Migrants: keeping a foot in both worlds or losing the ground beneath them? Transnationalism and integration as experienced in the everyday lives of Polish migrants in Belfast, Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses transnationalism and integration as processes entangled in the everyday lives of Polish migrants. It acknowledges that the co-existence of transnationalism and integration can present an array of choices and enable migrants to lead a fulfilling life in the receiving country while they continue to maintain a foothold in their original homeland. Yet, it might also create a feeling of disjuncture, discontinuity of relations, and ceaseless negotiation between inclusion and exclusion. It is, thus, important to bear in mind that migration is a process involving individuals with all their unique life experiences, complexities and consequences of their choices, sacrifices, ambiguities and hopes associated with the move. All of these have a profound impact on changes in migrants’ perception of, and attitude to, their place of origin, the specificities of destination setting and interpersonal relations between the two milieux. The empirical grounds for this discussion originate in biographical narrative interviews with Polish migrants in Belfast, Northern Ireland. These narratives portray transnationalism and integration as multiple trajectories, emphasising the co-existence of non-linear relations between the time and the intensity/frequency of migrants’ connections to the two settings. These will be examined using the theoretical framework of interpretative sociology, viewing individuals as constantly engaged in the task of interpretation, which is intrinsically rooted in the processes of interaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnationalism
• integration
• in-betweenness
• Polish immigrants

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

The doctoral study on which this article is based was funded by the Northern Irish Department of Education and Learning (DEL).

Notes

1. This article was based on doctoral research conducted between 2008 and 2012, entitled: ‘Between continuity and change – narratives of Polish migrants in Belfast' supervised by Professor Robert Miller and Dr Matthew Wood at Queen's University Belfast.

2. The term ‘post-accession immigrants’, refers to the accession of Poland to the European Union in May 2004. In to the Northern Irish Census conducted in 2011 there were over 19,000 respondents who stated Poland as their country of birth. Accordingly, Polish immigrants have become the largest ethnic minority group in Northern Ireland.

3. Interviewees’ names were changed. The information in the brackets refers to the name assigned by the researcher, the age of the interviewee, and occupational category of the interviewee.