Anne White
6. Civility, legal consciousness and trust
If life is becoming easier for many Poles, this is partly related to more pre-dictability and pleasanter experiences when dealing with officials, and better overall customer service (cf. chapter 4). Arcimowicz (2015, 252–8) describes a related process of ‘Americanisation’ of office management.
There is also more respect for legality and less corruption,2 and a gen-erally stronger feeling of agency among ordinary citizens than under communist party rule. Higher expectations of honesty and polite and responsible behaviour from strangers can be witnessed, especially com-pared with the ‘wild capitalism’ of the early 1990s, and this is in accordance with the theory that ‘generalised trust flourishes in democracies’ (Uslaner 1999, 123). Growing wealth in Poland is also important, since poor soci-eties everywhere are often less trusting; for example, Portugal shows similarly low levels of trust to most countries in CEE, compared with richer north-western Europe (Sztabiński and Sztabiński 2014). However, there are strong countercurrents. Many varieties of informal practice are still rife, both among individuals and employers, with an increase in precari-ous work (Boulhol 2014). Poles remain generally sceptical about improve-ments in trustworthiness. In 2014, for example, Poles were much more likely to think that Poles were less honest than they had been in 1989, with 47 per cent believing they were more dishonest, and only 14 per cent they were more honest (Boguszewski 2014a, 93).
Surveys suggest that in specific respects Poles are overcoming com-munist legacies of evading the law. Kubal (2012), in her study of ‘socio- legal integration’ among Poles in the United Kingdom, concludes that to some extent respect for the law is enhanced there, and that Poles return to Poland more convinced that law-abiding behaviour makes sense. For example, Poles increasingly disapprove of motorists speeding (Boguszewski 2013b, 6). This could be linked to many factors, such as road safety cam-paigns, but Kubal (2012, 2015), Galent, Goddeeris and Niedźwiedzki (2009, 60) and Garapich (2016b) all agree that the habit of safer driving does constitute a social remittance.3 Garapich reports that,
according to many respondents, this [safer driving] is the main thing that Poles ought to bring from Britain. . . . Migrants very often emphasise that it seems things in that domain are changing in Poland and that their (migrants’) attitudes may be playing a part in that pro-cess. This is of course very difficult to determine, but the very fact that migrants are so eager to stress the difference and then argue
that change in Poland is highly necessary and is slowly happening, suggests that they are implicit agents in that process, albeit met with strong resistance.
He quotes an interviewee who had returned from London and constantly argues with his friend in Sokółka over the latter’s refusal to wear a seat belt (2016b, 163–4).
Improved health and safety in work settings, implying more sense of responsibility towards the public, is also a sphere in which progress stems largely from enactment and enforcement of regulations, but also depends for success on cultural change. Such change can sometimes result from migration experience. For example, Leszek, a 33-year-old return migrant interviewed in Wrocław, observed:
In Poland a builder is normally expected to do everything. He has to do the wiring, put in the pipes, deal with the plumbing. Gener-ally the whole lot . . . I liked it better in London because you didn’t feel pressurised to do different things. I came and painted the walls, that was my job. I had to plaster and paint, and then the plumber and electrician would come and do their bit. . . . Although slowly things are changing in Poland . . . I think it’s because there’s more emphasis on health and safety.
Eugeniusz, a Grajewan forester, who had also been a construction worker, remarked that:
When I was in Germany I got to know the technology, how work was organised. I brought those things back to Poland. . . . A few friends had [also] been able to work in German forests back then. And when they returned to Poland they worked for me. So I had enough experienced and useful people. . . . People who knew what they were doing. They knew how to be careful. Working in Poland, it was the same. None of us, I or any of my employees, ever had an accident.
Eugeniusz backed up his account with a story about working for a Polish construction company in Białystok which made balconies not fit to carry weight. ‘That’s Polish mentality. You can’t imagine it happening abroad.
I learned a lot. Taking a more responsible approach to things.’
Many of my interviewees in Poland and the United Kingdom, as well as Poles quoted by other scholars (e.g. Burrell 2011a, 1026; Galasińska 2010b, 315), expressed the wish that in Poland people would behave in a
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friendlier and often, by extension, more helpful and socially responsible way towards strangers and subordinates. This relates partly to customer service and more transparency and civility in workplaces, but mostly to behaviour on the street – smiling and offering help – which is connected to trust in strangers. Iwona (Bristol, 2009, from Warsaw) made a typical observation: ‘Have you noticed that if you go somewhere where Poles are sitting they don’t smile? When you were in our [Polish] club, the women weren’t smiling? Only English women smile! In the UK, when people go somewhere where children are playing, they smile.’ Grabowska, Garapich, et al. (2017, 122) recount the story of a migrant to London who, on a visit home to a local government office in Sokółka, ‘started to count people who smiled on entering the place with predictable outcome: one in ten smil-ing’. In other cases the impression of more goodwill abroad may simply reflect moving from a busy city in Poland to a smaller place abroad; the comparison is nonetheless framed as between a friendly foreign country and unfriendly Poland. For example, Edyta, who had moved from Wrocław to Bath and whom I interviewed in 2009, commented, ‘In general, people are friendlier. . . . In Poland they are run off their feet, they are hostile [‘look at each other like wolves’] because they never have enough time. But here somehow life is more peaceful.’
As illustrated in the following two quotations, some interviewees suggest that Poland could not become more relaxed; others assert that attitudes are already being transferred:
Everyone [in Germany] was more helpful, more willing and quicker to help. I remember there was a situation where I was cycling to the [village] shop and my chain fell off and I couldn’t fix it. And a man at once asked me what had happened, and I said the chain had fallen off, and he helped me. I think that in Poland a couple of people would have to come by before maybe one of them – but he was the first per-son I met. . . . It’s simply a different culture. Germans are simply more open, Poles are more closed. (Oliwia, Lublin)
Later in the interview, I hazarded the idea that ‘life is changing in Poland’, but Oliwia retorted that ‘perhaps it’s changing on television’. In contrast, Marta, a returnee from Ireland (interviewed in English), commented in 2011 that she had noticed Warsaw society becoming more trustful and helpful as a result of migration:4
The culture is different, people are more friendly in Ireland, they are open, they talk to you on the street, the bus stop and everywhere.
Here, people are more reserved and not so helpful. . . . [However,]
I think that in Warsaw people are more friendly [than in other parts of Poland] because there are many young people who are not like that who know how it is like to be abroad and they bring some good types of behaviour from there.
Marta’s impressions of the contrast between Ireland and Poland are not unique. Only 9 per cent of Polish respondents chose answers at the ‘help-ful’ end of the scale (points 7–10) in reply to the 2004 European Social Survey question, ‘Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are mostly looking out for themselves?’ This compared with 54 per cent of respondents in Ireland. By 2014, the figure for Poland demonstrated a slight increase in expectations of helpfulness, up to 13 per cent (Czapiński 2007, 259; Czapiński 2015b, 334).5
Failure to smile is just the tip of the iceberg, according to many inter-viewees. It signals a wider base of reproving attitudes, distrust and hos-tility between Poles. On the one hand, it links to a generally less relaxed atmosphere said to prevail in Poland. For example, Sławomir, a 60-year-old pensioner from Warsaw with two children living abroad, suggested in 2016:
We’re too up-tight (sztywno) in Poland . . . Maybe a bit less now because we have lots of contact with abroad, on television, people behave more naturally. In Poland they’re always saying, ‘Don’t!’
(Nie wypada!). But now there are lots of things in Poland because of those foreign contacts, going abroad people see what it’s like in foreign countries and they imitate it.
More seriously, failure to smile is interpreted as mistrust. Poles notice and comment upon examples of trustfulness by foreigners, but sometimes only to say how unsuitable this behaviour would be in Poland. For example, interviewees in my own and other projects (e.g. Grabowska, Garapich, et al. 2017, 114; Galent, Goddeeris and Niedźwiedzki 2009, 118–19) have mentioned west European householders’ readiness to trust their house keys to Polish cleaners and builders. Both Kubal (2015, 77) and I heard surprised comments about Norwegians not locking their cars.
Levels of trust remain low in Poland. To some extent this is a legacy from the communist period (Sztompka 1999), but it is also connected to lower levels of prosperity and social cohesion in CEE than in the West.
However, polls in Poland since EU accession mostly show rising levels of generalised trust.6 In 1994, 8 per cent of Poles believed that ‘generally
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speaking, you can trust most people’ (Sztompka 1999, 170). By 2004 the number had risen to 17 per cent, and by 2008–10 there had been a sharp rise, to 26 per cent, thereafter falling back slightly to 23 per cent in 2016.
Trust specifically in strangers, however, was fairly constant (with 32–35 per cent trusting strangers to some extent) throughout the period from 2004 (Omyła-Rudzka 2016b, 2–3). The rising CBOS figures are similar to those in World Values Survey Polish data for 2005 and 2012 (WVS). A one-off and much larger GUS survey on social cohesion (GUS 2015b) showed trust in strangers slightly higher, at 39 per cent.7
Since trust is correlated with prosperity and higher levels of educa-tion, it is not surprising to find it rising, at least somewhat, after 2004. This was a time when incomes were rising fast for many Poles, income inequal-ity was declining, general life satisfaction was increasing and more Poles were acquiring university degrees. However, of course there remain many poor and less well-educated people. There is also an almost8 direct corre-lation between trust and size of place of residence, with villages the least trusting and the big cities the most (Omyła-Rudzka 2016b, 6). I inter-viewed some highly mistrustful stayers in the small towns of Sanok, Gra-jewo and Limanowa. Usually tales of cheating locally referred to employers failing to pay their workers, for example as cleaners or builders, although very occasionally a wider generalisation was made about ‘Poles’. In Grajewo in 2008, for example, Bogusława explained the poverty of a rel-ative who was a car repair mechanic as follows (translated literally): ‘Our people, the Poles, are conmen (kombinatorzy). They take the car and promise to pay tomorrow, but they don’t.’
Trust is important for migrants, especially non-professionals who depend heavily on informal networks both to migrate and also to operate abroad. However, disentangling how migration affects overall levels of trust in Poland is complex, since competing influences are at play. Migrants often need to be trusting, if they rely on co-ethnics abroad, so migration may strengthen particularised trust, when networks are used successfully.
On the other hand, migration can promote mistrust. Sometimes this has a basis in fact: betrayal by previously trusted personal contacts. However, probably more important in forming generalised distrust is the prevalent discourse about the need to be careful when accessing the precious resource of help from fellow Poles. A discourse of hostility among Poles abroad – relating to Poles other than family and close friends – is docu-mented by numerous scholars writing about Polish networks (e.g. Garapich 2016c; Gill 2010; Grzymała-Kazłowska 2005; Krasnodębska 2012; Piętka 2011, 149; Ryan 2010; White and Ryan 2008; White 2017, 185–8).
Some migrants base their mistrust on experience of types of work where undercutting and sharp practices are prevalent, such as construction and seasonal agricultural work, particularly in the shadow economy; con-versely, some educational and professional migrants may never encoun-ter the discourse.9 However, judging from the number of times interviewees volunteered such opinions (for which I never ‘fished’), mistrust seems widespread even among those who have not had bad experiences of their own.
Distrust is encapsulated in the saying, ‘Poles behave like wolves towards other Poles’ (Polak Polakowi wilkiem), referred to indirectly by Edyta above. Garapich (2016c, 243) writes that he lost count of the num-ber of times Polish journalists asked him to comment on this proverb. He refers to the ‘myth of the Polish conman’ (2016c, 241–51), although the problem is often framed as being one of envious malevolence, not cheat-ing. For example, I was told by a Pole in the United Kingdom that it must have been his Polish neighbours who slandered him to the tax authorities, because only Poles would be envious enough to do this.
Poles who go abroad without having had much contact with Polish migrants in advance, for example because they lived in Polish cities, may be generally mistrustful before leaving Poland, but nonetheless only become aware abroad of the opinion that Poles are dangerous to know.
Malwina, interviewed in Wrocław, commented on how, after they arrived,
‘our [Polish London] friends said a Pole would drown another Pole in a spoonful of water, to stop him being better’.10 The power of the myth is illustrated by the fact that young people from well-off backgrounds who go abroad, being apparently quite trusting, can become less so. For exam-ple, Jacek, aged 28, from Wrocław, expatiated on hostile discourse among Poles in Norway, and then described how his Norwegian employer asked him to recommend a Polish friend for a job. Jacek decided he would not, on the supposition – not backed with evidence – that a Pole might be unre-liable. He concluded that the myth ‘did play a bit of a role’ in influencing his behaviour.
Stayers who live in strong transnational social fields in Poland, and feel migration savvy, can imbibe the assumption that Polish migrants are wolves merely by living in Poland – even in Warsaw, with its high levels of generalised trust. Grzegorz, a student aged 21, had been socialised by his older relatives in London:
Lots of people complain it’s best for Poles abroad to avoid other Poles. In fact you can see it in Poland too. A Pole always wants to do
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down other Poles. . . . I’ve lived here [in Poland] quite a while and really, people aren’t nice in Poland. People are envious, they just love to make life hard for others.
These discourses especially circulate in locations where many people migrate, and can be said to constitute part of the migration culture. Even people with limited personal transnational networks believe the myth. For instance, Grażyna, a 39-year-old kitchen help from Sanok with no migra-tion experience, commented, ‘Polish people, sometimes, well, as they say, it can be better to be among foreigners. Because a Pole could be out to get you because he says “You’re earning more money and I’m getting worse money and you only just came.” ’ In an interesting parallel, Krasnodębska (2012, 129) illustrates how women from Silesia are upset to find a lack of specifically Silesian co-ethnic solidarity. One of her interviewees lamented:
‘Most of all I was pained by the lack of solidarity among Silesians . . . If I hadn’t seen for myself how people change abroad, I’d never have believed it.’
There seems to be circular causation: migrants bring generalised mistrust from Poland; this becomes more specific abroad because of the discourse – not necessarily backed up by first-hand experience – of wolf-ish Poles; and, through their negative reports back to stayers, migrants reinforce mistrust of Polish strangers in Poland. However, it is also impor-tant to note that, judging from my own interviews, small towns are already full of stories of cheating foreign employers and recruiting agents. These feed into overall mistrust of strangers, of whatever nationality.