Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

106 Krystyna Romaniszyn
the status of women either within the household or in society at large (Bilsborrow
and Zlotnik 1992: 140). This, however, is true only in the case of immigrants who
have settled in a host country. Those migrant women who just work abroad
providing their families with remittances, and take over the role of family breadwinners,
by this very fact improve their status within the household back in the
home country regardless of their job. Employed as domestic servants, migrant
women also help the professional career of their female employers by undertaking
the domestic duties of the latter. Indeed, the career of the middle-class women
in the host societies has been augmented by the employment of foreign women
servants undertaking their patrons’ housewife duties. Thus, in the long run, female
migration affects gender relations within migrant families by improving these
women’s status, and within the recipient families by easing the professional careers
of wives and mothers.
Third, migration may well reshape, or develop new patterns of accepted
behaviour. For example, the widespread approval of migration in the sending
country or just in its out-migration regions – when it occurs – reveals the development
of a new social norm of proper behaviour in these regions. According to
this norm, migration is collectively perceived as a sound and workable life strategy.
In turn, the social acceptance of a migratory life further accelerates migration,
which may even be treated as a rite of passage – one means by which people
make their transition into adulthood and social prestige depicted, for instance,
in numerous local communities in the west of Ireland (Gmelch 1987: 266ff.). The
emerging and functioning of this norm builds the local culture of migration.
A rise in the social status of the migrant households, basically due to remittances
and enhanced consumption ability, is one indicator of this culture.
Fourth, international inflows leading to concentration and settlement of the
newcomers from numerous countries in particular districts or residential areas
result in a qualitative change of the ‘affected’ local communities. The reason for this
is that the new residents originating from various nations have their meaningful
social relations not with the immediate neighbours, as used to happen, but entirely
outside the local community and across the globe (Albrow 1997: 53). The effect
of this novel pattern of behaviour and settlement is twofold: first, the newcomers do
not assimilate into the local community and its culture; second, their ‘semi-presence’
changes the local community so that it gradually loses its specific culture. In
such instances, locality parts with community. This crucial change obviously does
not pertain to all local communities inhabited by immigrants nor to all local
communities in the target countries, which means a diversification also in this social
sphere.
The influence of international migration is to be traced also in the sphere of
symbolic culture, in the spread of new values, norms and ideas, including religious
norms and values. Again, migration is not the only or the chief source of the dissemination
of new ideas in contemporary societies: the mass media communicates
and spreads them on a global scale. Nevertheless, migrants themselves and their
communities may effectively import new ideas, norms and values, or help to revive
old and muted ones in the host society. The former instance may be observed in