National identities of Poles in Manchester: Modern and postmodern geographies

Abstract

This article, based on a study carried out in Manchester between 2005 and 2008, contrasts two approaches toward national identity construction expressed by two distinct groups of Polish migrants to the UK; one leads to a strong modern national identity and the other produces a more recent postmodern identity. In both cases, I highlight the constant reproduction of national identity in everyday life and the distinct spatial contexts within which this takes place, and further discuss how national identity has evolved from a primarily collective experience to an individual one, along with the consequences of this transformation.

Keywords

banal nationalism consumerism everyday life migration national identity

Introduction

Billig emphasizes the continued presence of a ‘banal’ nationalism in the (post)modern world (1995), a line of thinking continued by Edensor (2002) who underlines the multiple processes through which national identity is expressed in everyday life. This article will explore how this everyday national identity has changed since the Second World War by looking at two groups of Polish immigrants in Manchester, England, between 2005 and 2008 in research that documented the unique phenomenon of mass Polish economic migration (Bielewska-Mensah, 2009).

The first group consists of ‘post-war migrants’ born in Poland before the Second World War whose identity has been shaped by strong wartime nationalism and who, due to particular historical circumstances, found themselves in England when the war finished. Perceived as enemies of the system by post-war socialist Poland, they were forced to settle in England. The second group are ‘post-accession migrants’, Poles born mostly in the 1980s. They have grown up at a time of systemic transformation as the communist bloc collapsed and Poland moved towards neoliberal democracy in a context of expanding globalization. Pushed out of Poland by high unemployment rates and low salaries, they came to England in search of career development and new experiences after Poland joined the European Union (EU) in May 2004. European integration brought free movement of people. At the same time cheap transport lowered the cost of migration. These things encouraged Polish migrants to choose a ‘fluid migration’ (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski, 2009) with no settlement goal and for an undefined period of time. Their lives were stretched between two countries.

This article will contrast these two groups of Polish migrants, focusing on how, under the impact of globalization processes, new technologies, network society and consumerism, national identity is moving from a clearly defined modern one to a postmodern multidimensional one. I will concentrate particularly on the connection between identity construction and place (territorialization or deterritorialization of identity) and assess it in the context of modern (Tuan, 1977) and postmodern (Massey, 1992) definitions of place. According to Giddens (1991) and Sassen (1997), globalization unifies space and consequently leads to the disembedding of national cultures. At the same time new communication technologies and new cheap means of transport that compress time and space (Castells, 1996) may support the formation of transnational networks, allowing for the cultivation of the national beyond national borders (Caglar, 2001; Westwood and Phizacklea, 2000) and the formation of transnational communities based on national sentiment. The following discussion of post-accession migrants’ attitudes questions this cultural disembedding and the extent to which new technologies support national belonging.

Research

The research this text is based on was conducted at a very particular historical moment. In May 2004, Poland was admitted into the EU and Polish workers gained access to the British labour market. As a result, between May 2004 and December 2009, 639, 970 Poles were registered on the Worker Registration Scheme (Home Office, 2010). In many English towns post-accession migrants met long-established Polish communities. The research investigates the Polishness of both groups by mapping the population and exploring the different sources and expressions of Polish immigrants’ identity, and is based mainly on primary qualitative data through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, although it also draws upon secondary data such as church archives, migrants’ publications and press reports. The interview sample was constructed with the use of snowball technique, with 10 interviews carried out with post-war migrants (seven individual, two joint and one group interview) and 22 with post-accession migrants (20 individual, one joint and one group interview), and a key aim was to achieve a diversified sample of migrants’ job positions, education, gender, relationship status and migration routes.

The post-war migrants were men and women of retirement age. The sample included ex-combatants who fought as soldiers during the Second World War, Poles who came to Manchester as scouts through Siberia, those brought as children by their parents who fled Poland as war refugees and women who arrived in the UK in 1960s and joined the Polish community by marrying Polish ex-soldiers. Respondents were also differentiated by education (three obtained British degrees), welfare and family situation.

The population of post-accession Polish migrants in the UK is varied. The sample of post-accession migrants, all of whom reside in Manchester, reflects some of the demographic trends described in official data (i.e. Fihel, 2007; Lusińska and Okólski, 2009; Stenning et al., 2006; Sumption and Somerville, 2010). However, it does not aim to be wholly representative. All respondents from this group have at least secondary education (whereas only 71.6 percent of the general post-accession Polish migrants in the UK have secondary education (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski, 2009)). Sixteen out of 25 have university degrees (the number for the whole post-accession migrant population is 22.5 percent (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski, 2009)). All except one were aged between 20 and 30 at the time of interview (71.6 percent of post-accession migrants are within this age range (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski, 2009)). The research sample significantly under-represents male migrants, who tend to be less educated (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski, 2009). The interview sample includes 18 female and seven male migrants when 67.6 percent of the whole population of Polish immigrants in the UK are male (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski, 2009). Female migrants may more often choose big cities than males who are commonly recruited from Poland through temporary work agencies and sent directly to work in rural farms with live-in accommodation or in warehouses located outside cities (Sumption and Somerville, 2010).

A methodological problem emerged because of the differences between the two migrant groups. Semi-structured interviews were an exhaustive source of information for post-war migrants, who tended to possess a strong and coherent narrative of identity, whereas the national identity of post-accession migrants was more fully expressed in other spheres of their life. To avoid the creation of artefacts, participant observation was adopted as an additional method, conducted in a Manchester bank call centre in which I was employed as a member of the Polish team from December 2006 to December 2007. The number of Poles in the team fluctuated from six to 32. The proportion of male and female workers was usually well balanced. The education level among the team workers varied between the secondary school graduates and people with university degrees. They had arrived in England with different levels of English language competencies but at the time of the bank recruitment procedure at the end of 2006 all of them spoke fluent English. The team was well integrated and I participated in many social events with co-workers. Participant observation was a source of beneficial information about everyday routines and banal activities but also illuminated questions about respondents’ ways of thinking, changing life plans and other issues.

Findings

The general conclusion of the research is that national identity persists and provides spatial embedding for migrants but its construction has undergone great transformation over the past 50 years. The first subsection contrasts the post-war migrants’ and post-accession migrants’ practices and identifies the similarities and differences in their behaviour. National identity is evident in all areas of everyday life, including in the choice of location in which to live, home-making practices, the domestication of urban space, daily routines, social networks and the use of virtual space.

Choice of location

The choice of location is important for geographies of identity because it may indicate social segregation. The post-war and post-accession migrants’ choice of place to live differs significantly.

The post-war migrants live mostly within distinct Polish neighbourhoods and their choice of location is linked to the construction of Polish identity. At first, their location was a result of both their economic situation and limited social capital, which consisted mainly of the networks they had established and consolidated with their co-ethnics. Currently, however, decisions about where to live are primarily socially motivated; that is, the migrants want to live in proximity to Polish institutions and other Poles. Such migrants’ settlement patterns are well represented in literature on spatial segregation (Culter et al., 2005; Massey et al., 1994; Lieberson, 1961).

The post-accession migrants interviewed may have used their co-ethnics’ support at the primary stage of migration; however, they make an effort to separate themselves from such dependencies as soon as possible:

Olek: I will be honest. I keep a distance from the Polish people. I don’t need … I did leave Poland not to hang out with Poles. They annoy me. (Interview, 2006)

These new trends toward spatial diffusion among post-accession migrants have also been recognized by other researchers (Robinson et al., 2007). The migrants I interviewed treat migration as an individual experience. They try more or less successfully to replace links with their co-ethnics with links to the host society. A step in this direction is living in the neighbourhoods of the white English middle or working class to which they aspire. In order to be able to afford accommodation in such neighbourhoods they are often prepared to compromise their comfort and share a house or apartment with several friends.

Post-accession migrants who show behaviour patterns more akin to those of the post-war migrants are those who tend to be poorly educated. They may turn up in Polish places (such as church, Polish club, shops) to look for accommodation because their poor language skills make answering advertisements or finding rooms through official channels such as agencies difficult for them.

Home-making practices

The most important place for identity formation is the home, understood not only as a geographical location but also as an idea, an imaginary that is imbued with feelings and socio-spatial relations between place and ideas (Blunt and Dowling, 2006). The home is the place where the migrants’ identity can be freely demonstrated through the use of material culture and home-making practices.

Migrants carry their idealized ‘home’ everywhere they go, because conceptualizations of home remain imprinted in identity. However, visions of ideal homes vary and a readiness to recreate them also differs significantly among the two groups researched. While post-war migrants tend to reproduce their Polish home in their new location, post-accession migrants visit their existing domiciles in Poland to ‘go home’.

The post-war migrants reinvent their home through material culture and have been engaged in the reproduction of a familiar domestic social structure through traditional gender roles. My visits discerned that their homes are decorated with national symbols and tend to be run according to a strict set of rules. However, their attempts to pass on their version of Polish culture to the next generation often appear to be unsuccessful due to strong cultural conservatism (for details on generational conflict refer to Temple, 2001).

Most post-accession respondents are at the beginning of their adult lives and have not started their own families yet. Their home-making practices are limited and they often refer to their family home in Poland as ‘home’, where they still regard their parents as responsible for the reproduction of tradition. This makes their identity somewhat geographically bounded. When they are in Poland they obey their parents’ rules and when they are in England, their identity is more individualized and less conditioned by traditional Polish mores. A similar observation is made by Elrick (2008: 513) who sees this as ‘freedom from well-rehearsed roles and values’.

Janka: It is truth that when I go to Poland I go to church. It is how it should be. But here I do not go. (Interview, 2008)

The post-accession migrants’ attitudes are apt to change, however, once they start a family, when they tend to redefine their lives and make conscious decisions about where they want to settle and how ‘Polish’ their own home should be.

Domestication of urban space

The home is a multi-scalar phenomenon ‘ranging from the body and household to the city, nation and globe’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 27) and national identity is also expressed in urban space. The post-war migrant community makes UK urban space familiar through establishing distinctly Polish spaces, while the post-accession migrants tend to treat the urban space as a big supermarket. They choose the products and services they like and only occasionally are these products offered by Polish institutions.

The post-war migrant community in Manchester has made an effort to colonize urban space with Polish symbols and has formed Polish spaces such as a church, clubs, Saturday School and care homes. These places are an extension of the transnational home, where ‘home’ is defined as the place where ‘difference can be displayed and acted out by speaking a language other than English, and by fostering cultural identities through domestic interiors and material cultures’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 214). The community members spend much free time in these places and when they retire, parish meetings become a focal point of social life for many. They also mark urban space beyond these Polish sites, mainly through establishing monuments and commemorative plates such as the Katyń Monument in Southern Cemetery, Chorlton.

The post-accession migrants interviewed are aware of the existence of the Polish church but few of them attend church regularly, mainly those families with school children where parents feel responsible for bringing them up in the Catholic faith. The phenomenon of treating religion as a marker of social identity described by Ryan (2010) and Rabikowska (2010) is marginal among single migrants. Around 100 families send their children to the Polish Saturday School and only those few Poles in the sample with basic education and poor English knowledge are interested in frequenting the discos in the Polish club, Polskie Koło.

The Polish institutions in Manchester were created by the Polish community and the group whose needs they addressed has declined. The post-accession migrants treat these venues merely as part of what is on offer in the city, and this often fails to meet their needs. They are not accustomed to a collective form of national identity rooted in early 20th-century traditions where a strong sense of patriotism was mixed with a strong collective religiousness. The assumption that migration reinforces an ethnic aspect of religiousness (Mitchell, 2006) is not evident here.

Everyday routines

The everyday activities of immigrants are organized in yearly, weekly and daily cycles. The most important events in the yearly cycles of both groups of immigrants are the religious celebrations of Christmas and Easter, which are typically perceived as family centred. Both groups make an effort to follow these traditions but, whereas post-war migrants celebrate these occasions in Manchester, post-accession migrants prefer going to Poland to spend the time with their parents. If they do stay in Manchester they often celebrate these holidays with close friends, and typically receive food packages of traditional dishes from their parents who thus exercise control over the ‘proper’ way of celebrating. Polish food is a crucial element of the Polish tradition of Christmas and Easter celebration. A similar phenomenon of maintaining parental control through food packages was observed by Petridou (2001) in her study of Greek students abroad.

According to Rabikowska’s (2010) study of post-accession Poles in London, Christmas and Easter are occasions for collective demonstration of ethnic identity in the streets (namely, by carrying the Easter baskets to church in a visible manner). My research shows post-accession Poles in Manchester avoid such demonstrations and their baskets are concealed inside carrier bags. Whereas national identity is expressed publicly and collectively while visiting families in Poland, in Manchester it belongs to the private sphere of life.

The weekly routines of post-war respondents are parish-centred. They attend Sunday mass in the Polish church and may also visit church for Wednesday bingo meetings. The parish meetings are the centre of their social life and, for some, the venue for voluntary activities. However, the number of post-war migrants visiting Polish institutions is diminishing because of an aging population.

The post-accession migrants do not have so clearly defined weekly schedules. The lifestyles of one group that moved solely for economic reasons are primarily job centred. Other post-accession migrants perform geographically unspecific lifestyles such as following a generic urban lifestyle or one concentrated around the electronic home. Their demographic characteristics – aged between 20 and 35 – mean that they act similarly to the German Turks in Berlin clubs studied by Caglar (2001) as urban youth with no connection to their national background. Their lifestyle choices stress their aspiration to belong to mainstream society. They visit fashionable places and stress their distance from migrants who visit Polish clubs. However, the most frequented Polish places in Manchester are shops selling familiar Polish brands and here national identity does appear through the expression of consumer loyalty.

Virtual spaces

In addition to the urban geographies discussed above, Polish migrants’ identity is also performed in virtual geographies. New technologies allow them to cultivate transnational networks by compressing time and space but they also offer a new dimension to express their identity – virtual space. However, post-war migrants’ choice of technologies and virtual words is significantly different to post-accession migrants.

The post-war migrants make less use of the internet and new media but are very active users of printed media and television. They use virtual worlds to build their community and to stay within Polish space. At a community level they like to communicate through such channels as books and journals. They publish their memories to share their stories with other community members and send letters to journals, magazines and newspapers to give their opinion on important issues. At a personal level, they watch diasporic TV channels:

Lucyna: We enjoy Polish TV. It is our only contact with Poland. (Interview, 2006)

Post-accession Polish migrants live in what Castells (1996) terms ‘electronic homes’. They are fluent users of the new communication technologies that are an integral part of their everyday life (an observation confirmed by Metykova’s (2010) research on post-accession migrants). In one sense they use media for their own personal development:

Stefan: I often listen to English TV. It is not interesting but it is good and necessary to improve your English. (Interview, 2006)

Apart from language, they learn from television and the internet about their new location: jobs, accommodation and the legal system. It facilitates their adaptation replacing social capital and allowing for the individualization of migration experience. Where post-war migrants turn to the Polish community, post-accession migrants, as members of the information society, turn for advice to the internet. Apart from the minority of poorly educated migrants, they become independent of the resources offered by their ethnic community, and since they do not need close relationships with unfamiliar Poles, they may spread freely around Manchester.

In addition, they use the new communication technologies to cultivate their pre-migration networks. It allows them to call the place that they have left their ‘home’.

Post-war migrants use their communication channels, such as the printed press, to create a communal ethnic space and build community. Post-accession migrants use their preferred medium, the internet, for their own personal benefit, to cultivate their networks and as an informational tool.

Networks

As networks are key phenomena in the understanding of postmodern place and place-related identity in what Castells (1996) calls the ‘network society’, I present an analysis of migrants’ networks in more depth.

Social networks can be a source of emotional, informational and instrumental support as well as companionship and socializing (Ryan et al., 2008). Putnam (2007: 143) differentiates between ‘bridging capital’ that consists of ties to people who are unlike ourselves in some important ways and ‘bonding capital’, which consists of ties to people who are significantly like ourselves. Bridging capital is defined as the ability to forge weak ties outside one’s own personal or ethnic social circles as especially important in overcoming the economic disadvantages of migrants (Putnam, 2000).

This research suggests that for Polish migrants in Manchester, bridging capital is determined by language competencies. It confirms the observation of Ryan et al. (2008) that migrants’ ability to mobilize social capital and successfully engage in bridging may depend upon the cultural capital (language, skills and educational qualifications) at their disposal. However, here we must acknowledge that having language competencies does not guarantee contacts with English people.

Post-war migrants rarely worked with English colleagues but even then, they were unable to form any close relationships with them:

Lucyna: Relations in office were very nice. We had friends from my husband work – nice people – but the contacts were very occasional. It wasn’t ‘let’s go there, let’s meet here’. (Interview, 2006)

These previously satisfying contacts are now limited to polite greetings. Apart from the relations with the English spouses of their children, the social networks of post-war migrants remain within the Polish ethnic community. The Polish and English people live next to each other, not with each other. As the only source of social capital for the post-war migrants, these specifically Polish networks entail often long distance travel for weekly meetings in the Polish church, indicating the strength of their sense of national identity.

The post-accession migrants often present what Garapich (2008) calls a ‘discursive hostility’ toward their co-ethnics. They know some English and they are not ready to invest their effort, time and resources to foster accidental and contingent Polish networks that can be perceived as threatening rather than advantageous. Yet, in spite of negative attitudes toward the other Polish migrants in general, they still stay within their own Polish networks of family members and friends. Ryan et al. (2008) call this phenomenon a binary opposition between particular Polish networks and a general population of Polish migrants. However, their contacts with English people do not satisfy their declared needs. Some of them have English boyfriends or girlfriends, some go out with English co-workers or co-students to pubs, but close friendships are uncommon. Similar Polish problems in befriending English people are described by Datta (2009) and Ryan (2010).

The ethnic solidarity of post-war migrants described above is limited to their own wave of migration but does not extend to economic migrants who came after Poland joined the EU. The new migrants disgust them in many ways. However, the division observed in Manchester is less marked than that described by Garapich (2005, 2008) in London, with negative opinions complemented by positive opinions about ‘hard-working Poles’ and an acknowledgement of the differences amongst the recent arrivals.

The post-war community leaders declare that the community needs new-comers to sustain the Polish places they created since the second generation have moved out of Manchester or, worse, have become assimilated. The post-accession migrants are not aware of this discussion of which they are the subject because they largely ignore the existence of the post-war community. They occasionally use its services but networks between these two groups are almost non-existent.

An attempt to explain the differences in migrants’ national identity

Above I have discussed the different geographical aspects of the identity construction of two groups of Polish migrants in Manchester. Respondents belonging to both groups feel strongly Polish; however, post-war migrants experience their identity collectively and reproduce it through Polish institutions. The majority settle in close proximity to each other and Polish institutions, and their routines and social networks concentrate around weekly meetings in the Polish parish. In contrast, post-accession migrants use migration as an opportunity to develop as individuals. Their national identity is experienced through transnational Polish networks and performed mainly in Poland, while life in England is a means to achieving career development and/or cosmopolitan urban experience. This section explores the factors which may produce these different geographies.

The ‘different Polands’

The first group of factors that influence the migrants’ identity incorporate the starting place and the destination. Both groups of immigrants come from Poland but each of them comes from a different Poland. Post-war migrants left Poland during the Second World War or soon after. They grew up in an atmosphere of strong 1930s’ nationalism and their war experience strengthened this aspect of their identity. Their nationalism was directed against two aggressors: Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union. Their narratives show that they had a very complicated relationship with socialist Poland, feeling sentimental towards it as their homeland but refusing to accept its new form and campaigning against the communist regime, which was perceived as the oppressor. When the communist bloc collapsed in 1989, they were happy yet were unable to recognize the new Poland. It was not their home anymore:

Emil: Poland doesn’t resemble what I remember. It doesn’t resemble the place I came from. (Interview 2007)

It is no longer a place to which they would like to return. They have lived in England too long and have got used to their current life:

Daria: We don’t live like people in Poland. … We got used to English way of thinking. Mentality in Poland is different. (Group interview, 2006)

They operate in a binary Polish–English world, continually choosing between those two identities. They admit they live and think as English people. However, they invariably define themselves as Polish. Garapich (2005, 2008) writes that Polish migrants to the UK see themselves as ‘real Poles’ and better than those from Poland, a superiority that comes from the fact they are not infected by communism. This type of view appeared only very indirectly during the Manchester interviews and may have been related to the interviewer’s positionality as the respondents knew the researcher as a ‘Polish’ Pole. The same problem, researcher positionality appeared in Temple and Koterba’s (2009) research on Polish language among Poles in Greater Manchester.

Post-accession migrants grew up in a post-socialist Poland, knowing of socialism mainly from their parents’ experiences, old movies and history lessons. Their own Poland is a nation that is far more open to western and American culture. They learn English at school and watch American TV programmes at home and this western popular culture has become a major element in their imagined geography. Accordingly, post-accession migrants do not share the patriotic narrative that post-war migrants brought to England. The nationalism taught in the Polish Saturday School irritates many of them. They rarely see connections between patriotism and Catholicism, believing in the secular state, separating religious faith and nationalism and treating the Polish church as a purely religious institution.

The different Polish realities that formed these groups of immigrants explain the largely indifferent attitude of the post-accession migrants towards the post-war migrant institutions on the one hand and the generally suspicious attitude of post-war migrants towards new arrivals on the other.

The ‘different UKs’

As stated above, the Polish migrants left different homelands and arrived in different UKs. The UK in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s is not the same place in which post-accession migrants arrived after 1 May 2004.

After the war, Polish soldiers were encouraged to go back to Poland before they were granted the right to settle (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatnatów, n.d.). Yet their feelings of gratitude for the hospitality provided by their new country was mixed with strong resentment towards the UK for what the Federation of Poles call handing Poland over to Soviet rule (Zjednoczenie Polskie, n.d.). The other reason for their discomfort in their new location was the fact of their otherness. When they arrived, British society was far more homogeneous than it is currently and they were an ethnically distinct group. They felt like strangers and even today many respondents stress that they are just guests in the UK.

Post-accession respondents have a much more relaxed attitude. They are part of a multi-ethnic society and position themselves as white in contrast to other immigrant groups, unaware that race is just a social construct and their whiteness could be questioned. They came to the UK as EU members and from the beginning they have had the right to live and work, have the same rights to education, health care and benefits as UK citizens, and may add their names to the electoral roll. Accordingly, they do not feel any disadvantage:

Olek: We are treated the same as Englishmen. We earn the same. We have the same rights. I belong to the trade union as they do; I pay taxes as they do. I demand as they do. (Interview, 2006)

While gaining rights in their new country, migrants still retain Polish citizenship and the rights associated with it (for instance, in 2007 the Polish embassy in Manchester organized polling stations for the Polish parliamentary election). Such dual legal rights that cross nation-state boundaries make migration a low-risk experience and post-accession migrants do not need the safety net of ethnic solidarity to reduce possible risks. Their racial status combined with their EU citizenship has given them the confidence to feel as if they are ordinary inhabitants, while the post-war migrants still feel as ‘poor guests’ and second-class citizens in spite of fighting alongside the Allied forces during the Second World War.

There are also numerical factors to take into account. The post-war migrants were few in number in Manchester. They needed to establish community events to meet other Poles. Now post-accession migrants are surrounded by other Poles all the time and meeting them has changed from a rarity to a banal everyday occurrence. There is thus no need for them to establish an ethnic community to meet other Poles.

The different times of migration

There is not only the difference between country of origin and country of destination. Fifty years have passed between the post-war and post-accession migration and the world has undergone a change – from modernity to postmodernity. Since time and space are now perceived differently from the way they were 50 years ago, the whole nature of the migration experience has changed. Time–space compression (Bauman, 1998; Carter et al., 1993; Morley, 2000) has brought Poland and England much closer, and globalization reduces the cost of migration and allows for settlement migration to be replaced by much more fluid forms (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski, 2009).

As a result of globalization the UK is not as foreign to post-accession migrants as it was to post-war migrants. Manchester offers more opportunities than their home towns but it is not particularly different in their mental maps from Polish cities such as Warsaw or Wrocław:

Janka: There is everything here … we are a bit behind. It means in my town … because I know that Wrocław, Poznań, Warszawa, these metropolises, have everything on time, everything there is modern. (Interview, 2007)

In ‘globalizing’ cities (Sassen, 1997), the same brands of clothes, food and entertainment are available. The availability of global media and popular culture reduces any sense of strangeness. While post-war migrants operate within a bipolar world where things can be identified as Polish or English, the post-accession migrants move between Polish, English and a global urban culture. This global popular culture is a common ingredient that forms a bridge between the national cultures, Polish, which they push toward the margin of their lives, and English, which is difficult to access. From the time of their arrival, post-accession migrants possess many of the necessary competencies due to globalization and their fluency as consumers of global popular culture.

The geographies/spatialities of identity formation

Time–space compression is connected with another change, namely the change in place perception. The modern perception of a place as closed, with clearly defined borders in opposition to open space (Tuan, 1977), has been replaced by a new understanding of place as open, consisting of networks (Massey, 1992). In this research, the post-war migrants largely continue to live in a world of ‘closed’ places whereby their domicile in Manchester means that they are separated from their homeland, whereas the post-accession migrants live in ‘open’ places and, dwelling in Manchester, are connected by various links with Poland.

To experience Polishness, the post-war migrants had to reinvent it in Manchester, creating ethnic institutions to satisfy that need. When the communist bloc collapsed, they were already at a stage of life in which their identity was resistant to change. The advent of free movement and yearly visits to Poland did not re-establish their broken links with the homeland. By contrast, when post-accession migrants want to experience Polishness, they can simply travel to Poland, visit Polish spaces via television or the internet, or contact their relatives through other new communication technologies so they do not feel any urgency to reinvent it abroad. The need to join the Polish community may emerge when they look for a Polish environment for their children. They do not share the consensus of the ‘political migrants’ about the ‘natural’ connection between people of the same ethnic origins.

The demographics of each group

Having discussed place of origin and place of destination, it is time to look at the migrants’ characteristics as a possible factor promoting changes in geographies of national identity. Both groups of migrants arrived in England in their youth, mainly in their 20s or 30s and there was an overrepresentation of male migrants. Age at the time of migration and sex are not, therefore, the differentiating factors. There is, however, a big difference in another demographic feature, namely education.

The post-war migrants usually came to the UK without language competencies and even if they had professional skills, these were not transferable (Bielewska-Mensah, 2009). Consequently, the majority stayed in low-paid manual jobs mainly in the textile industry. Admitting that they had to work really hard, the idea of ‘starting from scratch’ with nobody’s help is a part of their generation’s myth. The few migrants who participated in scholarship programmes for ex-combatants and obtained a degree, usually former soldiers with strong patriotic attitudes, became community leaders who helped to shape the patriotic consciousness of the rest. Upward social mobility was for this group an intergenerational process, and their aspirations were transferred to their children who now are usually educated to postgraduate level.

On the contrary, the post-accession migrants are usually well educated upon arrival. Most of them have finished at least secondary school and have a basic knowledge of English. Directly after arrival they perceive any job as an achievement:

Agnieszka: Was your boyfriend content with his job [security officer]?

Monika: Content? His legs were paining him because of staying. But it is like that at the beginning. Everyone is satisfied when they earn some money. When you get your salary you are satisfied because you see you can afford living here. (Interview, 2006)

However, soon their aspiration grows. Unlike post-war migrants whose hopes for a better future rested on their children’s achievements, post-accession migrants’ aspirations concern their own lifetime. Furthermore, Lopez Rodriguez et al. (2010) observe that the minority who are parents still expect their children to make up for their own de-skilling. Even though the qualifications of post-accession migrants rarely translate immediately into the UK labour market, their knowledge of English and general social capital does. They know how to look for a job and to which benefits they are entitled and are ready to undertake professional courses at English educational institutions to increase their marketability. The compromises in the standard of living and job status that they make are temporary before they move up the ladder or leave the UK:

Inga: If somebody wants to stop in the pubs, no problem for me. But … they got degree and … […] I think if I am here why I should have worse conditions than in Poland. (Interview, 2006)

A Leeds City Council report on new arrivals notes that Polish migrants are very dynamic in the labour market unlike other groups of post-accession migrants (Cook et al., 2008).

Summarizing, both groups arrived in Manchester at a young age, at the beginning of their working lives. However, the lack of cultural capital positioned the majority of post-war migrants outside the host society and forced them to look to their own ethnic community for support. Post-accession migrants, conversely had enough resources to encourage them to try to enter the primary labour market without needing the alternative universe of an ethnic community to be awarded dignity and respect. Their possession of more significant forms of cultural capital than post-war migrants allows for the individualization of the migration experience.

The life stage

Although the age at the time of migration is no differentiating factor, the age of the immigrants at the time of the research certainly impacted on research outcomes.

The post-war migrants are currently in their 70s, 80s and 90s. They are already retired and their activities are limited because of their life stage, with a reduced number and frequency in social contacts. This research suggests that when the post-war migrants limit their social networks in a way typical of elderly people, the weak ties are cut first. Contact with neighbours is reduced to greetings and the only sustained ties are bonding connections within the Polish ethnic group. At an earlier life stage, strong ties with other Poles did not exclude other dispersed, weaker ties with the host society, confirming Putnam’s (2007) and Ryan et al.’s (2008) theories that high bonding capital might well be compatible with high bridging capital, and that migrants who establish strong, trusting relationships with their fellow migrants and who develop the necessary skills, such as language, may be able to adapt these skills to establish more extensive relationships and weak ties beyond their own ethnic group. At present, they make their social exclusion more visible by cutting the former weak ties with English society and enclosing themselves within the ethnic community.

The post-accession migrants are young and most have yet to start a family. The experience of starting a family may be a turning point that marks the end of fluid migration and the beginning of settlement migration. It also forces migrants to make a conscious decision about how they want their children to be brought up and within which tradition. They often choose Polish culture and yet they do not believe in the possibility of a Polish upbringing in the UK:

Janka: I don’t imagine bringing up my children here.

Agnieszka: Why?

Janka: I just want to pass to them what I learnt from my parent and grandparents and I want my children to be Catholics. You want to pass it on and here it would be very difficult. (Interview, 2007)

However, staying in Manchester prevails as the preferred economic option. In the new situation migrants are often ready to cultivate Polish customs and habits much more than they did before for the sake of their children. They also use the Polish institutions. In Manchester the Polish Saturday School uses the involvement of parents to build a bridge between the post-war community and new migrants. The choices made by the post-accession migrants about how to bring up their children and the impact they make on the Polish community will emerge over the next few years, though some studies have already appeared (Lopez Rodriguez, 2010; Lopez Rodriguez et al., 2010).

The reasons for migration

A final factor influencing the experience of migration is the motivation for their migration. Post-war migrants are political migrants or war-refugees and their family members. The reason for coming to Manchester for post-accession migrants has been to improve their job prospects, to gain the experience of living in a global city and to improve their English skills. They come to England to gain a transferable experience that can be of use anywhere they may subsequently decide to live. In contrast to post-war migrants, their migration is fluid.

Garapich (2008) identifies post-war migrants as an example of ‘political migration’ and the post-accession migrants as ‘economic migration’. He observes a rigid boundary between the two groups. Since the 19th century, Polish diasporic leaders have constructed an ideology based on a dichotomy between these forms of migration. The first was perceived as superior and consisted of ‘political’ independence fighters. The second was evaluated as less honourable and consisted of ‘economic’ migrants, peasants and working-class people whose only chance to enter the domain of higher status ‘political’ migration was an active engagement in the fight for the Polish nation, following the leaders, priests and national activists. As Garapich (2005: 13) states:

Along with reinforcing their distinct Odyssean refugees’ identity, creating a degree of cultural, class and educational difference with the newcomers helps also to legitimize their roles as holders of social and political capital.

Garapich’s observations of London’s diasporic communities and their discourse are also relevant to Manchester. Post-war Polish immigrants concentrated around ex-combatant leaders involved in patriotic actions for Poland offer the new migrants the use of their places and some assistance, but they demand in return that the new arrivals respect their notion of a hierarchy of migrants:

Tadeusz Lesisz: As a president of the Federation of Poles (Zjednoczenie Polskie) I wanted to organize meeting of all Poles to explain them how things work in the United Kingdom and how we can help them. To explain them that they come when everything is ready and we are willing to help them. However, they need to understand how our structure works that I am president and I should be informed. I am the person to call and ask about information. […] They don’t know that we live so many years in this foreign land and we had to do something here and we did a lot. But we are underestimated. (Interview, 2006)

They want to be seen as the hosts and to be treated with respect. However, new migrants come to their places as consumers and demand to be served. They do not know the history of these places so they do not know why they should be grateful.

The dilemma of post-war migrants is of little concern for more recent migrants who largely treat their stay in Manchester as a temporary stage and are not interested in any roles that may be offered to them in the established Polish institutions. Indeed, the post-war migrants are usually not part of their mental map.

Garapich (2008) suggests that current economic migrants are too new and too preoccupied in establishing themselves abroad to be able to act in ethnic institutions. This suggests that more overtly patriotic practice may develop over time but this seems unlikely based on this research. Some migrants will most likely go back to Poland while others will assimilate. The new wave of migrants coming from Poland will still need to make efforts to establish themselves economically so they will not be able to act in Polish institutions. The migrants who decide to become established in Manchester may start to frequent the Polish places for the sake of their children (this tendency is already visible) but it is for future research to investigate the extent to which their engagement in the life of the Polish community may develop.

Conclusions

Analysis of the research results confirms there has been a significant change in national identity construction from a collective to an individual domain. A modern national identity has been renegotiated by one group and expressed by conforming to a set of strict rules whereas a postmodern national identity is claimed on the basis of an individual self-definition. Those whose identity was shaped in the first half of the 20th century as post-war migrants in the time of modernism, define themselves primarily through belonging to a particular nation, implicitly the place of the homeland. Their identity tends to be strongly rooted geographically with an understanding of (national) place as a closed entity with clearly defined borders (Tuan, 1977). Post-accession migrants investigated during this research see place differently. New communication technologies make it possible to embrace the world. They do not perceive migration as a journey into the unknown but rather as a move from a periphery to the centre. Time–space compression and virtual reality has given these new migrants a sense of constant connection with those left behind. They may still belong to the same networks and in this way are still part of the place they left, as with Massey’s (1992) understanding of place.

These different perceptions of place lead to different adaptation strategies expressed in everyday life. Post-war migrants, strong patriots separated from their homeland, built a little Polish home in Manchester. They carried with them acquired notions within their primary socialization about how such an ideal home should be constituted, with prescribed gender roles, traditions and everyday habits. In this sense they took their homeland with them to their place of destination. Post-accession migrants’ continued belonging to the family home in Poland explains why they rarely try to reinvent home abroad. They use migration as a chance to move up the professional ladder (through gathering work experience, developing language skills or earning some financial capital to start a new business) and for experiencing a city lifestyle. Its temporality justifies the suspension of some social norms pending a return home.

Modern national identities shared by post-war migrants have rigorous meanings that are negotiated by groups and imposed on members. Being a Pole in this modern sense demands the fulfilment of a set of strict criteria: a Pole needs to be a patriot and Catholic, involved actively in shared activities for the sake of the nation. Additionally, post-war migrants define their different roles through their Polish accent. They are Polish mothers and fathers, Polish wives and husbands and Polish Catholics. The community regulates individual actors through migrant organizations that also built bridges between migrants and the host community, replacing the lack of cultural capital in the form of language and education.

The postmodern identity of interviewed post-accession migrants tends to be contrastingly characterized by a degree of fluidity and individualization. They still refer to themselves as ‘Poles’ yet do not place national identity as pre-eminent among various labels and their Polishness does not define their whole life but appears when circumstances demand it. Their behaviour patterns often emerge out of a popular youth culture spread by global media. They perceive themselves foremost as individuals who should be judged and evaluated on their individual qualities rather than as members of a group. This way they avoid the minority group membership and position themselves closer to the power group. National identity is still present but is incorporated and transformed via multiple identities as described by Edensor (2002). This individualization of the migration experience is facilitated by possession of cultural capital that makes them independent of support provided by the previous migrants’ community.

The establishment of the post-war Polish community in Manchester was as a result of a series of unique events that promoted a strong feeling of duty amongst former soldiers, bound together by their small numbers, and this was consolidated by their lack of language competencies and the political reality of the East–West division during the Cold War. The lack of interest in this community amongst current Polish migrants is evidence of a deep change in the circumstances of migration and in the shape of national identity, which has moved from the centre of the life of Polish migrants to the periphery, from the sphere of the collective to that of individual experience, and from political reality to something expressed through consumption and brand loyalty.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Dr. Tim Edensor for his editorial work on this paper and his constant support.

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