The UK’s decision to leave the EU illustrates some of the tensions embedded in European integration, enabling us to examine how nationalism and cosmopolitanism operate simultaneously, thus reinforcing each other. Furthermore, the prolonged Brexit negotiations have created a climate of protracted insecurity where the only certainty is uncertainty. This is particularly reflected in the migratory experiences of European citizens currently residing in the UK. Academic research has begun exploring the affective impact of Brexit; however, little is known about how processes of connection and disconnection operate simultaneously, nor which coping strategies European migrants have employed to navigate this state of in-betweenness. Using the anthropological notion of liminality as a lens, we draw on participant observation and semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of Brexit and the coping practices of a range of (new) Bulgarian and (old) Italian European migrants. We argue that Brexit results in a loss of frames of reference for European migrants in the UK – which can be both liberating and unsettling, depending on migrants’ positioning as unequal EU subjects as well as their views on the nature of their future re-incorporation in post-Brexit Britain.

Based on a study of Polish migrants living in England and Scotland, this paper explores how Polish families who have decided to bring up their children in the UK make initial school choices. The Polish parents taking part in our study generally had low levels of social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986) upon arrival in the UK: they had limited networks (predominantly bonding capital) (Putnam 2000) and a poor command of English, and lacked basic knowledge of the British education system. Meanwhile, this is a highly complex system, very much different from the Polish one; moreover, school choice plays a much more important role within the UK system, especially at the level of secondary education. We found that while some parents acted as ‘disconnected choosers’ (Gewirtz, Ball and Bowe 1995) follow-ing the strategy they would use in Poland and simply enrolling their children in the nearest available school, others attempted to make an informed choice. In looking for schools, parents first and foremost turned to co-ethnic networks for advice and support; nevertheless, parents who attempted to make an informed choice typically lacked ‘insider knowledge’ and often held misconceptions about the British education system. The one feature of the system Polish parents were very much aware of, however, was the existence of Catholic schools; therefore, religious beliefs played a key role in school choice among Polish parents (with some seeking and others avoiding Catholic schools). The ‘active choosers’ also made choices based on first impressions and personal beliefs about what was best for their child (e.g. in terms of ethnic composition of the school) or allowed their children to make the choice. Parents of disabled children were most restricted in exercising school choice, as only certain schools cater for complex needs. All in all, the Polish parents in our sample faced similar barriers to BME (Black Minor-ity Ethnic) parents in exercising school choice in the UK and, regardless of their own levels of education, their school selection strategies resembled those of the British working class rather than of the middle class. However, the risk of ‘bad’ initial school choice may be largely offset by a generally strong pref-erence for Catholic schools and parents’ high educational ambitions for their children.

The issue of the educational system remains one of the crucial areas for the discussions pertaining to migrants’ integration and contemporary multicultural societies. Ever since the inception of compulsory schooling, children and youth have partaken in largely state-governed socialisation in schools, which provide not only knowledge and qualifications, but are also responsible for transferring the culture and values of a given society. Under this premise, the schooling system largely determines opportunities available to migrant children. This paper seeks to address the questions about the pathways to youth Polish migrant integration, belonging and achievement (or a lack thereof) visible in the context of the Norwegian school system. The paper draws on 30 interviews conducted in 2014 with Polish parents raising children abroad, and concentrates on the features of Norwegian school as seen through the eyes of Polish parents. Our findings show that the educational contexts of both sending and receiving socie-ties are of paramount importance for the understanding of family and parenting practices related to children’s schooling. In addition, we showcase the significance of Norwegian schools for children’s integration, illuminate the tensions in parental narratives and put the debates in the context of a more detailed analysis of the relations between school and home environments of migrant children. The paper relies on parental narratives in an attempt to trace and reflect the broader meanings of children’s education among Poles living abroad.

Poles are today the largest group of family immigrants to Norway. Since Polish immigration is an intra-Euro-pean movement of labour, there are no specific laws or regulations, apart from labour regulations, pertaining to the introduction of Polish families to Norway and their settlement there. Consequently, there are few guidelines in schools and local authorities on dealing with Polish children in school. They receive the same introduction to school as immigrants from any other background, with no considera-tion of the specific characteristics of Poles. Equally, their parents are not eligible for the orientation courses and language classes that are offered to adult asylum seekers or refugees. As these are expen-sive, many Polish parents postpone language classes until they can afford them or find alternative ways of learning language and culture. In this article, I explore the inclusion of Polish children in Norwegian schools through the voices of teachers receiving Polish children in their classrooms and Polish mothers of children attending school in Norway. Interviews with both teachers and mothers reveal inadequate understandings of each other’s conceptions of school, education and the roles of home and school in the education of children. They also demonstrate a limited understanding of culturally bound interpre-tations of each other’s actions. Although both sides are committed to the idea of effective integration, we risk overlooking the social and academic challenges that Polish children face in Norwegian schools unless conceptions and expectations of school and education are articulated and actions are explained and contextualised. There is also a risk that cultural differences will be perceived as individual prob-lems, while real individual problems may be overlooked due to poor communication between schools and families. The data is drawn from an extended case study including classroom observations, inter-views with teachers and Polish mothers in Norway, and focus groups of educators and researchers in the field of social work.

This article discusses and expands on two related issues. The first is the unexplored reasons for the departure of Polish migrant women: the forced migration phenomenon. The author describes the system behind forced migration as created at the intersections not only of care, gender and migration regimes but also of legal regimes. Second, the author points out that the close relation between forced migration and the process of ‘unbecoming a wife in the transnational context’ creates a distinctive type of trans-national motherhood experience. In order to explain the specificity of these types of experiences better the author introduces a new typology of transnational motherhood biographies. The case study of Al-dona is representative of the experiences of some Polish women in the period under study, 1989–2010.

This article, through the prism of immigration policy models proposed by Stephen Castles (1995), Steven Weldon (2005) and Liah Greenfeld (1998), discusses those aspects of Norwegian immigration policy that refer directly to children. Areas such as employment, education, housing and health care influence the situation of an immigrant family, which in turn affects the wellbeing of a child. However, it is the education system and the work of Child Welfare Services that most directly influence a child’s position. Analysis presented in this article is based on the White Paper to the Norwegian Parliament, and data that were obtained in expert interviews and ethnographic observation in Akershus and Buskerud area in Norway, conducted between 2012 and 2014. The article raises the question whether the tools of im-migration policy used by social workers and teachers lead to integration understood as an outcome of a pluralist or individualistic-civic model of immigration policy or are rather aimed at assimilation into Norwegian society, attempting to impose the effect of assimilation or the collectivistic-civic policy model.

The article provides a sociological analysis of national identities of Polish children growing up in Nor-way. The research results presented are unique in the sense that the portrayals of national identifica-tions constructed in the process of migration are shown through direct experiences of children. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with children, observation in the research situation (children’s rooms) and Sentence Completion Method. Adopting Antonina Kłoskowska’s analytical framework of national identity and her terminology of the so called ‘cultural valence’ (adoption of cul-ture), we argue that identities are processual and constructed, a result of the fact that mobility took place at a certain moment in time and in a specific geographical space. In addition, we see identities as conditioned by a plethora of identifiable objective and subjective reasons. The intensified mobility of children due to labour migrations of their parents leads to multiple challenges within the (re)construc-tions of children’s identities in their new place of settlement.

Workplaces have become increasingly diverse as a result of migration and other socio-economic changes in Europe. In the light of post-2004 migration, many Polish migrants find themselves in work-places where multiculture is an everyday lived experience. By drawing on narrative interviews conducted with Polish migrant women in Manchester and Barcelona, this paper focuses on the complexities of interaction with other ethnic groups at work, demonstrating various forms of conviviality. The study reveals more and less meaningful forms of contact at work including workplace friendships, light-hearted forms of conviviality characterised by the interplay of language and humour, relations based on care and respect for difference, as well as forced encounters marked by superficial and involuntary interaction. The findings show that while workplace can be a place of meaningful interaction, it can also involve conflict and tensions. The narratives illustrate that workplace relations can be influenced by the dynamics of gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic circumstances and immigration discourses. The paper contributes analytically and empirically to the understanding of different forms of encounters in the workplace.

This study analyses and compares the fertility behaviour and childbearing plans of Polish migrant fam-ilies in Ireland and those of their counterparts – families in Poland. The study has a comparative and explanatory character and applies both quantitative and qualitative methods. The analysis is based on the author’s own data collected from an online survey of Polish family units in Ireland in 2014 and compared with secondary data on families in Poland retrieved from the 2011 Gender and Generation Survey (GGS). My research reveals fertility postponement and fewer families with children among mi-grant families; nonetheless, migrant parents have more children than their counterparts in Poland. The results highlight the significance of socio-economic and institutional contexts. The study also reveals a dichotomisation of fertility strategies within the migrant population, with distinct differences in the number of children, transition age to parenthood, and further fertility intentions between migrants who became parents in Poland and those who did so after the move. The results also provide insights into the childbearing motivations and fertility patterns of recent Polish migrants and contribute to the dis-cussion of migrants’ fertility in general.

Recently, the issue of intercultural relations between immigrants and the host society has been widely discussed. Taking into account the increasing spatial mobility of non-EU foreigners, it seems highly important to examine their relations with the host community on the local level. This article presents the results of the qualitative study conducted in the first quarter of 2014 in the Lesznowola municipality (Mazowieckie province, Piaseczno district) in Poland. It aims at analysing the situation of the Vietnam-ese community and its engagement in the local life of the municipality and examine attitudes of both Vietnamese and Poles towards prospects for granting local voting rights to migrants in Poland. Through several years of successful business and social cooperation, the Vietnamese immigrants have become a recognisable part of the social landscape of the municipality. The degree of social and political par-ticipation at the local level on the part of the Vietnamese community has also increased, which can be observed, for example, through such practical indicator as cooperation with local educational institu-tions. Therefore, we can argue that the Vietnamese community has been transforming itself from a marginalised and self-sufficient homogeneous group into more and more self-aware and active socio-political group of actors.

This article discusses the professional careers of foreign scholars in Krakow, one of the leading academic centres in Poland and a regional ‘silicon valley’ (toutes proportions gardées). Central and Eastern Europe is understudied as an immigration region for highly skilled migrants (HSMs). To bridge this gap, we concentrate on three interrelated topics: (a) the perception of Polish science and its infrastruc-ture; (b) careers of international staff employed in Polish academia; and (c) their perception of their achievements in Poland. Foreign scholars come to Poland for various reasons. Two of the most important are the cultural proximity between Poland and their country of origin, and research interests focused directly in Poland. Our findings show that Poland attracts first and foremost scholars with average scientific achievements. We discuss major problems they encounter (e.g., shortage of funds, uncomfortable office space, restricted access to books and papers) and their expectations of life in a semi-periphery country. The paper is mainly based on in-depth interviews with 23 foreign scholars working full time at four universities in Krakow and, as a secondary source, on the analysis of websites of these universities.

This article looks at the mobility of highly skilled female migrants from the perspective of the post-socialist semi-peripheral countries in Eastern Europe. It analyses chosen aspects of the biographical experiences of highly skilled women from three post-USSR republics bordering the European Union – namely Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia – in Poland, a post-socialist country itself but also an EU member-state. The empirical analysis focuses on their lifestyle changes and choices, made through the experience of living in a new, though quite familiar Polish culture, which is both more emancipated (Western) while, at the same time, pertaining to some of the familiar (Eastern) patterns. Due to this liminal nature of the host country, the adaptation process of migrants is easier and comes at a lower biographical cost. In the analysis, I explore two notions: the gender roles renegotiation and the changes in the women’s approach towards the external manifestations of femininity, which I contrast with their reflections of the changes undergone. As for the gender role renegotiation, three main approaches were described varying by the degree to which the old, familiar patterns are maintained. In terms of the external notions of femininity, while taking care of one’s looks is still an observable element of the migrants’ identity, they do take advantage of the wider spectrum of options available in the host society, and try to blend in with the casual big-city crowd. The article was written on the basis of empirical material in the form of twenty in-depth, unstructured interviews, which were confronted with the selected subject literature.

The aim of this article is to examine how family policies contribute to changes in family practices and towards gender equality in families. Empirically we draw on interviews with two groups of Polish-born parents: Polish parents who have migrated to Norway and Polish parents living in Poland. Norway and Poland are relevant cases for our exploration because they represent different types of welfare states, which have followed different paths towards their current family policy package. In our analysis of actual work–family adaptations we found a convergence towards gender-equal dual-earner/dual-carer arrangements in both groups, although there were differences in the level of agency. Polish parents in Poland felt less entitled to use the measures available to them, and sometimes refrained from using them, compared to Polish parents in Norway who expressed a strong sense of agency in using family policy measures to create a good life in Norway and as part of a project of change towards more gender-equal sharing of work and care responsibilities. The analysis confirms the strong link between family practices and family policies, but also illustrates how the effect of policies on practices may be hampered or boosted by the wider historical-cultural context of the society in question. In conclusion, in analyses of the link between policy and practice it may be fruitful to distinguish between family policy packages – the concrete set of entitlements for working parents – and family policy regimes, meaning policies in their wider context, including migrancy as a mediating factor.

The use of welfare support by EU migrants has dominated media coverage and political debates about EU migration in the UK for several years, regularly featuring claims about the negative effects of the presence of EU migrants on the UK social security system. Such claims became particularly prominent in 2013–2015, during the UK government’s campaign to limit EU migrants’ access to UK welfare benefits and in debates prior to the Brexit referendum. This article sheds light on how Polish migrants position themselves concern-ing the claiming of welfare benefits in the UK and how this affects their welfare strategies. The article is based on 14 qualitative interviews conducted in Liverpool 18 months after the Brexit referendum. Using stigma and benefits stigma as an overall theoretical framework, we find that the informants, in their posi-tioning narratives, 1) put forward similar stigmatising expressions and stereotypes regarding the use of wel-fare as those featured by politicians and the media, which points to perceived abuse; 2) make a distinction between in-work and out-of-work benefits, the first being more acceptable than the second; 3) prefer living on savings or accepting ‘any job’ over making use of out-of-work benefits, which points to an underuse and/or to possible processes of marginalisation; and 4), a tendency among those who have experience with claiming out-of-work benefits to question the discourses of welfare abuse. Finally, ‘working’ and ‘contrib-uting’ to the system as opposed to relying on welfare support is perceived as a precondition to staying in the UK after Brexit – welfare and work are seen to signal very high stakes indeed.