Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

102 Krystyna Romaniszyn
corresponds with, and perhaps stems from, the growing importance and development
of the service sector in national economies employing the newcomers, legally
and illegally. These movements are further augmented by the operation of a
powerful migration-networks mechanism (Romaniszyn 2000b). These efficient
microstructures, which have developed across the world and have been recorded
in a number of fieldwork studies, link sending and receiving countries and provide
subsequent inflows of migrants, legal and illegal. Migrant networks also play a vital
role in adjustment to the receiving country and in development of ethnic enclaves
in a host country’s economy. Kin and friends of the same ethnic origin ‘provide
essential information on the setting up of businesses, the economic inputs required,
the problems encountered and the labour requirements’ (Boyd 1989: 653).
Trafficking networks function in a similar way, well organised and proving to be
a lucrative and efficient industry. Indisputably the development, expansion,
and operation of these networks, speeds up the inflow of illegal migrants into
the ‘Fortress’ and its ‘buffer zone’ (Romaniszyn 1997: 23ff.). All in all, due to the
operation of numerous factors, the ‘Fortress’ remains besieged; what changes are
the locations where migratory pressure amounts, and the categories of inflows.
Thirdly, and metaphorically speaking, migratory inflows bring about the
‘migration of cultures’, as migrants are the bearers of their own ethnic or national
culture, and are perceived as such, at least at the beginning of their stay. Moreover,
their mass settlement or permanent residence in the recipient society results both
in a change of the country’s ethnic structure, and in diversification of its culture.
Cultural change that follows is to be seen as the most fundamental consequence
of contemporary migration inflows into the European receiving countries.
Within a few decades after the Second World War, mass migration had led
to the creation of multi-ethnic, and hence multi-cultural, societies with large,
distinctive, and basically non-European minorities. It is true that the European
receiving societies had been unprepared for the acceptance of a vast number of
permanent immigrants. This seems to be changing. Nevertheless, policies towards
immigrants still seem incoherent. On the one hand, governments try to defend a
dominant culture of the nation-state and to integrate minorities. While, on the other
hand, they attempt to safeguard the rights of immigrants wishing to preserve their
cultural distinctiveness. As stated previously, newly adopted policies and joint
agreements on migration, on the whole, enforce restriction. But there is also a wealth
of discussion about the measures necessary to tackle the inequalities and exclusion
confronting minority groups and immigrants. Needless to say, the permanent
presence of immigrants calls for skilled governance of the emerging ethnic and
cultural pluralism within a nation-state, that welcomes its cultural identity,
coherence and stability, in their numerous aspects.
Cultural diversification resulting from migratory
flows
The following discussion on cultural diversification brought about by migratory
inflows rests upon the assumption that the culture of the host and sending societies