Migration and changing trends in families and gender roles: Reflections on intersecting factors

Since the 1990s, Polish society has undergone deep, complex and multi-dimensional change, affecting every sphere of life and all social organisa-tions and instituorganisa-tions, including families. Social change can be understood as changing models of behaviour, social relations and social structures and institutions (Sztompka 2005, 22). Different strands of change are inter-connected, since economic restructuring and political reform have also had an impact on social and cultural processes. Figure  6.1 shows the

intersecting contexts of family change in Poland, to help understand how migration links with wider patterns of change. Migration results from changes in each sphere, but it also causes change. Figure 6.1 helps demon-strate how migration is particularly important for causing change in some sections of society and prompts reflection about why some families and their members are more affected than others by migration-related change.

For example, if a poor family (Circle 1) from a poor region negatively affected by the transition to a market economy (Circle 2) with more con-ventional and religious views (Circle 3) adopts a more democratic family model this is more likely to be the result of migration than in the case of well-educated wealthy families from big cities, who have a greater number of different, non-migration related reasons to adopt more liberal views.

As suggested in Circle 1, how families function is related most impor-tantly to their specific characteristics, particularly whether or not they include children; the socio-economic status of family members; social

MIGRATION

Circle 3: Sociocultural factors:

processes of individualisation and privatisation of family life,

women’s involvement in movements for gender equality, family as a social value, Mother-Pole model, influence of the Catholic

Church.

Circle 2: Economic and political structures: neoliberal economic system, peripheral position (globally) of the Polish economy,

(until recently) limited scope of social policy, including family

policy. Influence of the EU.

Growth in higher education.

Circle 1: Characteristics of individual families: members’ age, sex, education, place of residence, parental status, personality traits,

income, social capital.

Fig. 6.1 Contexts of social changes relating to migration and families in Poland today. Source: Own elaboration.

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support networks (including migration networks) within the extended family; and the agency and personality traits of family members (e.g.

resourcefulness, openness, ambition). Family composition helps shape the destiny of individual households. However, changing family composition – as documented above, often a departure from the conventional model of the married couple with children, surrounded by extended family and living in Poland  –  is also a consequence of social change in Poland, including migration-related change.

With regard to Circle 2, neoliberal reforms since 1989 have included the retraction of state services, the transfer of caring responsibilities to individuals and families, and the spread of precarious and insecure work, all of which make it harder to combine work and family life (Charkiewicz 2009; Charkiewicz and Zachorowska-Mazurkiewicz 2009; Hryciuk and Korolczuk 2015). This latter tendency is enhanced by Poland’s peripheral location within the global economy (Urbański 2014). The transition to a market economy also created fear of unemployment, and state benefits have been modest until very recently. One consequence has been that many couples have hesitated to have children (Hardy 2010; Kotowska 2014; Szelewa 2015). The general democratisation of family life – the introduction of a partner-like family model and the diffusion among all social classes of the model of engaged fatherhood (Hobson and Fahlen 2009; Sikorska 2009; Slany, Pustułka and Ślusarczyk 2016; Suwada 2016) – is inhibited by the demands of the labour market, which often require fathers to work very long hours (Boulhol 2014, 6).

These obstacles to gender equality combine with conservative cul-tural opposition, notably in the context of the so-called ‘gender war’ since 2011. Circle 3 refers to sociocultural conditions. These include the still influential ideal of the self-sacrificing Mother-Pole (Hryciuk and Korol-czuk 2012; Titkow, Duch and Budrowska 2004). In the words of Hryciuk and Korolczuk (2012, 7), this is ‘personal role model, stereotype . . . and fantasy’. It is part of the identity of Polish women and their cultural capi-tal, but it also has an ‘exclusionary character [for women who cannot live up to the ideal], and its reproduction is entangled in the hierarchy of social power relations’. As various research has demonstrated, the role of Mother-Pole is both contested and reproduced, including by transnational families. The Catholic Church actively promotes a traditional family model in Poland. According to the Church, women are responsible for the home and children. The Church hierarchy frequently speaks out against gender equality and influences the attitudes of many believers, as well as politi-cians responsible for forming state policy (Jacobsson and Korolczuk 2017;

Szelewa 2015, 123).

For most Poles the family, as mentioned above, remains the most important social value. However, since 1989 Poland has become much less a society of families, and individuals have acquired more personal free-dom (see also chapter 8 on the individualisation of religion). Economic changes are accompanied by changes in social life, such as an individual-isation and privatindividual-isation of family life, complementing the withdrawal of state services and privatising of care (Hryciuk and Korolczuk 2015). Indi-viduals exercise greater freedom in organising their own personal lives and increasingly believe that matters such as contraception, extramarital sex and divorce are for individuals to decide for themselves, rather than following the prescriptions of the Catholic Church (Grabowska 2013a, 2013b).

4. Methodology

The main sources for this chapter are the findings of two research projects which provide up-to-date evidence about family trends and gender rela-tions in Poland and abroad (see table 6.1).¹ On changing gender equality and family practices in Poland, the main source is Gender Equality and Qual-ity of Life: How Gender EqualQual-ity Can Contribute to Development in Europe. A study of Poland and Norway (GEQ).² This asks questions about the fami-lies in which respondents grew up (their ‘famifami-lies of origin’) as well as about the families they created as adults (their ‘families of procreation’).

The discussion of transnational families is largely based on Doing Family in Transnational Context: Demographic Choices, Welfare Adaption, School Integration, and Everyday Life of Polish Families Living in Polish-Norwegian Transnationality (Transfam).³ Data for demographic trends in Poland is from GUS (Główny Urząd Statystyczny, Central Statistical Office).

Norway, the receiving country in which the research was conducted, is an interesting laboratory in which to study migration impact. Since the 1970s it has practised a particularly vigorous gender equality policy.

Despite the 2012 so-called backlash against gender equality polices, it has never stopped treating gender equality as a core value and ‘part of Nor-way’s identity’ (Krzaklewska et al. 2016). All aspects of life are evaluated through a gender lens, and a range of public policy incentives and instru-ments promotes egalitarian relations in the family and connections between family and work lives. Policy is intended to bring positive effects for the whole of society, as well as to improve life quality for individuals:

more happiness and satisfaction with family life, more children per family, less domestic violence and better mental health (Holter, Svare and Egeland

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2009). When arrivals from conservative Poland encounter equality measures, such as paternity leave and monitoring of domestic violence through the Barnevernet child protection agency, this can constitute a cul-ture shock but also lead to an enforced egalitarianism across a range of complex family practices.

5. Gender equality in Poland as reflected