This article focuses on a comparison of attitudes towards migration in twenty European countries. It analyses data from the European Social Survey 2002. The first part of the article contains a summary of the available sources of data on migration and a brief outline of developments and the current state of migration in Europe. The second part looks at the question of whether attitudes towards immigrants are related to the numbers and structure of immigrants in a country and their economic situation. Three thematic areas are examined: 1) the host population's willingness to accept immigrants; 2) perceptions of the impact of immigration on the host country; 3) attitudes towards different forms of integration of immigrants. The findings indicate that Europeans are more willing to accept migrants that are of the same race (ethnic group) and from Europe than they are migrants of a different race (ethnic group) and from states outside Europe. The strongest unwillingness to accept people from other states and the strongest emphasis on the negative impact of immigration was observed in Greece and Hungary, while the strongest willingness to accept immigrants was found in Sweden and Switzerland and was connected with a more positive perception of the impact of immigration.
The majority of marriages that took place in the parish of Dobrovice were, endogamous. The proportion of marriages in which at least one of the marrying partners was not a member of the parish of Dobrovice considerably increased within the area of the entire parish. The increased mobility of marrying partners in the village was brought about by their absolution from labour obligations after 1848. The radius in kilometres from which marrying partners came was not of course very large, and the majority of marriages took place within 15 km of the area under observation. The results gathered indicate that mobility preceded marriage and may have been related to work mobility. At the end of the 18th century marrying partners from the middle strata predominated, over the course of the first half of the 19th century the frequency of marriages among the lower strata increased, especially among the landless. Throughout the period, however, the overall character of social homogamy within the area of the parish did not change.
This publication is the work of a theoretical nature. The author focused on the causes and consequences of migration from Poland after 1 May 2004.The paper presents the rock migration, and the main features of contemporary Polish migration, the author also compares the Poles trips to Scandinavia and the UK.
A study of four localities in Horni Police in 1710-1725 confirmed that people most often migrated at the age of 20-35 years. People of that age left home most often for the purpose of marriage. Typical for people over 35 years of age was the tendency to remain in one place, and typical for people over 50 years of age was their elimination from the records of the serf rolls, almost exclusively as a result of their death. Children up to the age of 15 tended to move with their parents.
The article takes up the issue of contemporary Mexican migration to the United States of America. Some crucial information is supplied concerning the scale and dynamism as well as the historical and social context of this phenomenon. It also outlines the key problems connected with the application of adequate theoretical models that would facilitate the analysis of migration as such and other related processes like integration with the American society. The text is an introduction to the broad multi-aspect issue of the presence of Mexican immigrants in the USA, also in the context of other people of Latin American origin. .
The article describes the concept of migration, its types, scale and directions. It also gives an account of the discussions on the size of the migration of Poles, its results in demographic, economic and social terms in the scale of the whole country, as well as ways of monitoring it. This is followed by a presentation of the results of studies on the phenomenon of migration in Wielkopolska (Great Poland) conducted by the Regional Work Office, concerning the size of migration after Poland's accession to the EU and in 2007. The study also sheds light on the motivation and expectations of migrants. From the analyses it can be inferred that in the nearest future migration will remain on the current level, but after 5-6 years it should diminish depending on the state of the country's economy. The last part of the article presents the main conclusions of the study and recommended measures so as to reduce and rationalize migration and its consequences. .
The work aims are: 1) analysis of intra EU migration after the recent regional block enlargement, 2) evaluation of its economic outcomes for the countries with the most inflow of immigrants and for which labour migration size was significant relative to their population potential. The most important conclusions are the following: 1) immigrants came mainly from the less developed countries, 2) migration had a positive impact on EU economic growth, 3) immigrants constituted complementary labour and did not cause labour market deterioration in the EU-15 countries, 4) financial remittances to emigrants countries were an important factor of demand growth.
Partial results of the research on intercultural communication competence were achieved in the North-East Poland, mainly in Podlasie region. The region was chosen deliberately because it was assumed that the rich, centuries-old migration traditions of its population may be the factor that builds competence to intercultural communication. The assumption was partly confirmed: if migration occurs in the biography of the family, the level of intercultural communication competence of young people is higher than in the situation when there is no migration experience in the family. Furthermore, if migration occurred in the family in the past, intercultural communication competence of young people is higher than in the case of young people from “nonmigration” families. Oral tradition passed by significant members of the family who were usually migrating in the past is more important than the actual migration trips of siblings or cousins. Therefore the role of “family memory” is high and much stronger than direct contact of young people with foreign countries.
Poland’s accession to the EU in May 2004 brought many new possibilities and opportunities for Polish migrants to Britain. In the period from May 2004 to June 2008, over 500,000 Poles registered with the Workers Registration Scheme as employees in Britain. One unforeseen consequence of this rapid increase in migration was the large numbers of Polish children arriving in British schools. According to office government statistics, there are over 26,000 school pupils in England whose first language is Polish (DCFS, Schools Census, 2008). Schools are not only places of education but also sites of socialisation and interaction. Social norms, values and expectations are taught and learned through both the formal and informal curriculum – in the classroom, playground and at the school gates (Adams and Kirova, 2006). For newly arrived migrant children and their parents school may be the place where they encounter the diversity of the host society in all its complexity and newness. While school may be regarded as a safe place of learning, it can also be daunting and confusing. Conversations at the school gates may provide parents with a valuable opportunity to acquire new information and make friends (Ryan, 2007). However, school can also be associated with culture clashes, negative stereotypes, feelings of isolation and even racist bullying. Thus, for newly arrived migrant children and their parents, school provides an array of opportunities and challenges. In this paper we explore these issues drawing on our research with Polish migrants in London (Ryan et al, 2007; 2008) and on Polish children in London primary schools (Sales, et al, 2008). Based on interviews with parents and teachers at 4 London primary schools, as well as some additional data from Polish children, we explore processes of adaptation, accommodation, negotiation and identity formation. In particular, we analyse the ways in which Polish migrants construct notions of Polishness in the context of education.
The dynamics of the integration process varies in case of the first and the following generations of emigrants. It is quite challenging though to describe all the details of the integration process of Polish migrants to Ireland due to the short period of Poland’s membership in the EU. However, it is important to analyze the barriers which are becoming more and more visible on the way to integration of the first “pioneer migrant generation”. The aim of the paper is the multi-dimentional analysis of the factors impeding Polish migrants’ integration into the Irish society. The analysis refers to the empirical research based on the technique of in-depth interviews. The main focus is on the two aspects of integration: the social and the cultural ones. The social aspect of integration includes: career trajectory, participation in the social life of the local community and interpersonal relations. The cultural aspect of integration includes: language skills, values and behavioural patterns as well as everyday culture and rituals. The analysis focuses both on individuals and on institutions, that is the activities of Polish-Irish associations, and stresses the factors impeding the integration process of Polish migrants. Those factors can be divided into: social factors such as weak ties with Irish people and institutions and desire to come back to Poland; cultural factors such as insufficient language skills and lack of knowledge of norms and behavioral patterns; legal factors such as reluctance to acquire Irish citizenship and unwillingness to participate in the Irish political life; and finally, spatial factors that is lack of contacts with the Irish people in the migrant’s local communities.
Researches on human mobility have ignored the role of gender in migration processes for a long time. In the 1970s, feminist scholars started criticising the gender blindness and male bias in this domain. New researches focusing on the position of women declared the need to adopt gender as a useful category in migration studies. This article describes the genealogy of the feminist reflection of migration and shows how the conceptualisation of gender in migration studies has changed over forty years. It focuses on one type of women's mobility: the migration of care workers, domestic workers, and nurses. Many researchers refer to these women as 'global' and 'globalised' and show how globalised migration penetrates everyday life and generates new types of inequalities or hierarchies based on class, gender, and ethnic or generational differences.
The main aim of the article is an analysis of migration streams flowing from Babica to the United States in the context of the social topography of the village. Babica is a village located in the south-eastern Poland, in the Province of Podkarpacie. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century emigration from this countryside became very popular phenomenon. During the Interwar Period, the research on emigration from this region was conducted by the sociologist Krystyna Duda-Dziewierz. As a major issue, she analyzed an influence of emigration on the social organization of a local community. One of the most important factor, which affected emigration from this village, was the social topography of Babica. Therefore, the analysis conducted in this article refers mainly to the impact of the social topography of the village on the migration process.
‘Mobility’ is a zeitgeist of the European Union. European enlargement and the removal of borders in Central and Eastern Europe has reinvigorated geographical mobility in Europe while the extension of neo-liberal economic reform across the region has been said to offer opportunities for social mobility to a new demography. The right to spatial and social mobility in the EU is described as enhancing freedom, opportunity and choice for large numbers of people living in Central and Eastern Europe, yet the reality for many people living and working across borders in the EU is marked still by poverty, uncertainty and immobility. How do we conceptualise this inequality within a discourse of ‘free movement’ and ‘equality of opportunity’ in Europe? In this paper I will discuss theories of mobility that have shaped the discourse on mobility and immobility in the EU in recent times. I will explore the ways in which this discourse has contributed to an almost immutable acceptance of the EU as a ‘mobile space’. Adding to this I will present some early empirical findings from case studies in the Edinburgh, Scotland and Krakow, Poland to show that the everyday experiences of young Polish people who negotiate the invisible borders of the EU to find ‘opportunities’ has many dimensions, raising further questions about how ‘mobility’ is perceived and enacted by young Polish people living and working in the UK.
This paper presents an overview of health care staff situation in Poland. During last years we can observe significant decrease of indicators of number of medical staff per population (in all medical staff groups). Working conditions of health care staff were not improved after implementation of health care reform in Poland, and some of changes were negative for health care staff (e.g. staff reduction). Low level of the remuneration and difficult situation at the labour market, make Polish doctors and nurses to work in other European Union countries. This trends and low indicators of health care personnel in Poland is very worrisome. The problem of the migration of health care personnel refers not only Poland. Results of the research of WHO inform about 'the world crisis of resources of health care personnel'. According to estimation of the WHO, undermanning in the global health care system is about 4 mln of medical staff. In accordance with the strategy of the WHO, for the purpose of dealing with problems of the international migration, it is necessary to take actions, both at national and international level. To find the best solution for these problems countries must work both individually and together.
The text is an introduction to the Journal of Ethnology’s monothematic issue about expatriates. Its goal is to classify the theme into a wider context, to show that the relation to expatriates differs in different countries and to demonstrate that in many countries the emigration and the relations to expatriates constitute a significant component of the history and a part of processes of national identification. The text also deals with factors that strengthen the relation between the source and the destination country in the process of migration. It shows that the theme of expatriates does not include only the theme of emigration but also that of return migrations. From this point of view, the topicality of the theme of expatriates in Europe and the Czech Republic has rather increased than decreased recently. The examples of particular communities of expatriates come mainly from Europe. The author focused on the examples with Czech expatriates; partially he speaks about German, Polish, Irish and Armenian communities. In the conclusion, he mentions the contemporary trend of double residence and transnational lifestyle.
Globalization increased the number of transnational families all over the world. The way of life created by transnationalism leads to changes in family relationships, creates a specific dynamics, implies care at distance and produces various forms of parenting. Starting from the analysis of transnational families between Angola and Portugal, the aim of this paper is to understand the effects of migration on parent-child relationship trying to perceive how parenting at a distance is conceived by the actors: migrant parents in Portugal and children in Angola. Drawing on interviews made with migrant parents and children, the paper explores the functioning of the parental relationship at distance.
The text deals with the issues of cross-cultural competencies of students that are relevant in the era of intensifying internal and external migration. It has attempted to answer the following questions: What are cross-cultural competencies of students – modern nomads? Are these competencies sufficient to function in the modern world in the perspective of social integration and simultaneous collision of cultures?
The central aim of the article is to explore, from the perspective of the Slovak migrants in London, how the sense of their presence in London and their absence in Slovakia is created in context of their life cycle.
Securitization discourse on migration became one of the leading perspectives of the interpretation in political science how the national state has been dealing with the high numbers of immigrants in the last two decades. It views immigration as a threat to the nation-state because of inflow of unknown or unrecognised. This article's main contribution is a systematic discussion on migration policies reflected by social theorists with a special attention paid to the concept of security in migration theory. Inspired by post-structuralise approach, author argues that migration theories became highly influenced by public and media discourse that reproduce knowledge on dominant social groups in the nation-state.
This article looks at the issue of the dramatic raise of street homelessness among Polish men from the perspective of social anthropology looking at the relationship between structural constraints faced by Polish migrants and their own perception of the social world, their meaning-making practices, norms and values, behavioral patterns. As I will show, focusing just on structural and economic determinants not only offers simplistic and one-dimensional picture but it also fails to give an explanation and prediction what happens if these constraints and exclusionary policies are removed and homeless migrants gain same set of social rights as the rest of British and EU citizens (which in theory will happen in May 2011). An anthropological approach to the functions, roles and cultural meanings of homelessness, group bonds, masculinities, alcohol consumption, perception of the state and dominant society as voiced by homeless migrants I ‘hanged around’ with, reveals that structurally rejected, people with particular backgrounds reconstruct communities and form strong ties despite (or because of) a hostile, exclusionary and hegemonic social environment of the neoliberal order. Two conclusions are drawn from this analysis, empirical and theoretical: first taking both structural and cultural factors into account the levels of homeless among that group is going to rise, at least in London; second the set of cultural forms of behavior and social practices described in academic literature as the homo sovieticus syndrome (Wedel 1986, Sztompka 2000, Morawska 1998) proves not only valuable and resourceful in highly individualized, neoliberal and capitalistic society but may be in fact reinforced in new conditions being a productive – socially and culturally - counter-reaction to the neoliberal order of social life in the global city.
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