Between inter-personal dynamics on one side and structural patterns on the other: bringing the context of sending societies into the perspective

The initial act of migration could be seen as a response to structural developments such as EU enlargement and the opening of the UK labour market. However the choice to migrate could be at least partially explained by the difficulties experienced in home countries in such areas as employment. The perceived shortcomings of sending countries could be as important as new possibilities created by EU enlargement: participants from CEE countries would explicitly state that unfavourable circumstances at home, particularly the unsatisfactory level of pay, had pushed them to migrate. This pattern was particularly prominent in the case of interviewed labour migrants from CEE. The context has been different for Northtown’s migrants originating from non EU countries. Many of them came as a result of ethnic conflicts and personal as well as collective (often violent) pressures. The analysis will primarily focus on EU migrants and discuss how structural conditions in sending countries impacted on their decisions to migrate. Alongside those macro structural factors, it will show how interpersonal relations within the family influenced participants’ reflections over the act of migration. It would be argued that structural socio-economic problems such as unemployment, underemployment and the unsatisfactory level of pay intertwined with family relations. The discussion will conclude with the review of migratory motives of Northtown’s migrants from non EU countries.

Participants’ narratives suggest that although the opening of the UK labour market has created the potential for legalised paid employment, the personal decision to use this opportunity could be seen as a response to unfavourable employment and wider socio-economic conditions in the new EU member states. While national, gender, age and social backgrounds of interviewees had differed, the theme of low level of pay in sending countries as a push factor in migration was shared by most CEE participants. The personal experience of unemployment and underemployment were also cited as the key reasons for migration.

Alina, a Polish labour migrant, claimed that for Polish migrants, whom she met while working in Northtown, the main motivation for migrating was the possibility to secure any kind of employment which could give a chance to earn higher wages when compared to the level available in sending countries:

If not for the money you get from work – the pay is better here, no one would come here at all…

This can look like a generalised assertion: the narratives of other participants have been more nuanced than such sweeping statements over the relation between the need to earn higher wages and individual causes of migration. At the same time, the importance of finding paid employment or any kind of employment was very high. For example, a Polish female interviewee Ludmila, who got MA degree in history, but could not find stable employment in Poland and eventually decided to migrate with her boyfriend, who found himself in a similar position, to Britain. It was a necessity to find paid employment which has determined her decision to leave her home country. This was not an isolated example, but a reoccurring theme to be found in the narratives of other participants coming from Poland. Even when participants had a stable and professional job – e.g. a job in such sectors as health and education, they would complain over the level of pay. For instance, a Polish interviewee Tadeusz, who undergone five years of medical education and training, started to work as a qualified nurse, and later as a manager with the public healthcare institution in Poland. However, neither his high level of education nor work experience could guarantee a desired level living for him and his family. It all came down to the unacceptably low level of pay. Hence Tadeusz decided to move:

I had worked for six months in a hospital as a male nurse. After that I worked as a manager in the department of public health. I worked and I worked, but work was so badly paid – I could not afford anything. So we decided to emigrate

Upon arriving to the UK, Tadeusz became an assistant to a carpenter rather than a health professional. From the retrospective point of view, the reality of low-wages and high living expenses could not be compensated by a successful career in health services in Poland. Subsequently, it resulted not only in the withdrawal from the

chosen profession but also in leaving the country of birth. The issue of family is also important – Tadeusz did not feel that he could act as an adequate breadwinner so he made the decision to move to the UK.

Similar trajectory was observed with other participants: for example, Jan, who was a physical education teacher, found the level of pay in Polish schools to be unacceptable and decided to move to Britain and look for any job which could bring higher income than those attainable in Poland. Jan was not tied by strong family obligations at the moment of his departure from Poland: he was divorced and made the decision to migrate on his own, though he continued financially to support his family from the first marriage. It should be noted that while the family status of participants was different and that the participants would bring it up while discussing their decisions to leave the country of origin, low wages in Poland were commonly cited by participants irrespective of their family status.

While prior to migration Tadeusz and Jan could still work in the occupations for which they were trained in Poland, this was not a route available to others. Witold, also from Poland, completed a university degree in transport studies. Whilst at the university he worked part-time to support himself. After graduating he could not find a job which would suit him in terms of pay and education. Similarly to Tadeusz, Witold turned to migration as an alternative:

I studied transport, the management of traffic in transport, but the job which I had didn’t allow me for any kind of development. It allowed me to survive on the minimal level without any career perspectives so I eventually quitted my job and became unemployed and I had to live on the unemployment benefit. Since I couldn’t find a job in my profession I had decided to go to England

This narrative points to the problems associated with low pay or complete exclusion from paid employment as the contexts in which the decision to migrate has been made. Witold also added that his family status – he was single and did not have a partner – in his own words he ‘was an old bachelor’, made his migratory decision-making more flexible. Though for him the elements of wider socio- economic context such as the lack of employment opportunities were central, such

reflections suggest that having or not having a partner and/or children is also important when it comes to individual acts of migration.

Tadeusz and Witold’s migratory trajectories are different, but one pattern is common, i.e. the unsatisfactory level of pay. For them, it failed to guarantee a desired level of living, whether they worked in the professions for which they were trained or not. In this sense, migration was not simply about the response to the opportunity created by Poland and other CEE countries’ entrance to the EU, but rather as a combination of the introduction of new mobility rights and the paucity of opportunities in the country of origin. However, while participants’ decision to migrate was affected by those structural contexts, it was also mediated by the nature of family relations. Tadeusz and Witold exemplify the type of migration conducted and initiated by men. But a reverse scenario also was possible: Karol also from Poland arrived to the UK after his wife found accommodation and employment. Karol, a former Polish language teacher, recognised that the level of pay was one of the main factors, but also pointed to the specific circumstances: he and his wife sought to generate funds for their daughter’s wedding.

When examining the narratives of non-Polish interviewees from other CEE countries, it was also possible to identify the interaction between structural (e.g. low wages) and family based underpinnings of migration. For instance, a Slovak migrant Vaclav came to England to study the language and stayed with his sister who already was living in a city closely located to Northtown. The decision to migrate can also be influenced by the encouragements made by friends: Irina, at the time of migration a single woman from a small town in Latvia was encouraged to go to the UK by a close family friend who told her about higher wages in the UK.

The role of family was particularly felt in chain migration, when participants would join their partners already working and living in Northtown. Being in a relationship had a strong impact on migratory decisions: those who were not single felt emotionally compelled to join their partners and spouses. The women were particularly affected. In the words of Regina from Poland:

Well, I came mostly because I was missing unbearably my husband, who came here simply in order to earn to feed the family. So one day I just grabbed our daughter and came here

Regina’s motivation was driven primarily by psychological distress caused by the separation. However it should be remembered that her husband migrated because of socio-economic reasons – the level of pay in the home country was not satisfactory. Moreover, while she emphasized that her decision was emotionally driven and to a degree spontaneous, she also said that she migrated with the daughter only when her husband found stable paid employment and accommodation, and when the level of his earnings was considerably higher than in Poland. From such examples it appears that the unsatisfactory level of pay pushed one of the spouses to migrate as well as contributed to chain migration of other family members. The unsatisfactory level of income and personal relations created the context in which the decision to migrate was made. This example alongside others suggests that individual acts of migration are formed in the process of interplay between the mechanisms of structural regulations such as migration regimes – EU enlargement, the dissatisfaction over the level of income in home countries and the relations within the family.

The stress on the importance of pre-migratory situation to the departure for the UK was not limited to the married couples with children, separated and single migrants. Younger people, single and cohabiting interviewees reported similar challenges. For some migration was also seen as the last resort: when all attempts to find relatively stable and decently paid work had been exhausted, only then one of partners would chose to leave for the UK.

The recollections of Malgosia about her partner Olgierd provide a vivid illustration. This is how Malgosia talks about Olgierd, his struggles to secure any kind of work and painful experiences he had to go through prior to migration:

Unfortunately, the reality in Poland was very cruel... Olgierd tried very hard, he even worked in physically demanding jobs... He did not want to return to Poland because he could not find work there... he could not see any future in Poland

Back in Poland, Olgierd was disadvantaged by being an orphan: the weakness of family network obstructed the access to the labour market. According to both of them, Olgierd had a chance to find paid employment only with the help of acquaintances. However, because he did not have parents or extended family, he faced a vicious circle of unemployment and underemployment. It meant that he could find work only on a temporary basis (sometimes for days rather than even weeks or months) and the nature of his employment contract was almost always informal. Such employment conditions led to all kinds of unending problems in employment relations which included the withholding of wages by employers and the dismissal without prior notice. Moreover, the type of work her could on temporary basis was primarily in the construction sector, where the work was physically difficult for him.

Olgierd said that he did not see for himself future in Poland. As a result, he considered migration to the UK to be a preferable alternative to the unappealing perspective of staying in Poland. His exclusion from the formal labour market and his desire to leave Poland affected his partner Malgosia. In Malgosia’s words, she was very much in love and did not want to be separated from him. As a member of a household she was affected by her partner’s exclusion from the labour market and any legal form of paid employment. Here again one can notice the set of complex interactions between structural domain and personal relations within the household.

Even when participants could rely on extended family network back in sending countries in finding employment, they still could feel dissatisfied and could choose to migrate. Even when there was a possibility to find employment via extended family network, some participants would still choose to migrate. The reliance on family as the exclusive option in finding employment could lead to the formation of personal tensions, as it happened to one Polish couple – Alina and Lech. In Alina’s words,

My husband worked for a couple of years in my parents’ company – they have a family business. He had enough of it, you can imagine how difficult relations within

the family can be. He said that he needed to find something different or to wait for any other opportunity.

Such opinion would suggest that the decision to migrate could be explained not simply by the availability of work or the level of pay but by interpersonal dynamics within the family. While Alina did not say it directly, she implied that her husband could not find work outside the family network. The sense of dependency and family pressure made the work in the wife’s family small firm psychologically distressing for Alina’s husband. Moreover, Lech was not content with the idea of Alina to move to the capital city of Warsaw from their city of Bydgoszcz. Lech felt that while Alina because of her education and skills had a reasonable chance of finding work in civil society organizations, for him the access to the capital’s labour market would be more complicated. So when their family friend proposed to work in a retail store in the UK, Lech decided to take the offer. His wife and their two children have joined him later after his employment situation became more stable. Similarly to the narratives of other participants, the decision to migrate was a complex combination of family and work related reasons rather than a mono- casual process of movement of people exercising EU citizenship rights.

The discussion so far points to the following interpretation. The interaction between the macro context – severe employment problems in CEE countries such as Poland and the possibility to migrate to high income country and the meso- context - the relations within the family and extended kinship networks (e.g. friends and co-ethnics), which led to the departure for the UK and settlement in Northtown. Participants have been often joined by their family members after they have managed to secure paid employment and find accommodation in Northtown. The narratives show that family ties and personal affections were very important influencing factors, when it came to the subsequent migration of family members. The narratives also indicate that there was a gendered dimension: female interviewees felt compelled to join their male partners. While men in relationships left home countries because of socio-economic reasons, at least three Polish female interviewees stressed the emotional aspect. They felt that they had to join their partners in order to preserve personal relationships.

The other influential factor prompting families to migrate was related to the price of living; participants repeatedly mentioned that the level of pay in sending countries was not acceptable to them. It was also pointed out that, while the wages in CEE countries were considerably lower than in the UK, the cost of consumer goods was often similar or even sometimes higher. The interviewees noticed higher prices for food, but also the absence of affordable high street retailers such as Primark in home countries. For instance, Ludmila from Western Polish city of Torun, said that one simply could not purchase new clothing items such as jeans in Poland for the prices existing on the UK high street – it was more expensive in Poland. This daily realities of inability to afford to purchase basic consumption items combined with already low level of pay acted as principal structural factors creating outward migration from CEE. The difference in income between CEE countries and the UK was also felt during migrants’ short-term trips to home countries: participants told that they were viewed with the resentment by some friends and relatives who stayed behind and were jealous about higher income achieved by migrants in Britain. Two female participants from Poland – Ludmila and Alina were particularly adamant in expressing their frustrations with such attitudes; they would also say that people demonstrating such attitudes did not have any idea of what kind of sacrifices migrants had to make by taking low status jobs in the UK and spending long working hours performing jobs which they found inferior in terms of status when compared to their pre-migratory working experiences or the level of their education.

The analysis of narratives of Polish participants, but also some testimonies of participants from Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia suggests that they have left their home countries for a number of reasons: while the paucity of socio-economic opportunities (the level of pay being the central one) was not the exclusive motive of migration, it was noticeable for its commonality – migrants either directly cited it or mentioned it in relation to migration of their family members.

Some participants not only limited themselves to describing the push factors of migration, but made broader judgements over the state of societies left behind. Interviewees have shown a deep-seated sense of bewilderment and frustration