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What Do We Know and How Can We Learn More About Homecoming?
Abstract
The chapter includes a discussion of European and Polish academic literature on the sociology of return migration to the mid-1970s and studies on return migration (in a number of disciplines) from that time to the present. The author discusses the pros and cons of several mid-range theories in various disciplines (sociology, economics, psychology, geography, and anthropology). Having determined the real constraints of such theories the author turns to grand theories and provides his own theoretical framework based on an original synthesis of Margaret Archer’s (Making our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility, Leiden: Cambridge University Press, 2007) social realism and Alfred Schütz’s (1945) phenomenology. Once the theoretical framework has been defined the author discusses his methodological procedure, research techniques, and tools.
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Kim są profesjonaliści? Na potrzeby niniejszej analizy przyjęto, że są to osoby o wysokich kwalifikacjach, posiadające doświadczenie zawodowe umożliwiają-ce wykonywanie specjalistycznej pracy (OECD, 2002). Pracują one zgodnie ze swoimi kwalifikacjami zawodowymi w sektorze usług, a ich praca cieszy się wy-sokim prestiżem społecznym. Idąc za propozycją Salta (1997) przyjęto również, że niekoniecznie muszą być to osoby, które ukończyły uczelnię wyższą, ponieważ nie zawsze dyplom uczelni wyższej jest od nich wymagany (np. w wypadku za-wodów artystycznych). Najczęściej reprezentują one zawody należące w między-narodowej klasyfikacji zawodów ISCO (International Standard Classification of Occupations) do 2 i 3 poziomu, a więc "specjalistów" oraz "techników i inny średni personel". Omawiając migracje profesjonalistów koncentrujemy się na grupie polskich migrantek i migrantów, którzy w trakcie pobytu za granicą wy-konywali pracę wymagającą wysokich kwalifikacji. Przy wyborze osób badanych uwzględniono nie tylko ich status zawodowy w momencie opuszczenia Polski, ale również utrzymanie lub podwyższenie kompetencji zawodowych w trakcie pobytu za granicą.
The article introduces the theoretical approach to analysing return migration policy and discusses the main dilemmas of the state related to political reaction to returns of its nationals. The concept of reac-tive and active policy is presented, the first aiming at minimising the negative effects of returns, while the second focused on stimulating the return processes. The main drivers and determinants of the return policy effectiveness as well as the types, scope and scale of state activities addressed to returnees are also discussed in the article. The practice of state policy implementation is illustrated with the example of the particular case of Poland as a country which faced mass emigration after accession to the European Union and return migration in the recent years. The review of conceptual documents, the rationale for the state policy and the variety of activities implemented by the Polish government and other institutions are presented.
The aim of this article is to provide an empirical test of the model of non-economic transfers by migrants such as values, attitudes, behaviours, lifestyles, transnational social networks, know-how, skills and knowledge. The first part of the article discusses the current state of Polish society, identifies the direction of social change in Poland since 1989 and analyses the mutual dependency between social change and migration. The second section offers the analytical model and describes how existing empirical data from official statistics and research reports as well as the author's own research projects have been analysed. The crucial element of the model is the notion of 'closure', defined as any factor that makes the migrants' non-economic transfers difficult or impossible. Within each of the three categories of closure-socioeconomic , cultural and psycho-social-more specific barriers to non-economic transfers are tested, e.g., lack of cohesive policy towards return migrants, social narratives on migration or 'homecomer syndrome'. The analysis leads to the conclusion that, however difficult the measurement of the impact of return migration on social change at this stage, return migrants' transfers are accelerating the process of social change in Poland towards the model of well-developed, post-modern Western societies , whereas closures impede this process.
This chapter considers the contents, structures, and meanings of communication as key elements enabling or hindering transfer of social remittances in the transnational social networks of Polish migrants. It departs from the assumption that migrants are confronted with new patterns of behaviours and with unfamiliar social norms and uses both quantitative and the qualitative approaches to social networks to investigate the contents, structures, and meanings of migrants’ communication with members of their transnational network. It is argued that when we consider why, when, and how migrants ‘report home’ about their experiences abroad, we can better understand the mechanisms beyond social remittances. The chapter draws on the data from in-depth interviews and questionnaires with 134 migrants from Poland in Germany (Berlin and Munich) and England (London and Birmingham).
This paper explores how the workplace experience of migrants helps to determine part of the social remittances they can make to their country of origin. The social remittance literature needs to pay more attention to work as an element of the migrant experience. Focus is placed on public internet forums related to newspapers in Poland because these are a very open means of communicating experience to the public sphere. To support the analysis, UK census and other data are used to show both the breadth of work done by Polish migrants in the UK and some of its peculiarities. This is then followed with a more qualitative analysis of selected comments from the gazeta.pl website. The complexities of both the range of migrants' ideas about their work and also the analysis of internet-based newspaper comment sites as a form of public communication are shown. Social remittances and the importance of work and the workplace This paper poses the question of how the workplace experiences of Polish migrants in the UK might contribute to a neglected form of social remittance transmission, namely the workplace experience. Our aim is twofold. First, using UK census data, we explain the broad context within which Polish migrants have navigated the UK labour market. Second, we demonstrate how migrant narrative involvement in internet discussions in Po-land might remit information about the comparative experiences of work. In doing so, we also point to the methodological benefits of blending top-down quantitative data with bottom-up qualitative narrative material when analysing particular nuances in migration research. It has been argued that paid employment no longer plays the central role in defining our being and the nature of society that it once did (Grint 2005). But if this claim is of questionable validity for the mass of the population it is certainly dubious for those who engage in voluntary international migration. We know that a key motivating factor in migration is the search for better work. This may be a job itself, if the home society is characterised by unemployment; it may be better paid work; or, as Cieslik (2011) suggests, it may be a search for better work conditions. Paid work also creates the basis for the economic remittances that have
Artykuł powstał w oparciu o pilotażowe badania polskich migrantów powrotnych do kraju dzięki działalności Fundacji " Barka ". Badania przeprowadzone zostały w 2010 roku, wkrót-ce po tym, jak mężczyźni wrócili do Polski, podczas ich readaptacji połączonej z procesem planowania przyszłości – czy zostać w kraju, wrócić do Anglii czy też migrować gdzieś indziej. Rozmowy koncentrowały się na subiektywnej ocenie wyjazdów, dokonywanej przez samych migrantów, wpływie pracowników " Barki " na podejmowane przez nich decyzje o powrocie, próbie określenia najistotniejszych potrzeb w sytuacji, w której się znaleźli, oraz ocenie usług świadczonych przez organizację po ich powrocie do Polski, jak również ich planów na przyszłość. Prowadzone równolegle wywiady z przedstawicielami organizacji pomocowej odzwierciedlają, jak odmiennie postrzegane mogą być te same wyjazdy zagraniczne z perspektywy migrantów (emic) oraz przez personel zatrudniony przy projekcie (etic). Słowa kluczowe: migracje powrotne, Polacy żyjący na ulicach, Fundacja " Barka " 1 Artykuł jest polską wersją językową tekstu I. Czerniejewska, E. M. Goździak, Aiding defeated migrants: Institutional strategies to assist Polish returned migrants, opublikowanego w " International Migration " , 2014, 52(1).
In this report, data on the prevalence of demoralization in a sample of 198 Greek emigrants who were repatriated from Western Europe to a southwestern province of Greece, are presented. The measurement of demoralization was based upon the number of self-reported non specific symptoms of distress. The mental health screening instrument was the Langner 22 item scale. 51.1% of females and 36.0% of males, were characterized as mentally impaired with a criterion of six or more reported pathognomonic symptoms in the scale. Multiple Regression analysis revealed that age, sex, immigration (in years) and place of birth predicted the psychological symptom score.
The aim of this paper is to examine individual social remittances in the sphere of employment, against the background of the changing employment patterns and flexibilisation of work. Through an analysis of life stories of post-accession return migrants from the UK to Poland, it investigates the way in which returnees’ work experience gathered abroad impacts on their perception of employment standards in general. The revealed differences are understood as ‘potential social remittances,’ i.e. the discrepancies acknowledged by returnees between the realities experienced during emigration and after their return (in this case to Poland). It is argued that the actualisation of the ‘potential social remittances’ depends on return migrants’ coping strategies as well as on the institutional and structural settings in returnees’ home country. The four main distinguished strategies are: re-emigration, activism, adaptation and entrepreneurship.
This is a comprehensive study of international migrations from communist Poland and related policies migration and exit policies. For a longer summary in English see pages 472-477.
Contemporary immigrants can not be characterized as the "uprooted'. Many are transmigrants, becoming firmly rooted in their new country but maintaining multiple linkages to their homeland. In the US, anthropologists are engaged in building a transnational anthropology and rethinking their data on immigration. Migration proves to be an important transnational process that reflects and contributes to the current political configurations of the emerging global economy. In this article, the authors use studies of migration from St. Vincent, Grenada, the Philippines, and Haiti to the US to delineate some of the parameters of an ethnography of transnational migration and explore the reasons for and the implications of transnational migrations. The authors conclude that the transnational connections of immigrants provide a subtext of the public debates in the US about the merits of immigration. -Authors
Humanity and the very notion of the human subject are under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared not only the 'Death of God' but also the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and personal identity - all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity. This original and provocative new book from leading social theorist Margaret S. Archer builds on the themes explored in her previous books Culture and Agency (CUP 1988) and Realist Social Theory (CUP 1995). It will be required reading for academics and students of social theory, cultural theory, political theory, philosophy and theology.
This presentation describes the development of migration to and from Western Europe and seeks to determine to what extent such immigration and return migration movements are influenced by governmental action and regulation.
Many studies highlight the macro-level dissemination of global culture and institutions. This article focuses on social remittances – a local-level, migration-driven form of cultural diffusion. Social remittances are the ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending-country communities. The role that these resources play in promoting immigrant entrepreneurship, community and family formation, and political integration is widely acknowledged. This article specifies how these same ideas and practices are remolded in receiving countries, the mechanisms by which they are sent back to sending communities, and the role they play in transforming sending-country social and political life.
Research on immigrant women in the last ten years has focused on developing a gendered understanding of the relationships among family, work, and migration. From this emerges a view of women as active agents in the migration process – using migration as an economic option that deals with gender ideology and practice. Migration among Puerto Rican women is an interesting case study with which to examine these relationships given the prominent role of women in this migration history and that the role of family characteristics have not been sufficiently studied with this population. This paper examines the effect of family indicators on migration from, and return migration to, Puerto Rico among women in the 1980s. It appears that women use migration to gain independence as single women and mothers since unmarried women were more likely to migrate from Puerto Rico than married women. On the other hand, we see evidence of a traditional route in which women follow men in the migration stream since women recently married were more likely to migrate from, and return to, Puerto Rico. Women married for longer periods of time are the least likely to migrate. Finally, it appears that women use migration to counter limited marriage opportunities in Puerto Rico since unmarried women were less likely to return there and since there were more changes in marital status after women migrated to New York than after returning to Puerto Rico.
Return migrants who fled the country after the day Poland had become the member of Euro-pean Union, 1st may 2004, make us consider the socio-cultural capitals which they are bring-ing back home. Few-years-long stay in another country, beside economic gains, had an im-pact on the area of values, norms, and behavioral patterns of migrants who have lived under the influence of another socio-cultural environment. How important are all the changes which migrants have experienced, what is their impact on the way their identity is being con-structed and seen, what is their self-image? Is it justified to differentiate between two catego-ries: ‘us’ – migrants and ‘them’ – non-migrants, does the after-migration identity exist? The paper is an attempt to answer all those questions in the light of own qualitative research conducted in 2008 on Polish migrants living in Ireland as well as the recent research papers on migration after accession to European Union and return migration.
Based on 115 interviews with Polish mothers in the UK and Poland, as well as a specially-commissioned opinion poll, this topical book discusses recent Polish migration to the UK. In a vivid account of every stage of the migration process, the book explores why so many Poles have migrated since 2004, why more children migrate with their families and how working-class families in the West of England make decisions about whether to stay. With a fully revised introduction for the paperback edition, it covers many broader themes - including livelihoods and migration cultures in Poland, experiences of integration into UK communities and issues surrounding return to Poland. This book is highly relevant to migration policy across Europe and beyond. It will be of interest to policy-makers and the general public as well as students and scholars. Winner of the BASEES George Blazyca Prize 2011.
This is an ethnographic account of the transnational caregiving experiences and practices of Australian migrants and refugees, caring for their elderly parents in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and New Zealand. It describes how people respond to unprecedented mobility (both voluntary and forced), globalized job markets and an ageing population. © loretta Baldassar, Cora Vellekoop Baldock and Raelene Wilding 2007. All rights reserved.
Culture shock tends to be an occupational disease of people who have been suddenly transplanted abroad. Like most ailments, it has its own symptoms, cause, and cure. Many missionaries have suffered from it. Some never recovered, and left their field. Some live in a constant state of such shock. Many recover beautifully. As will be clear from the implications of Dr. Oberg's article, the state of culture shock in which a Christian lives will have great bearing on his temperament and witness.
The massive rise in intra-European Union (EU) mobility in recent decades has spawned several important social and cultural phenomena that are still not covered by academic research. Social remittances – the transfer of ideas, practices, codes of behaviours, values and norms between the place of origin and destination are an important aspect of social change and modernity and they are still to be explored and documented. However, not all migrants acquire, transfer and implement them in the same way. Ongoing acts of resistance, imitation and innovation are involved, so that some migrants become ‘ordinary agents of change’ in their local microcosms, while others may contest that change. Tracing these processes in a transnational perspective through a three-year transnational multi-sited qualitative longitudinal research, this article offers an in-depth look at the consequences of human mobility within the enlarged EU.
This study explored: (a) the differences between MKs and Non-MKs on measures of parental attachment, perceived social support, reverse culture shock and college adjustment; (b) within-group difference on the personality measures for MKs; and (c) the relations between the constructs of parental attachment, perceived social support, reverse culture shock and college adjustment for MKs and for Non-MKs. There were 110 subjects, 49 MKs (completed data on 45) and 65 Non-MKs recruited from Westmont College and Biola University. A significant difference was found between MKs and Non-MKs on the Parents as Facilitators of Independence scale of the Parental Attachment Questionnaire and the Cultural Distance and Interpersonal Distance scales of the Homecomer Culture Shock scale. Significant MK within group comparisons were also found on all of the personality measures. Parental Attachment was found to have a direct causal effect on perceived social support and college adjustment for all subjects. Perceived social support was found to be significantly correlated with college adjustment. Pertinent research and applied implications are discussed.
The paper describes the relationship between migration (with a focus on international migration) and modernisation. In particular, the author discusses the problem of emigration impacts on modernisation processes in a society undergoing significant population outflow. The analysis of these impacts has been carried out from the perspective of longue durée. The author puts forward the concepts of the migration cycle and its close relative, the population cycle. He argues that any modernising society undergoes both of these cycles. On the basis of the very nature of the migration cycle, the author hypothesises that out-migration has a crowding-out effect that is indispensible for the modernisation of society to be completed. The paper presents many arguments supporting this hypothesis, but it does not avoid reflection on its limitations.
How do we reflect upon ourselves and our concerns in relation to society, and vice versa? Human reflexivity works through ‘internal conversations’ using language, but also emotions, sensations and images. Most people acknowledge this ‘inner-dialogue’ and can report upon it. However, little research has been conducted on ‘internal conversations’ and how they mediate between our ultimate concerns and the social contexts we confront. Margaret Archer argues that reflexivity is progressively replacing routine action in late modernity, shaping how ordinary people make their way through the world. Using interviewees' life and work histories, she shows how ‘internal conversations’ guide the occupations people seek, keep or quit; their stances towards structural constraints and enablements; and their resulting patterns of social mobility. © Margaret S. Archer 2007 and Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Cross-cultural psychology has demonstrated important links between cultural context and individual behavioural development. Given this relationship, cross-cultural research has increasingly investigated what happens to individuals who have developed in one cultural context when they attempt to re-establish their lives in another one. The long-term psychological consequences of this process of acculturation are highly variable, depending on social and personal variables that reside in the society of origin, the society of settlement, and phenomena that both exist prior to, and arise during, the course of acculturation. This article outlines a conceptual framework within which acculturation and adaptation can be investigated, and then presents some general findings and conclusions based on a sample of empirical studies.
This study examines two vital issues in return migration behavior in two populations: (1) the characteristics of return migrants, and (2) their reasons for returning to their homelands. Comparisons between Irish and Newfoundland returnees are made possible by the use of an identical interview schedule. Sex, age and occupational selectivity, years spent abroad, population of foreign and home residence, and emigration intentions are examined and a strong similarity between the two migrant populations is found. The conceptual framework in the second part is a decision model in which a range of factors in the decision to return are examined. Determinants of the decision to migrate are divided into three broad classes—patriotic-social, familial-personal, and economic-occupational—and then subclassified according to "push" and "pull" factors. The push-pull model of migration motives is then put into operational terms using an accounting scheme in which the influence of each factor is measured. Again a strong si...
Most empirical studies of return migration have found that migrants contribute very little to the development of their homelands. Most studies, however, have been conducted in rural areas among peasant migrants, whose largely unskilled industrial work experience in foreign countries has little relevance to the agrarian economies to which they return. This article examines return migration to both urban and rural settings in the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados. It compares the impact of student migrants—that is, migrants who were college educated or received technical training abroad—with that of worker migrants. The results show that returning student-migrants, most of whom enter professional or other white collar occupations at home, often introduce new ideas and techniques into the workplace. The returning worker migrants have little impact: they are often employed at jobs that do not make use of their overseas work experience and they generally lack the position or authority to introduce changes in the workplace.
Also treated is the role of return migrants in introducing new ideas outside the workplace. Finally, the paper examines how return migrants invest their overseas earnings at home and the possible benefits of their investments to the home society. The study concludes that return migration to Barbados, involving the transfer of ideas, attitudes, work skills and capital, does contribute to the nation's development.
The purpose of this discussion is to develop the concepts and tools with which to determine the influence of migration as an equilibrating mechanism in a changing economy. Some of the important costs and returns to migration--both public and private--are identified and to a limited extent methods for estimating them are devised. This treatment places migration in a resource allocation framework because it deals with migration as a means to promoting efficient resource allocation and because migration is an activity which requires resources. Within this framework the goal is to determine the return to investment in migration rather than to relate rates of migration to income differentials. The studies of net migration conducted thus far partially reveal the functioning of the labor market yet they provide little more than the fact that net migration is in the "right" direction. The estimated response magnitude of net migration to gaps in earnings is of little value in gauging the effectiveness of migration as an equilibrator. There are several alternative approaches. 1 simple approach is to compare rates of (gross) migration with changes in earnings over time. Numerous compositional corrections would be required and this approach would still have to answer the difficult question of how much equalization of earnings should be brought about by a given amount of migration. A better alternative at least analytically is to cast the problem strictly as one of resource allocation. To do this migration is treated as an investment increasing the productivity of human resources an investment which has costs and which also renders returns. The private costs can be broken down into money and nonmoney costs. The money costs include out of pocket expenses of movement and the nonmoney costs include foregone earnings and the psychic costs of changing ones environment. For any particular indivdual the money returns to migration will consist of a positive or negative increment to his real earnings streams to be obtained by moving to another place. This increment will arise from a change in nominal earnings a change in costs of employment a change in prices or a combination of these three. It was found that psychic costs of migration can be ignored since they involve no resource cost. Likewise nonmoney returns arising from locational preferences should be ignored to the extent that they represent consumption which has a zero cost of production. In sum migration cannot be viewed in isolation. Complementary investments in the human agent are probably as important or more important than the migration process itself.