As the second-largest foreign community, Polish people have a unique identity but are integrating into British society
The 2011 census confirmed Poles as the second-largest foreign community in Britain. Some Poles living in Britain are still coming to terms with their own identity and whether they want to remain here or go back to Poland, but for many Britain has become their home and they are not going back.
Ania Ready, who came to Oxford nine years ago and runs evenings with Polish authors for English-speaking audience in independent bookshops, told me: "In my experience Poles … mix well in British society and they don't tend to live or function in ghettos."
The new generation of Polish children who were born in Britain or came with their parents, now fluent in both Polish and English, often don't think of themselves as Poles any more and don't sound Polish. But there are also Poles with British passports who don't speak a word of English, have no interest in engaging with anybody else apart from other Poles and struggle to accept people of different skin colour or sexual orientation. As with any immigrant group, integration into society takes time.
Better wages no longer seem to be the primary reason why Poles come to or stay in Britain (in terms of growth, the Polish economy is in a much better state than the British). During an event in Edinburgh, a newly arrived Polish woman told me she came because she was curious about living in such a rich and diverse culture, and that money had nothing to do with it. The somewhat stereotypical image of a Pole in Britain as gastarbeiter – the name originally given to migrant workers from Turkey who arrived on a large scale in west Germany in the 1960s – has evolved, since a large number of Poles are more interested in becoming active members of British society and building a bridge between the two cultures.
In Scotland, the Polish Cultural Festival Association is working on the exciting "Polish Scottish Heritage Trail", the aim of which is to celebrate the shared history and culture between Polish and Scottish people and the importance of the Polish community in Scotland. The Interactive Writing Salon in Scotland already offers a vibrant space for Poles who want to write and better integrate with British society as well as promote Polish culture among British people.
The Liverpool-based group Merseyside Polonia inspires good relationships with local communities through Polish and other minority culture-orientated events. This year the Polish Cultural Institute in London launched the UK's largest Polish literary event in the UK – Pole Position, featuring seven Polish authors during 18 events across 10 cities. And Project London Films, run by Poles Pawel Jodlowski and Mariusz Muskietorz, recently brought an impressive Polish movie You Are God (Jesteś Bogiem) to a British audience, "the third-biggest opening for a Polish film in the last 20 years".
Polish people are overwhelmingly white, so any Pole who integrates well in British society simply disappears. We live and work among the British people, we are like everybody else. Poles are an invisible minority unless, of course, we make the headlines. The Jersey killings, Marcin Kasprzak who buried his partner in a cardboard box, or Wlodzimierz Umaniec, who defaced one of Rothko's work, are some recent examples.
Many Poles see themselves as commuting to work by coming to Britain. It is perhaps a sign of our times that migration between countries offers to many people the best of both worlds. The early excitement of joining the EU and the freedom to choose where to live or work has passed. My friends in Poland have no intention of permanently leaving their country and a large number of Poles who initially came to Britain have already returned to Poland. As a nation we are experiencing a deep transformation of who we are, and more often Poles who live abroad think of themselves as Europeans. Still, it is for the British public to decide how much they'd like to see and hear from us and for Poles to decide how much they want to be seen.
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Guardian