The social distance of Poles to other minorities: a study of four cities in Germany and Britain

ABSTRACT

This contribution investigates the social distance of immigrants from Poland in four Western European cities – London, Birmingham, Berlin and Munich – particularly Polish immigrants’ distance towards members of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities in their various social roles. Presenting unique data from the first wave of a longitudinal qualitative study, we first discuss the differential levels of social distance that Polish immigrants place between themselves and members of minority groups in each city. We find that respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics impact their social distance, but their education and occupation may have less of an effect than their place of origin in Poland or current place of residence and work. Moreover, these factors work differentially across the four cities. After analysing social distance with respect to three dimensions of difference – ethnicity, religion and sexuality – we find several different social-distancing mechanisms. Ultimately, we argue that social science needs to consider regional and local contexts in which social attitudes towards minorities are acquired and exercised. Similarly, we need to reflect on the group’s presumed homogeneity and on the unifying visions of the ‘host society’ as a site of migrants’ incorporation.

KEYWORDS:

• Social distance
• immigration
• Europe
• minorities
• urban incorporation

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. TRANSFORmIG. Transforming Migration: Transnational Transfer of Multicultural Habitus, ERC grant No. 313369 awarded to Prof. Magdalena Nowicka, 2013-2017. More information under www.transformig.hu-berlin.de.

2. Portes and Rumbaut (1996, 2001) partly addressed this question, showing that second-generation immigrants might assimilate into some but not all sections of society. In response, Alba and Nee (2003) admitted that the American ‘mainstream’ is highly dynamic and heterogeneous, and that immigrants’ pre-migration backgrounds need to be considered as well. These considerations found limited and insufficient operationalization in the studies on social attitudes.

3. In the 2011 Polish census, 809,000 respondents declared Silesian nationality and 229,000 Kashubian (Kostrzewa and Szałtys 2013). Silesians and Kashubians are not ethnic minorities under Polish law (Szmeja 2000; Mazurek 2010).

4. For a discussion of the intellectual roots of the concept of social distance, see Ethington (1997) and Karakayali (2009).

5. The number of Muslims in Germany are only estimates; immigrants of Turkish origin are estimated the most numerous group among Muslim in Germany (ca. 2.5 million), followed by immigrants from south-east Europe, Near East and Asia (http://www.deutsche-islam-konferenz.de/DIK/EN/Magazin/Lebenswelten/ZahlenDatenFakten/ZahlMLD/zahl-mld-node.html).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council [grant number 313369].