FAQ

Mobility as a Strategy to Cope with Change: A Case Study of the Village of Wronka

Publication date: 05.09.2019

Migration Studies – Review of Polish Diaspora, 2019 (XLV), Vol. 2 (172), pp. 63 - 85

https://doi.org/10.4467/25444972SMPP.19.015.10841

Authors

Aleksandra Turowska
Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-2683 Orcid
All publications →

Titles

Mobility as a Strategy to Cope with Change: A Case Study of the Village of Wronka

Abstract

Poland’s accession to the EU exponentially increased the mobility of its citizens and changed the geography of Polish migration to Western Europe. Poles go abroad to improve their livelihoods: to work, earn competitive wages, and to study. Post-accession migrants hail mainly from small communities. The paper is based on empirical research in a small community of Wronka in the West Pomeranian Voivodship. The goal of this case study was to reconstruct the history of labour mobility of Wronka’s residents, identify migration paths of their families, and analyse the effects of labour migration on the sending community. Departing from the customary analytical lens, this study analyses Polish mobility from the point of view of the sending, not the destination community. In the context of Wronka, mobility has become the norm in this previously immobile community centred around the state-owned farm, and appears to be a strategy used to cope with social, economic, and political change.

References

Baba, M. L., Dahl-Jørgensen C. (2010). Work Migration from Poland to Norway: A New Institutional Approach. iNtergraph: Journal of Dialogic Anthropology 2 (2) (Re-issue), http://intergraph-journal.net/enhanced/vol2issue2/2.html.

Bakewell O., Engbersen G., Horst C., Fonseca L. (eds) (2016). Beyond Networks. Feedback in International Migration. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan Palgrave

Basch, L., Glick-Schiller, N. Szanton Blanc, C. (1994) Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Basel, Switzerland: Gordon and Breach.

Black, R., Engbersen G., Okólski M., Pantîru C. (Eds.) (2010). A Continent Moving West? EU Enlargement and Labour Migration from Central and Eastern Europe. Amsterdam: University Press.

Brettell, C. B. (2000.) Theorizing Migration in Anthropology: The Social Construction of Networks, Identities, Communities, and Globalscapes. In Migration Theory, ed. C.B. Brettell and J.F. Hollifield. New York: Routledge, pp. 97–136.

Buchowski, M. (2008) Widmo orientalizmu w Europie. Od egzotycznego Innego do napiętnowanego swojego. Recykling Idei 10: Imperium (przesyłka zwrotna): 98–107.

Buchowski, M. (2017). Czyściec. Antropologia neoliberalnego postsocjalizmu. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.

Czapiewska, G. (2003). Historyczne uwarunkowania rozwoju rolnictwa uspołecznionego na Pomorzu Środkowym. Słupskie Prace Geograficzne 1: 51–67.

Dekker R., Engbersen G. (2014). How Social Media Transform Migrant Networks and Facilitate Migration. Global Networks 14(4): 401–418.

Elrick T. (2008). The Influence of Migration on Origin Communities: Insights from Polish Migrations to the West. Europe–Asia Studies 60(9): 1503–1517.

Garapich, M. (2016). London’s Polish Borders. Transnationalizing Class and Ethnicity Among Polish Migrants in London. Ibidem Verlag.

Goździak, E., Pawlak M. (2016). Theorizing Polish Migration Across Europe: Perspectives, Concepts, and Methodologies. Sprawy Narodowościowe Seria nowa 48: 106–127.

Grabowska, I. (2016). Movers and Stayers: Social Mobility, Migration and Skills. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag.

Grabowska, I., Engbersen G. (2016). Social Remittances and the Impact of Temporary Migration on an EU Sending Country: The Case of Poland. Central and Eastern European Migration Review 5 (2): 99–117.

Grabowska, I., Garapich M., Jaźwińska E., Radziwinowiczówna A. (2017). Migrants as Agents of Change. Social Remittances in an Enlarged European Union. Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Grabowska I., Sarnowska J. (2017). Transnarodowe wielostanowiskowe jakościowe badanie powtórzone w migrujących społecznościach lokalnych. Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej, 13(3): 6–28.

Grabowska-Lusińska, I., Okólski M. (2009). Emigracja ostatnia? Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.

de Haas, H. (2010). Migration and development: a theoretical perspective. International Migration Review 44 (1): 227–265.

Ignatowicz A. (2011). Travelling Home: Personal Mobility and ‘New’ Polish Migrants in England. Studia Migracyjne – Przegląd Polonijny 37(1): 33–47.

Jaźwińska, E., Grabowska I. (2017). Efekty społecznych przekazów migracyjnych (social remittances) w polskich społecznościach lokalnych. Studia Socjologiczne, 1: 139–165.

Kaczmarek, P., Tyrowicz J. (2015). Winners and Losers among Skilled Migrants: The Case of Post-Accession Polish Migrants to the UK. IZA Discussion Paper. Institute for the Study of Labor 9057, May.

Kennedy P. (2010). Local Lives and Global Transformations: Towards World Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Kocik L. (2001). Trauma i eurosceptycyzm polskiej wsi. Kraków: Drukarnia Narodowa S.A.

Komito L., Bates J. (2011). Migrants’ Information Practices and Use of Social Media in Ireland: Networks and Community. http://www.ucd.ie/lkomito/iConference2011-komito.pdf (accessed 14 February 2019).

Kurczewski J., Fuszara M. (2012). Modernizacja czy kryzys? Przemiany rodzin czasowych migrantów. Societas/Communitas 13: 79–108.

Levitt, P. (1998.) Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-Level Forms of Cultural Diffusion. International Migration Review 32(4): 926–948.

Levitt, P. (2001). The Transnational Villagers. University of California Press.

Main, I., Czerniejewska, I. (2017). Post-accession Female Mobility between Poland and Norway. New Trends and New Ways of Thinking about Migration. Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria Nowa 49. https://doi.org/10.11649/sn.1358.

Marcus G., E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117.

Okólski, M. (2001). Mobilność przestrzenna z perspektywy koncepcji migracji niepełnej. In: Ludzie na huśtawce. Migracje między peryferiami Polski i Zachodu, ed. E. Jaźwińska, M. Okólski, Warszawa: Scholar, 31–61.

Okólski, M. (2012). Spatial Mobility from the Perspective of the Incomplete Migration Concept. Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 1 (1): 11–36.

Orozco, M. (2013). Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Pobłocki, K. (2001). Online National Communities. Polish Sociological Review, (134), 221–246. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41274800.

Pobłocki, K. (2010). The Cunning of Class: Urbanisation of Inequality in post-war Poland. Unpublished PhD thesis. Budapest: Central European University.

Sala, J., Tańska, H. (2016). Competences in the knowledge-based economy. Position Papers of the  Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems 9: 219–224.

Slany, K. (ed.) (2008). Migracje Kobiet. Perspektywa wielowymiarowa. Kraków: Wydawnictwo  Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.

Sztompka, P. (2000). Trauma wielkiej zmiany. Warszawa: Instytut Nauk Politycznych.

White, A. (2010). Family Migration from Small-Town Poland: A Livelihood Strategy Approach. In Polish Migration to the UK in the “New” European Union: After 2004, ed. Kathy Burrell. Burlington: Ashgate, 67–86.

White A. (2011a). Polish Families and Migration Since EU Accession. Bristol: The Policy Press.

White A. (2011b). The Mobility of Polish Families in the West of England: Translocalism and Attitudes to Return. Studia Migracyjne – Przegląd Polonijny 37(1): 11–32.

White, A. (2016). Informal Practices, Unemployment, and Migration in Small-Town Poland. East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures 30 (2): 404–422.

Wimmer A., Glick Schiller N. (2002.) Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation–state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 2 (4): 301–334.

Winiecki, J. 2001. Historia polskiego marginesu. Online: http://archiwum.rp.pl/artykul/367122_Historia_polskiego_marginesu.html (accessed: 21 January 2018).

Information

Information: Migration Studies – Review of Polish Diaspora, 2019 (XLV), Vol. 2 (172), pp. 63 - 85

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Mobility as a Strategy to Cope with Change: A Case Study of the Village of Wronka

English:

Mobility as a Strategy to Cope with Change: A Case Study of the Village of Wronka

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-2683

Aleksandra Turowska
Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-2683 Orcid
All publications →

Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań

Published at: 05.09.2019

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND  licence icon

Percentage share of authors:

Aleksandra Turowska (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English