Magdalena Ślusarczyk

Parent and Child Migration – Challenges and Solutions for Social Support System

According to the most recent demographic data, Poland remains a country of net emigration, with population outflows significantly higher than the numbers for the incoming flows. A high ratio of 75% of the temporary migrants has remained abroad for 12 months and longer becoming residents of immigration countries. Intensive international movements of Poles lead to changes in social relations and in family functioning and often to it temporary or permanent restructuring. They generate the full range of problems which in many cases require not just the extemporary reactions of social care institutions but the design of entire social security system to help and support families and children themselves. This article is focused on two significant challenges. First one is the situation of children whose parents (one or both) migrate and which are colloquially and stigmatizingly called Euro-orphans. The second one – connected mostly with education system – is the help for children returning to Poland and to the Polish school after a period of staying abroad.

Parent and Child Migration – Challenges and Solutions for Social Support System

According to the most recent demographic data, Poland remains a country of net emigration, with population outflows significantly higher than the numbers for the incoming flows. A high ratio of 75% of the temporary migrants has remained abroad for 12 months and longer becoming residents of immigration countries. Intensive international movements of Poles lead to changes in social relations and in family functioning and often to it temporary or permanent restructuring. They generate the full range of problems which in many cases require not just the extemporary reactions of social care institutions but the design of entire social security system to help and support families and children themselves. This article is focused on two significant challenges. First one is the situation of children whose parents (one or both) migrate and which are colloquially and stigmatizingly called Euro-orphans. The second one – connected mostly with education system – is the help for children returning to Poland and to the Polish school after a period of staying abroad.

The Power of Women’s Migration. Historical and Sociological Perspectives

The article is a review of research areas in the field of women’s migration studies with particular emphasis on the mobility of Polish women. We characterize the gradual paradigm shift, which has led to the observation of differences in the migration of women and men, and recognition that gender is a key variable necessary for analyzing and explaining them. Our goal is also to present the mobility of Polish women in a historical perspective, as well as to outline contemporary trends in Polish migration studies. We are looking for the strength and agency of migrant women, their determination to change lives not only for themselves but also for their families, and take into account

Streszczenie

Artykuł stanowi przegląd zagadnień badawczych w obszarze studiów nad migracjami kobiet ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem mobilności Polek. Charakteryzujemy stopniową zmianę paradygmatu, która doprowadziła do zaobserwowania odmienności migracji kobiet i mężczyzn oraz uznania w związku z tym, że płeć jest niezwykle ważną zmienną niezbędną przy ich analizowaniu i wyjaśnianiu. Naszym celem jest również przedstawienie mobilności Polek w perspektywie historycznej, jak i zarysowanie współczesnych trendów w polskich studiach migracyjnych. Poszukujemy siły i sprawczości migrantek, ich determinacji w zmianie życia nie tylko dla siebie, ale i rodzin, uwzględniając złożony ekonomiczno-społeczny kontekst globalny i krajowy. Inspiracją do przygotowania tekstu w takiej perspektywie, jak i całego tomu była 100. rocznica uzyskania przez Polki praw wyborczych.

The presented article focuses on two main objectives. On the one hand, it presents the complex and multifaceted issues of migrant children’s education from a theoretical perspective, which have a significant impact on the course of their integration process, their quality of life and their chances of a better future in the country of migration. We draw attention to the importance of migrant children from the perspective of a child-centred approach, which emphasises children’s agency and subjectivity, the importance of their voice, their experiences, as well as the mission of the school and the roles of the professionals (teachers, cultural mediators, social workers) working with them and influencing their integration success. We show the school as a space that is not only institutional, formal and oriented towards intercultural education, but also a relational space in which informal processes take place to shape the future of children, dependent on significant others but also on the educational system. On the other hand we refer mainly to the contribution of the research project Children Hybrid Identity (CHILD-UP) to formulate theoretical explanations about the visibility of migrant children, their agency in school, and to uncover empirical findings about their achievements, barriers, challenges. Although these are in various locations, in different schools and educational programmes, they nevertheless bring about changes in the structure of a class and the occurrence of important processes due to their ethnic and national, cultural, religious, and language context.

The trauma, you cannnot escape from!
Sorrow, addiction, trauma, injustice… hope

Where do the sorrow and trauma begin? Are they interrelated? What are the causes of such feelings as powerlessness, hopelessness or injustice? Could the mental pain be so big that the man isn’t able to stand it? And last but not least – where the hope begin? And how? Th ese questions are the topic of this article. We try to shed light on the issue of trauma and mental (and sometimes also physical) injuries in context of social inqeualities, class and gender diff erences or social injustice and ask for the consequences. We discuss also the way of getting out of the trauma and look for the way how could man overcome the traumatic experiences and if the social work is able to help in this process?

The aim of this article is to analyse how teachers experience, navigate and negotiate their daily work in Polish school with migrant children. We explore the title statement of one of the teachers we interviewed – we look at the teachers’ strategy of ‘doing everything with their own hands’. The data presented in the article comes from the quantitative and qualitative study conducted within the CHILD-UP project. The research was conducted in two different locations that allowed us to capture the diversity of migrant children in terms of their status and the specificity of working with them: in a large city in the south of Poland characterized by a significant influx of immigrants in recent years, and in the Lublin Province, where schools are attended mostly by refugee children from Centers for Foreigners. The article provides an analysis of teachers’ agency at three different interconnected levels: the macro level (public policies), the meso level (local community), and the micro level (specific schools and their community). We claim that teachers’ agency expressed by them in a constant search for new tools to support migrant children’s education and integration is shaped by complexities of social, economic and political factors produced by the school system in Poland.