This paper is based on sociological quantitative studies carried out in 2019 on a sample of 620 Polish Catholics living in London, Swindon, or Oxford. Those studies and their findings are limited only to those Catholics who make up the communities around major Polish institutions in the UK, such as Polish parishes, Saturday schools, and community houses. The goal of this paper is to describe selected aspects of Polish migrants’ religiosity in the new social and cultural milieu. What we focus on here is how Poles themselves describe their faith, how they understand and evaluate their membership of parishes or other religious communities, and how they approach religious practices, especially Sunday Mass attendance. We address the following questions: how do the Poles living abroad describe their attitudes towards faith? How many of them are active members of Polish parishes? What do their religious practices and membership of other community organisations look like? How do specific factors affect the results across these areas?

Poles represent one of the largest groups of economic immigrants to the UK. As a result of Brexit, many of them have redefined their migration scenarios, which has affected the economy and some areas of social and cultural life in the UK. This paper presents the results of our original quantitative study conducted in the autumn of 2019 on a sample of 620 Polish respondents living in three locations in England – London, Oxford, and Swindon. The study addresses the question Do Polish migrants intend to return to Poland, and if they do, when? and examines to what extent this decision is influenced by the length of their stay in England, by their financial situation, by their knowledge of English, by their ability to assimilate culturally, by how much they miss their family, by homesickness, and by their craving for Polish culture. The article follows the typology of attitudes adopted by Poles towards Brexit, as identified by Agnieszka Trąbka and Paulina Pustułka.

Religion can determine how people perceive socio-political reality, especially in a cultural context in which religious affiliation is an important part of national identity. This has a special significance in the Polish cultural context, in which Catholicism is considered the national religion, and its institutional dimension plays an important role in the Polish socio-political domain. The purpose of this study is to analyse how religion affects the socio-political attitudes of Poles abroad. This analysis focuses directly on evaluating the influence of the spiritual leaders of Polish community organisations in the UK on the knowledge and opinions of Brexit among Polish post-accession emigrants to the UK. The study was conducted on a sample of 620 Poles living in the UK (62.6% male) using a group-administered questionnaire. The study found that the Polish Catholic clergy did not play an important role in opinion-forming, i.e., in shaping what Polish emigrants to the UK know and think about Brexit. What proved to be the most powerful factor in terms of opinion-making was the British mass media. The influence of the Catholic clergy on the knowledge of—and opinions on—Brexit among Polish emigrants was only evident among elderly people who did not know English very well, and who regularly participated in religious activities.

Religia odgrywa istotną rolę w życiu jednostek, społeczeństw i całych wspólnot narodowych. Posiada ona szczególną siłę oddziaływania tam, gdzie przynależność religijna jest ważną częścią tożsamości narodowej. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest analiza wpływu religijności na postawy tożsamościowe polskich emigrantów. W analizie skupiono się na ocenie wpływu autodeklaracji wiary polskich migrantów poakcesyjnych w Wielkiej Brytanii na ich tożsamość narodową. Badania socjologiczne przeprowadzono za pomocą kwestionariusza ankiety na próbie 620 Polaków tam mieszkających (badania własne przeprowadzone jesienią 2019 r.). Analiza badań ilościowych wykazała, że mimo malejącego wskaźnika autodeklaracji wiary respondentów religia w dalszym ciągu jest silnie powiązana z identyfikacją narodową. Wpływ czynnika religijnego na deklarowaną przynależność narodową kraju pochodzenia najwyraźniej widać pośród głęboko wierzących, tych zaś, którzy deklarowali przynależność narodową także do kraju osiedlenia, charakteryzowała niższa wartość wskaźnika religijności.

The text engages with the ongoing discussion about the role played by religion in social life, with attention paid to transnational dynamics of religiosity in migrants’ individual experiences, expectations and modes of involvement. We concentrate on the research problem: how does the Roman Catholic Church, through the networks of the faithful, facilitate, challenge, and intersect with the adaptation or integration of migrants in their new settings? The study draws on a survey conducted with a sample ( n = 620) Polish Catholics in Great Britain in 2019. With the cluster analysis, we distinguished five categories of participants in parish life. The results of the study concern the declared expectations of the respondents in the confessional and non-confessional (charity, leisure, tourist, or cultural) activities. It shows two paths of respondents’ religious experience: the old parochialism and the new one. The first attitude, represents a general religious-community context, while the second one emphasizes socio-cultural background and cooperative style of work based on associations and goals-achievement. Our findings concern the socio-cultural specificity of migrants resulting from belonging to migrant parishes outside Poland and how this specificity can be juxtaposed with information concerning mainstream Catholic parishes in Great Britain.