80, 81, 90, 92, 94–95, 114, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128, 142 criticism 13, 14 definition 13 temporariness/lasting temporariness 45, 46, 53, 54, 57, 71, 76, 96, 120, 138 temporariness v. permanency dichotomy 33, 59, 76–77

transmigration 20 transnationalism 45 transnational flows/processes 3, 12 transnational perspective 14, 32, 46 transnational relations and practices 15, 24, 28, 44, 45, 46, 58, 63, 64, 81, 115, 150 transnational spaces 6, 14, 46, 63, 71 Turner’s theory of transition 111 turning points 62, 108, 118, 120, 150 un-anchoring 21, 31, 58, 115, 117–118, 133, 150, 151 uprootedness 25 Urry 12, 15, 29, 126 Vertovec 3, 5, 13, 28, 126 welfare provision 9, 55, 61, 73, 87, 97–99, 137, 139 welfare state 2, 3, 4, 137 well-being 4, 76, 77, 122, 104–105, 122 Yuval-Davis 2, 16, 17, 18, 130, 144, 146