Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

180 Ewa Morawska
in Düsseldorf in western Germany. 28 One of the interesting research questions
that await comparative investigation is the effect of proximate (here, Berlin) vs. geographically
more distant (Düsseldorf) home and host countries and its implications
for the ease and frequency of back-and-forth travels on the composition of
immigrants’ identities.
Another factor apparently contributing to this identificational configuration
is the ‘domestication’ of or, in sociological terms, anticipatory socialisation into
German culture in immigrants’ families in the home country. On several occasions
during our conversations about this matter, my respondents referred to their
backgrounds in Poland’s western territories or the former zabor pruski, a German
division of partitioned Poland (1795–1918) where ‘people’s habits and outlooks
still differ from those in the rest of Poland’, to ‘respect for the law and order and
familiarity with German culture’, and to knowledge of [at least some] German
maintained in their families. 29
Finally, there is also a possibility that the emphasis by immigrants in this group
on their cosmopolitan (supra-national) orientations represents a form of inner escape
from or defence against the low status of the Polish group in Germany. Such escapes
into transnational, here, home-country-oriented, identities and engagements by
racial minority immigrants in America have been reported in several studies
(see, e.g., Waters 1999; Smith and Guarnizo 1998). This case would represent
a flight into post-nationalism. I did not pursue this possibility in my preliminary
study, but, thus far unexamined in sociological studies, it is certainly worth
investigation.
Conclusion
As the foregoing discussion demonstrates, how the immigrant experience influences
the national identities of Berlin Poles depends not only on the particular circumstances
they encounter in the host society but also on the home-country cultural
capital they bring with them. 30 As a result of this multiplicity, immigrant identities
take many forms. Only four have been considered in this chapter. As I discussed
each of them, I also pointed out research questions that await further investigation.
In conclusion, I return to the two reasons noted in the introduction, which make
the study of Polish (and East European) immigrants in Germany (West Europe)
worthy of investigation.
The contribution of my Berlin project to the study of immigrant transnationalism
has been twofold. A vast literature on immigrant transnationalism 31 that recognises
cross-border identities of travellers as a constitutive component of this phenomenon
has seldom inquired into the particular forms of these self-representations. I have
identified different forms of such identities and circumstances that shape them.
My study also repudiates the prevailing view that transnational involvements either
de-anchor immigrants from both sender and receiver societies or produce ‘bifocal’
identities whose social embeddedness in local environments is not elaborated (see,
e.g., Vertovec and Cohen 1999; Rouse 1992; and Kearney 1995 for the former
approach; Portes 1999 for the latter). As a result, studies of transnationalism and the