Opportunity and uncertainty: young people's narratives of ‘double transition’ in post-socialist Poland

Abstract

This article focuses on youth transitions in the specific geo-historical context of post-socialist Poland. While post-socialist 'transition' across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states has heralded extensive social and economic upheaval in general, different age groups experienced different facets of this change more keenly than others. For those who were teenagers in the 1990s, societal change coincided with their own life-course transitions from youth to adulthood, creating a potentially destabilising 'double transition' for them to negotiate. Based on in-depth, life history interviews with Polish migrants in the UK who were born between 1975 and 1985, this article considers how these changes are represented in their narrative accounts. It concentrates on two narrative strands: the opportunities offered by a liberalising economy and more open borders, and the uncertainties and anxieties that also underpinned their memories and experiences of this time. Ultimately, the article finds that however exciting some of the changes appeared to be in the 1990s, young people had to learn new strategies to navigate the post-socialist worlds, often struggling to find confidence in the new socio-economic environment forming around them.

‘European Generation of Migration’: Change and agency in the post-2004 Polish graduates’ migratory experience

“…Milewski and Ruszczak-_ Zbikowska, 2008;Trevena, 2008;Galasiń ska and Kozlowska, 2009a,b;Burrell, 2009Burrell, , 2011Botterill, 2011) with the primary reasons for migration being economic constraints to commence an independent life in Poland and multiple secondary reasons, such as willingness to improve language skills, seeking adventure and further training/education, which also align with push-pull migration theory (see : Samers, 2010).…”

“…She argues that the old, safe and tried socialist system, as well as their childhoods were lost to them, and at the same time, there were no clear rules on how to build their future in the new system, where the new regulations were often 'oblique and ill informed'. As Burrell (2011: 418) further observes, for respondents in her research the goal of migrating westwards became 'one of the clearest routes into the future' that was on offer, although access to such mobility is uneven across post-socialist countries (Burrell, 2011;Stenning, 2005). Moreover, Galasiń ska (2010: 944) stresses the distinctiveness of the post-enlargement group of Polish migrants to the UK, arguing that such cohorts 'constructed their migration as a temporary or open-ended period in their lives'.…”

“…Such mobility opportunities, as Burrell (2011) notes, became available to the youth born between 1975 and 1985 by 'double transition' of temporal and spatial changes. She argues that the old, safe and tried socialist system, as well as their childhoods were lost to them, and at the same time, there were no clear rules on how to build their future in the new system, where the new regulations were often 'oblique and ill informed'.…”

“…These have broadly been discussed in studies on the migration of Poles to the UK after the EU enlargement in 2004, which comment on the large scale of the movement (e.g. Drinkwater et al, 2006Drinkwater et al, , 2010Okólski, 2007;Burrell, 2009Burrell, , 2011Kaczmarczyk, 2010) and relatively younger cohorts arriving in the UK. Kaczmarczyk (2009) highlights that 'youth' understood as persons below the age of 35, often single and relatively well educated, became the dominant type of migrants, and Fihel and Kaczmarczyk (2009: 35) reveal that in 2004-2006 the median age of post-2004 migrants to the UK was 25 years old.…”

Mapping the meaning of ‘difference’ in Europe: A social topography of prejudice

“…As a consequence, NGOs to advance the rights of minority groups and to inform these communities of their entitlements are recent developments in Poland and are not yet very co-ordinated. While Poland is beginning to experience processes of individualisation (Burrell, 2011a), it is still a relatively traditional society in which the Catholic Church has grown in influence since the end of the socialist period having emerged as a champion of national interest during the revolution. Likewise, despite the rapid growth of mobility (both immigration and emigration) in the post-socialist era, Poland is still a relatively mono-ethnic society albeit one that is beginning to change quite rapidly (Burrell, 2011b;Hörschelmann and Stenning, 2008;Stenning, 2005) (Duszczyk and Góra, 2012).…”