Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

New Europeans?
Polish (im)migrants in Berlin 175
This group of undocumented migrant workers, college students and young
professionals, has not, thus far, attracted the attention of students of East–West
European international migration, and I did not consider it, either, in my original
hypotheses. It constitutes a minority among East European Arbeitstouristen in West
European countries, but since the mid-1990s, large cities such as Berlin, Paris,
Brussels, and Amsterdam have been receiving increasing numbers of such migrants
from Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia.
They come to earn money, for sure, but this is not the only and for some not
even the most important purpose of their sojourns. According to my Berlin
informants, Polish college students and young professionals, men and women alike,
come to this city either on temporary student visas to learn German or to upgrade
their qualifications and undertake undocumented work or to do the same on tourist
visas, especially in the summer months. The informal-sector jobs they find and
the illegal income they earn are similar to those obtained by their fellow-nationals
in the main category of tourist-workers discussed earlier. It is, however, their future
projects focused on a time when a successfully transformed Poland will be a member
of the European Union that primarily motivates their migrations.
My respondents contrasted this group with typical Arbeitstouristen: ‘this group is
quite different, swiatla, cultured or civilized’; ‘they are curious about the world’;
‘they want to learn the [German] language and gain the [European] experience’. 12
It is a sad way to win their spurs among Europeans but perhaps the best possible
for pauvres cousins from the antechambers of the European Union.
These are observations of well-positioned local residents. Whether, indeed, these
migrants, men and women, are ‘civilized cosmopolitans’ and aspiring Europeans
and, if so, whether their sojourns in Berlin as second-rate, often openly unwelcome,
visitors strengthen or weaken these self-perceptions, must be addressed in direct
conversations with these people. Universities can be located easily in Poland, so
students who recently spent time in Berlin as tourist-workers can be identified and
interviewed in their home country (this task would be much more difficult in the case
of the typical Arbeitsouristen, who come from all over Poland). It would be interesting,
too, to investigate interactions (if any) these young and aspiring visitors may have
had with different groups of permanent Polish immigrants (see below) and their
impact on these sojourners’ images of Poland’s/Poles’ position in Western Europe
and, in turn, on their national identities.
Polish immigrants
In the mid-1990s about 29,000 Polish immigrants lived in Berlin who were either
citizens or permanent residents of Germany. 13 The proportionally largest group –
and the focus of this discussion – are immigrants who came to Germany in the
1980s and (a lesser number) in the early 1990s (Polonia w Niemczech 1995; Stach 1998;
Lesiuk and Trzcielinska-Polus 2000; Kaczmarczyk 2001). The majority of them
were 35 to 55 years of age. Immigrants who came to Berlin as adults usually