Migration influences on religion in Poland

Polish migration to more secularised countries in western Europe has an impact on sections of the Catholic Church, in the sense that it promotes alarm – alarm about encroaching materialism, about permissiveness, about atheism, and about a general loss of Polish identity. A study of Church documents and press releases from 2006 to 2013 uncovered con-sistent and comprehensive condemnation of migration; only twice did senior Church figures refer to its positive effects (Lisak 2015, 118–9).

Globally, migration does not in itself have a predictable effect on religios-ity. Many migrants maintain their religious beliefs unchanged, some become less practising, and in some cases less believing, while others find religion becoming more important to them. One would expect the same to be true of Poles, although Mole et al. (2017) and Röder and Lubbers (2015), regarding Poles in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Neth-erlands, suggest some increase in religious practice over time spent abroad. Religiosity among Poles abroad is discussed in chapter 9. The main argument is that religious belief seems to become more individual-ised and privatindividual-ised as church attendance declines and as Poles become more familiar with other faiths or simply with different versions of Roman Catholicism.

If one accepts Grabowska’s (2015b) argument that the most impor-tant religious trend is that belief and church attendance continue to be high overall in Poland, then a search for migration influences should presum-ably concentrate on reasons why migration helps maintain these still

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impressive numbers. It is not hard to find such reasons. Many Poles abroad have ample opportunities to maintain transnational ties and lead a ‘Polish’

life, without having to engage with non-Polish variants of religious practice. Those who do not attend church often have practical motiva-tions. All in all, it seems probable that many Polish return migrants have not found their faith disturbed. This is why they attend church as normal after they return, and their return maintains the proportion of practis-ing religious people in the local population. Moreover, people often come back to rural and small-town locations where social sanctions for non- attendance at church remain strong, and it is easiest simply to slot back into old habits, as suggested by my interviews and observations and, for example, by Grabowska, Garapich, et al. (2017) and Krasnodębska (2012, 132). In their study of three small towns, Grabowska, Garapich, et al. (2017, 92) contrast Pszczyna, where ‘lapsed Catholics or agnostics openly declared that they no longer practice their Catholic religion’, with Trzebnica and Sokółka, where return migrants seemed to be under more pressure to conform. For example, in Trzebnica neighbours were unwel-coming when children who had returned from the United Kingdom tried to go trick-or-treating on Hallowe’en (Grabowska, Garapich, et al.

2017, 165).

Nonetheless, even in the most Catholic parts of Poland the trend is towards condoning behaviour that does not conform to strict Catho-lic teachings on family life. One reason is the pragmatic acceptance of migration as a livelihood strategy, even if this means going against tradi-tional gender norms. 55 per cent of respondents in my 2008 opinion poll in Podkarpacie agreed that it was acceptable for lone mothers in finan-cial difficulties to temporarily leave their children to work abroad (White 2017, 69). The value accorded to higher education in contemporary Poland trumps conventions about mothers not migrating and led inter-viewees to condone migration to pay for adult children’s education. Indi-vidual female interviewees expressed the view that women, including themselves, should take advantage of opportunities to work abroad even at the expense of their wifely roles.

If I . . . can’t find work . . . and because my husband [a coach driver]

is hardly ever at home . . . I’ll get my mother-in-law [a cleaner in Ger-many] to fix something up . . . My husband isn’t keen on it. Even though he’s not at home a lot, he prefers me to be there when he is!

(Luiza, Limanowa)

6. Conclusion

Galent and Kubicki (2010, 217), describing Poland soon after EU accession, made the following argument:

Polish urban centres are going through a much more dynamic pro-cess of social change than the population of smaller towns and vil-lages, where a multicultural environment and pluralism is present only via stereotypical images and where cultural or social strange-ness is still seen through the prism of threat, whereas in the case of urban culture this heterogeneity and strangeness are associated with such positive meanings such as creativity and innovation.

Considering the mass exposure to foreign countries of smaller towns and villages in recent years, it seems that Galent and Kubicki’s analysis may now be out of date. Of course, cities, especially the largest ones, have a particularly high share of well-educated, well-travelled, well-off and lib-eral inhabitants, so it is hardly surprising if cities also score highly on indi-cators of openness. Their residents also have more opportunities than most Poles to rub shoulders with foreigners in Poland. Nonetheless, as argued in chapter 7, migration also has a levelling role. Given the right type of conditions abroad, migration experience can shape more tolerant attitudes towards diversity, even among small-town residents and villag-ers, and even among working-class urban Poles who might not otherwise have much exposure to difference. This is particularly the case in some

‘super-diverse’ cities abroad, where there is no dominant ethnic group, and in convivial settings where Poles and others spend time together enjoyably.

As direct, lived experiences, these can leave a strong impression on migrants and visiting stayers, supporting Kuhn’s (2012) assertion that less educated people become more open to difference mostly as the result of personal experiences. In some cases their attitudes can be classed as ‘deep cosmo-politanism’, since they include a ‘recognition of interconnectedness’ – for example, when they reject racism because they encounter it abroad, so can put themselves in the shoes of others. Migration therefore serves as an ‘eye-opener’ for individual members of social groups who, as a majority, often show up as intolerant in survey data.

Although such limited survey evidence as exists tends to support the idea that Polish migrants are more likely than not to acquire more open-to-difference attitudes abroad, and although the massive recent increase in English-language knowledge makes Poles well placed to get

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to know and understand foreign cultures, of course it is important not to exaggerate trends towards openness in Poland. Many of the changes towards more tolerance captured in Polish national survey data are quite small scale, and there are also counter-trends. Migration (particularly when migrants have difficult experiences abroad, for example in their workplaces, or have little meaningful contact with local people) can also support the spread of intolerance. Since few Poles would argue that migra-tion is economically harmful for individual households, anti-migramigra-tion discourse in Poland naturally focuses on cultural threats to national iden-tity, which can reinforce racism and homophobia brought back to Poland by return migrants and their visitors.

Religion, too, is often associated with socially conservative opinions, although religiosity in Poland is changing, particularly in some locations.

When return migrants who have lost the habit of church attendance abroad return to a large Polish city or a region such as West Pomerania, they are more able to continue not to attend church regularly than if they return to a village or one of the more religious regions of eastern Poland.

Overall, it seems, religious belief, partly as a result of migration and expo-sure to religious difference abroad, is becoming more personalised and less mediated by the Catholic Church. Hence it should not be assumed that continuing high levels of self-identification as Catholics among Poles equates to agreement with the more intolerant views expressed by some priests, or is a barrier to the adoption of more tolerant attitudes to diversity.

Overall, this chapter has illustrated once again how helpful it is to apply the insights of receiving country scholarship to understand the impact of migration on sending countries. It also illustrates again the diversity of ‘Poland’. On the one hand, openness to difference cannot be understood without reference to socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender and level of education. On the other hand, trends in religiosity have to be understood in the context of geography.

Notes

1 A Pew Research Center survey (2017, 43) conducted in the second half of 2015 found that 57 per cent agreed and 34 per cent disagreed that ‘it is better for us if society consists of people from the same nationality, and who have the same religion and culture’.

2 Preparedness to house refugees in Poland had also dipped in the mid-1990s, but had been rising since 1996 (Hall and Mikulska-Jolles 2016, 4–5). However, the refugee flows (resulting mostly from the wars in Chechnya) and the international political situation were very different in the 1990s, making the periods hard to compare. CBOS surveys show Poles are readier to accept Ukrainian refugees than non-Europeans. For more discussion, see chapter 10.

3 See, e.g. Mau, Mewes and Zimmermann (2008) and Kuhn (2015). Unfortunately

‘trans national’ is used slightly differently by different scholars.

4 Those with over 500,000 population: Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław and Poznań. Gołębiowska (2014, 24–5) comments that ‘previous research consistently finds that subgroup differences in tolerance are related to one’s area of residence, but little is known about why these differences occur. The principal explanation for the link is that a greater proportion of urban residents report greater openness to diversity because they have greater opportunities for exposure to diversity’.

5 See, for example, Omyła-Rudzka (2017, 8) on attitudes to other nations, and Omyła-Rudzka (2015, 7) on whether it is possible to have two home countries. In the latter case, young respondents were also especially likely to agree that it was.

6 Respondents were aged 17–21, in formal education. Unfortunately the questions about tolerance in 2013 and 2016 were not the same as had been asked in the previous study, Youth 2008 (CBOS 2009).

7 The assumption that cosmopolitanism is a feature only of elites is also linked to the somewhat different understanding of ‘cosmopolitan’ as someone participating in elite consumption practices.

8 German, however, has slightly declined, as indicated in the sources referenced in this section.

9 2005 was the first year that Diagnoza Społeczna gathered data on language competency, and their report presents ‘active and passive knowledge’ as one combined figure.

10 School curriculums in some countries are more geared towards teaching tolerance of diversity, and Gołębiowska (2014, 19–20) argues that Poland has not been a leader in this respect.

11 Borowik (2010, 273) argues that if Polish respondents answered surveys more honestly, levels of religiosity in Poland would seem comparable with those in other Catholic European countries such as Spain, Ireland and Italy.

12 Question V144.

13 EVS Question V154. <30:36.4%, 30–49:25.3%, >50:45.5%. This question was not asked in previous surveys.

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