Methodology and comments on studying small towns and rural areas compared with cities

Chapters 7–10 are based on all my Polish migration research projects; fur-ther detail about the methodology can be found in the publications refer-enced in table  7.1 below. In chapters  7–10, dates of interviews are mentioned for interviewees from Grajewo, Warsaw, Bath and Bristol because interviews in those locations were conducted in various years. For other locations, the dates of quoted interviews are as follows: Sanok (2008), Limanowa (2013), Wrocław, Łódź and Lublin (2016). My first three projects investigated labour markets, livelihood strategies and migration patterns in Poland, focusing mostly on small towns and sur-rounding rural areas, and using in-depth interviews to explore the views of stayers, including return migrants. I also commissioned an opinion poll that surveyed men and women in towns and villages across the Podkar-pacie region (omitting the capital, Rzeszów) about their views on chil-dren’s and parents’ migration. It was while analysing this poll that I became curious about social remittance effects, since these seemed a pos-sible explanation for the more radical, less gender-stereotyped responses given by returnees from the United Kingdom (White 2017, 91–2). Addi-tional types of migration impact were revealed by my in-depth interviews,

Table 7.1 Author’s research projects, used for chapters 7–10 Project titleMethodology and sample size ‘Polish families and migration since EU accession’, 2006–9Opinion poll (1,101 respondents), Podkarpacie, 2008. 115 in-depth interviews in Poland and UK: 82 in small towns in Poland (2007 Kłodawa, Gniezno, villages around Poznań (9); Suwałki and Ełk (9); 2008 Grajewo (Podlasie) and Sanok (54); 2009 Grajewo (10)), 33 in Bath, Bristol, Frome and Trowbridge. The 102 interviewees were all working-class mothers, including 19 return migrants. 13 interviews were repeat interviews. (See White 2017, 15–20 and appendices.) ‘Polish double return migration’, 2010–1232 interviews with return migrants, 50:50 f/m, different ages, backgrounds, 20 in Poland (Warsaw, Poznań and Grajewo); 12 in UK (Bristol, Bath and Weston-super-Mare). (See White 2014a, 26.) ‘Long-term unemployment and migration’, 201336 interviews with unemployed people (28f/8m) including 18 return migrants in Limanowa (Małopolska). (See White 2016a, 411.) ‘The impact of migration on social change in Poland’, 2015–1646 interviews with 49 people (30f/19m, different ages and backgrounds) in 2015: Wrocław (4); and in 2016: Wrocław (20), Łódź (3), Warsaw (8) and Lublin (12), including 22 return migrants.

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as well as by other types of ethnographic research – interviews at job cen-tres, schools, newspaper offices and other local institutions; documentary and media analysis; walks around the fieldwork sites; and casual conver-sations with local residents. For example, it was only through such research that I could solve the puzzle, my main research question in 2006–9, of why so many Polish parents took their children to live with them abroad after 2004. In small towns where one-parent migration on a mass scale before 2004 had profound emotional impact, it was understandable that parents took advantage of new opportunities for family reunification abroad or migration all together.

I had complemented the interviews in Poland with some in the United Kingdom, with migrants from villages, towns and cities all over Poland, and with participant observation as a volunteer teacher of Eng-lish to parents at PoEng-lish Saturday schools (continuing at the time of writ-ing). For my second project, on return migration, I also included some interviews in the cities of Warsaw and Poznań. Conversations with Polish city dwellers piqued my curiosity about how, and the extent to which, migration patterns and impact really differed between cities and small towns. Polish scholarship had to date mostly focused on small towns (e.g.

Cieślińska 1997; Osipowicz 2002; and Warsaw University Centre of Migra-tion Research ethnosurveys). An excepMigra-tion is Gorzelak (2008a), Polska lokalna 2007, a study of Polish social change across a range of towns and cities, which frequently mentions migration in passing. My most recent research project (2015–6) therefore looked for evidence of migration’s impact on social change in Polish cities, to understand how and why they might differ from small towns and villages. The project included mapping Polish trends through reading sociological literature, so I began the inter-views with some sense of what to look for, although there were obviously far too many potential trends to discuss them all with everyone. Hence interviews were hardly structured, to give interviewees space to talk, and for me to find out what they considered important. Food and travel emerged as topics on which I gathered many comments, while other consumption practices such as cars and fashion, which do mark out social status in Poland (see, e.g. Goryszewski 2014), were not mentioned as frequently, so do not feature in the discussion below.

The overarching trend for households all over Poland to become immersed in transnational social fields was amply illustrated even in the largest and more prosperous cities such as Wrocław. In some cases, poorer city neighbourhoods constitute ‘migration hotspots’ – places with high volumes of migration where transnational social fields are very intense (White 2016d). Lucyna, a trainee probation officer, commented, ‘There

are parts of the city where every family contains someone who has migrated (wyjechał) to England or who migrates (jeździ) to Germany, that’s how they manage. . . . It’s often their only survival strategy.’ Jacek, between jobs and aged 28, reminisced, ‘From those poorer families, the ones who always hung around in the playground, made trouble and so on, most [of my schoolfriends] went abroad. They had problems, debts, and from what I hear most of them are in England, in Holland, and they’re probably settled there.’

Migration hotspots can also be found among certain social groups, irrespective of geographical location. For example, I found that Eng-lish-language classes for retired people in Wrocław were full of parents of adult children abroad. Other hotspots are the Poland-based social net-works of migrants who participated in the exodus of young Poles around 2004. Not everyone in cities is aware of these networks, but where net-works still exist they can form intense transnational fields. Participants are no longer poor students, but working people in their thirties able to make frequent visits in either direction, keeping the networks alive. I found examples in both Poznań and Lublin. For instance:

The links have lasted for nearly 15 years . . . with the same inten-sity as when we were students together . . . I don’t see any evidence that the ties are weaker, in any sense. . . . There is still the same intensity of interest in each other, in their relations, as when they were students. . . . It’s kept up by mutual visits and taking part in the same events as they always did in Poland. For example, concerts together, bands, going to football matches together, going to pubs and clubs, and they have the money to do it. It’s only 2–3 hours from Lublin to London. (Maryla, 39, Lublin, on her male university friends, some of whom emigrated c.2002)

Small transnational fields exist everywhere among family members of Polish migrants, even if those family members do not have many friends or neighbours living abroad. If the family members are on close terms with Polish migrants, these mini-fields can be central in their lives. For instance, when I asked Agata (Wrocław), a student whose father had been work-ing in Germany for 12 years, how he had changed as a result, she said that whenever he returned he would continually be mentioning Germany in conversation and drawing comparisons. Stayers are inevitably forced to think about these comparisons, and those who visit friends and family abroad find themselves thinking in the same way. Iwona (Lublin), when asked how her everyday life was changed by having friends and family in

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Italy, said, ‘How we remind each other, “But in Italy! It was like that! Do you remember?” ’