Unfulfilled intentions: family stories and narratives on unrealised emigration under emigration restrictions

ABSTRACT

The paper sheds light on the character of family stories concerning unrealised emigration experienced under emigration restrictions and their potential intergenerational impacts. To this end, it explores the family stories on unfulfilled intentions to emigrate from two countries that were part of the Socialist Bloc, drawing on data from semi-structured in-depth interviews with people whose family members intended to emigrate from the Polish People’s Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic but who have not fulfilled their plans. The study highlights how memories on the experience of unrealised emigration have been transmitted across generations within families, how the character of family stories varies, and what mechanisms may underlie the potential influence of the experience over migration-related attitudes, norms, aspirations, and in some cases intentions and behaviour, of the non-migrants’ descendants.

KEYWORDS:

• Unfulfilled migration intentions
• unrealised emigration
• stories
• narratives
• descendants

Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible without the contribution of my interviewees who gave up their time and generously shared their stories and thoughts related to their family experience of unrealised emigration. I thank them for their time and insights. I am also grateful to people who helped me to reach my informants and to the members of the CMR’s Socio-Cultural Research Unit, in particular Sabina Toruńczyk-Ruiz, Marta Kindler, Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska, Weronika Kloc-Nowak, and Ewa Cichocka, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Research data that support the findings of this study are not shared due to ethical restrictions (participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly).

Notes

1 Hereafter whenever I refer to non-migrants, I mean communist-era non-migrants.

2 In two cases, the non-migrants migrated internally within the USSR and part of their unrealised emigration experience concerned other USSR republics (Ukrainian and Belarusian). In four cases, the experience went beyond the post-communist period and hence concerned the Russian Federation.

3 In the case of one of the Polish non-migrants – an oppositionist ‘encouraged’ by the authorities to leave the country – it would be more correct to say he ‘considered emigration’ (rather than ‘intended to emigrate’).

4 When also the non-interviewed adult descendants of the non-migrants in the studied families are accounted for (children of the interviewed non-migrants or siblings of the interviewed descendants), of 50 (known) descendants, 17 were based abroad, 13 – in the home country but had migration experience, and 20 had no migration experience. In cases where unrealised emigration concerned my informants’ grandparents (3 people), information on the descendants may be incomplete.

5 The study was approved by the Centre of Migration Research’s ethics committee (approval no. CMR/EC/8/2021). Before interview, participants were provided information on the study, their rights and rules for the processing of personal data. At the beginning of the interview, a verbal informed consent to take part in the research, recording of the interview and the processing of personal data was obtained. Verbal consents were audio recorded and constituted an integral part of the interview recording. Verbal consents were chosen for practical reasons (interviews conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic) and to protect participants anonymity (especially important in the case of Russian interviewees).

6 Everyday times refer to everyday timetables, present circumstances that influence spatial aspirations; individual lifetimes refer to the ‘perceived limitations on life course advancement’; institutional times – to ‘wider geo-political and geo-economic developments’ (Wang and Collins 2020).

7 This theme appeared in only one of the Polish interviews.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Warsaw under the Priority Research Area V of the Excellence Initiative–Research University programme [grant number BOB-IDUB-622-66/2021].