STUDENTS' FOREIGN TRIPS. IRREVOCABLY 'INFECTED BY THE OTHERNESS'

• Authors: Witoslaw A.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The article refers to Polish students who work abroad during their vacation breaks. In recent years 'work travels' have become a visible phenomenon, becoming a frequent behavior in students' curriculum and in collective behavioral patterns. Today, hundreds or even thousands of students decide to go for the profit-seeking migration for a few months or more during their 5-year studies or right after finishing their education in Poland. Observations of returning students entitle to refer to them metaphorically as irrecoverably 'infected with the otherness'. In this study the infection is treated as a very serious and stable phenomenon (social event, social fact), as something that cannot pass away on its own. On the basis of preliminary conversations and subsequent interviews with the students, the authoress proposes the hypothesis according to which, for many of these young people, such infection is irreversible. The state of infection means also that young people who work abroad, gain new experience as well as fresh, very original and innovative philosophy of life. For that reason infected individuals infect broader groups of young people. Poland is a country with a century-long tradition of migrations. Those migrations represent different mobility patterns (character, duration etc.). There are and there were various reasons of this mobility, although profit has definitely been the most common motive and also the one that unites the majority of Polish migrants. Such was the case of students' foreign summer vacations. The paper presents selected problems of young migrants. It shows, how trips have changed students, what characteristics they have achieved during their earning trips and how they changed, being irrevocably 'infected with the otherness' of visited countries. The text presents the specific culture of migrant students: the patterns of behaviour, the role of social networks, the 'migration addiction' - understood as dissemination of short-period mobility patterns and, in effect, the emergence of certain young people lifestyle.

Keywords

EN

POLISH STUDENTS PROFIT-SEEKING MIGRATION

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Journal: Pogranicze. Studia Społeczne
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 13
• Pages: 73-90
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Witoslaw A.

• A. Witoslaw, Uniwersytet w Bialymstoku, Instytut Socjologii, pl.Uniwersytecki 1, 15-420 Bialystok, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

07PLAAAA02805715