Emigracje bliskie i dalekie: studium współczesnych emigracji zarobkowych na przykładzie województwa podlaskiego

Abstract

The book presents contemporary economic emigration exemplified by the Podlasie Province. The process of emigration to find employment and earnings outside Poland has been escalating in this Province already for several decades. At the beginning (in the 1970s), emigrant streams could be discerned in relatively small towns such as Mońki, Zambrów or Siemiatycze. As the years went by, however, the phenomenon of economic emigration started to spread encompassing other cities too including Bialystok. Taking into account an extent of the Podlasie residents’ involvement in migrations, I conventionally divided them into direct and indirect (observers) participants of economic emigrations. This division, therefore, is important with reference to biographic materials analyzed in the book. In my work I have introduced a division into near and distant emigrations. Nearness and distance of target countries may be understood both literally and figuratively. The literary meaning involves geographical distance whereas the figurative one “tamed” emigrations to trusty and verified places where emigrants’ relatives, cousins or acquaintances are already there. Near emigrations are simpler and easier to realize, they are more frequently repeated many a time thus becoming an element of a lifestyle. Emigrants find a near country to be friendly, the one where you can easily find yourself at home like, where there already are some acquaintances and relatives. As far as a distant country is concerned, the situation is opposite. In “distant” countries emigrants are more often accompanied by a sense of foreignness or strangeness and loneliness as well as a desire to return to their homeland. The book consists of nine chapters, an introduction and conclusion. The introduction and the first two chapters are introductory. I present therein main assumptions and a manner and scope of the research. Moreover, I refer to several basic issues which constitute contexts for contemporary migration processes. Chapter two presents the results of statistical research concerning registered emigrations including migratory directions and forms as well as a social and demographic structure of emigrants leaving permanently or temporarily. The statistical data imply that in recent years overseas emigration, which is typical for the Province, has considerably decreased whereas a continental one increased. Chapter three and four present the results of surveys carried out in Bialystok, the largest city in the region and the Province’s capital. The research was conducted on representatives samples in 2003, 2005 and 2007, and comprised three categories of residents successively: Bialystok dwellers, secondary school pupils and teachers. The research on the Bialystok dwellers shows a social climate of foreign mobility before Poland joined the European Union. The research on school youth and teachers indicates experiences and plans connected with participation in economic emigration. The fifth chapter regards students whose dilemmas about economic emigration can be seen through the prism of academic debates on contemporary emigration. This chapter fulfils a function of a peculiar bridge and passageway between the quantitative research (the analysis of statistical data and surveys) and qualitative research (the analysis of biographical material’s content). Chapter five divides the work into two parts. The first part provides general knowledge about migration whereas the second one (chapters six to nine) refers to individual migration experiences. Based on biographical materials I discuss specificity of emigration to the three selected countries: Great Britain, Germany and the USA. In the conclusion I draw attention to the importance of mobility as an element of a lifestyle which becomes widespread in the contemporary world. As far as peripheral regions are concerned, such a lifestyle is connected with development of emigration culture, whose foundation is an economic situation in a country and its nationals’ aspirations to overcome individual marginalization. The analyzed cases of economic emigrations indicate migrants’ conformity at different migration stages. As a result, foreign migrations so far favored stabilization of the system and mitigated the effects of crises in households.