Problems of children adaptation, acculturation and integration have been ignored or treated marginally in large literature devoted to migration process. This article discusses problems that children of immigrants in Poland are facing particularly in Polish school. The qualitative research (based on interviews) is focused on immigrant children attending Polish schools mainly in Warsaw and investigates both the perspectives of children themselves and of school as an institution. Different situations of emigration produce different types of challenges for the host country’s school methods and goals. The research presented here is mainly about the first two categories of people mentioned below: 1) children of diplomats and long term contract employees, whose stay in Poland is strictly determined, AND (2) children of economic migrants who choose between long term stay in Poland or further migration, or even when returning home. Their stay in Poland is an element of the individual life strategy of the family. The third group - (3) children of political refugees and persons who attempt to receive the legal status of political refugee. the conclusions of the article also may be of interest for researchers dealing with children of refugees. Poland became a relatively attractive country of immigration because of (1) its relative easy access, (2) relatively high standard of living, (3) its safety and (4) its high level of education.
This chapter focuses on several aspects affecting the life of binational marriages currently residing in Poland. Examined herein are the dilemmas which transnational couples face in deciding about place of residence, language(s) of communication, the culture of their children’s education, etc. Also of interest are assessments of both the positive and negative aspects of transnational married life as well as the unique problems identified by the spouses in their descriptions. These marriages have been analyzed as a case of cultural contact under the circumstances of strong emotional ties and a special closeness which underscore the slightest of cultural differences separating the partners. At the same time, it is on their basis that boundaries are shattered between what is familiar and what is foreign. The analyzed material is drawn from long-term qualitative research – specifically 65 in-depth interviews conducted in Warsaw and several other Polish cities over the past decade with one or both spouses. In each case, one of the partners is of Polish nationality while the other comes from Europe, Africa, Latin America or Asia.
This article is about the European - African encounters on West African coast in the XVth century. The bases of sources are: the Zurara and Rui de Pina chronicles, a description of voyages of Ca da Mosto, a work of Joao de Barros, and as a supplement material descriptions of Duarte Pacheco, Diogo Gomes, Eustache Delafosse, chronicle of Garcia de Resende and documents from Portugaliae Monumenta Africana. In the initial part of the article, the author - using the psychological literature - specifies what conditions must be met duringt a contact between individuals or groups of people, in order to be considered as an encounter. These are: the willingness of both parties to enter into contact, the organized character of the contact, the specification of both parties' objectives, an approved time and space, the peaceful nature of contact and reciprocal subjective treatment of the parties.Three encounters have been described and analysed: Valarte - Guitenyia, Ca da Mosto - Budomel and Diogo de Azambuja - Caramansa. The author describes the places of each encounters, the objectives of the parties, the parties' ways of presenting themselves, their methods of conducting talks and course of the meetings. The author then compares these three cases: the collapse of the talks and a disaster in the first case, then successful encounter in the second case, till the emergence of elements of coercion and the restriction of African subjectivity, while maintaining the appearance of voluntary actions by either side, in the case of the latter.
This study is a theoretic analysis of lives and works of three Czech travellers - Enrique Stanko Vráz, Alberto Vojtěch Frič and Josef Kořenský. These pioneers of the nascent social and cultural anthropology found themselves on the boundary of different civilizations and were among the first white men who set their foot on the exotic world of “the others”. With their travels, vividly described in their literal work, they not only did an extraordinary job when gathering authentic ethnographic material in the form of literature, photographs and exotic artefacts in Czech cultural context, but they also deconstructed the doctrine of Eurocentrism. The study focuses mainly on their literal heritage and their desire to describe, understand and interpret a different cultural reality. Works of these travellers represent original effort to integrate collecting, observing and research intentions. The study presents their travel books as a specific gnoseologic tool enabling to analyse their field findings ranging from the description to the comparison and interpretation of the exoticism and unknown socio-cultural reality. The study also points out the fact that the travellers transformed the different in their books into a cultural construction created within the author’s personality and his own civilization. Through the strange and different, the travellers thus gave rise to an authentic and complex picture of a different and unknown world including, however, also the author’s own description and interpretation of different forms of cultural reality. This study also aspires to prove that the works of these travellers represent their different personal approaches to perception of cultural boundaries and to their studies of different ethnicities and nations.
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