Temat: Integration
Lidia K.:
How much have you integrated as a foreigner into the Polish society? Do you consider yourself a Pole?
A very interesting question. Of course Warsaw society is a good deal less homogenous than the rest of Poland, but the East and Central European countries have some very specific ideas about nationality which is a complicated enough issue even without that.
I certainly don't feel like a Pole (but what is a Pole? Does an American of Polish origins who's never been to Poland and speaks broken Polish count, or a Polish citizen of German origins who's lived all their life here and has Polish as a first language? Is nationality about blood, culture, language, or something more inchoate?).
I am however a Polish resident and as the years pass have less and less contact with the UK. If not Poland, then where?
If you speak the language, do you read our (local) papers, watch/listen to the news? If not, how else? Would you ever go on a Polish music concert?
I speak the language far more often than I speak English, read the newspapers here. Don't have a TV anyway, except in the kitchen for the person who cleans.
I go to Polish concerts, theatre, wystawy, wernisaży all the time. Not English or even English-language in Warsaw. Never bother with tourist attractions and actively dislike historical museums, especially if there is a political gloss, as in Poland there invariably is.
Don't have much contact with English-speaking expats, by choice, though I am in the Chamber of Commerce for other reasons, and a whole variety of Polish organisations.
Do you support OUR football teams and beauty contests, no mention
the Eurovision?
The football test (similar to Norman Tebbitt's Cricket test) is a thorny one. But if the Poland team is playing anyone from outside The Commonwealth, they would have my support.
I most definitely don't support any beauty contest anywhere, and the government and people of Poland should be ashamed that they allowed Miss World to be held here. In this day and age, really!
And given Poland's near inability to have an entry to Eurovision (or any other pop song ever) that is anything other than risible - listen to Anna Jantar, Michał Wiśniewski, Violetta Villas, Czesław Niemen, Doda, Maryla Rodowicz, Mandarynka et al and you'll see what I mean - then I don't support them in Eurovision (or Britain either). But tactfully pretend to friends that I do.
Nevertheless, there is some very, very good music in Poland. Just not pop.
What are the things definitely you're NOT going to integrate with?
Food is the easiest, try with something else.
Never liked cabbage or pork whether British or Polish, though there's a great difference in what different people here eat - I wish Poles wouldn't try to homogenise everythng - there were cookbooks available here from the 1920s onwards advising housewives how to make their cooking more Polish and less regional, usually meaning blander.
Despite this, there's a difference between the Polish food that a cosmopolitan and generationally affluent Polish person eats and some God-awful gołąbki, schabowy or pierogi leniwy. Elitist, but true. Good food is good food, regardless of origin. And even if an immigrant doesn't cook Polish dishes, they sure as heck have to use Polish ingredients. This is where Fusion Cuisine comes from, Toad-in-the-Hole using kielbasa, Scotch Eggs using przepiórki eggs, etc.
In other matters, despite being an immigrant and therefore close to the edge of the sharp-end of such things, I'll probably never develop the obsession with nationality, race, religion and historical injustice that persists here, nor will I start shutting windows to keep the air out (a long-running source of tension with my lodgers). Nor will I ever take Rutinoscorbin or wear a hat and scarf on the bus, a baseball cap anywhere. Or one of those waistcoats with all the pockets. And my stomach will stay flat!
Assimilating to another culture is a complex matter, and in Central Europe even more so than normal. There isn't an equivalent of the Association of Poles in Britain, to assert and promote the rights of British people, though I understand there's plans afoot. When the big chunk of central Warsaw and vast tracts of land in Mazowsze that belong to the British community in Poland are finally recovered (about 2000 people of British descent/culture lived in Warsaw until 1939, many for generations and almost none survived, and no attempt was made to trace their heirs), there will be a motive for organising something. Money talks, and in Central Europe land ownership talks louder. There's also a campaign to get a British person onto the City Council at the next election. This will be a wonderfully symbolicstep. There are local politicians in the UK who settled there from Poland, what a wonderful act of cementing the links between our nations it will be when the reverse is true.
After the Treaty of Nice is implemented and EU citizens can vote in national and not just local elections there will be more of a sense of integration. This is an even bigger step - not just symbolic.
For a lot of immigrants, even most, they aren't here on one-year job postings or because they like the culture and traditions. Or want to taste the pierogi and listen to Chopin (an immigrant himself). They are here due to circumstance and whether they like it or not. I'm fortunate that I do like it and have been able to assimilate quite well, to the point of having to try hard to protect my accent and cultural values.
It's imposible to generalise about nationality, assimilation, and migration, not least because the development of the EU will require ever-changing definitions of those terms, however the specific circumstances that have linked British and Polish people since 2004 will have a huge effect on the cultural/national identity of many people. And this works both ways. There are a lot of people who are half-British and half Polish. It will be interesting to see how many of the kids born to British/Polish couples will grow up to be half-Polish Britons or half-British Poles. I suspect there will be plenty of both.
After 8 years though, I still meet a**holes who insist on speaking English to me, ask how Im enjoying my 'stay' (purleez), which hotel I'm in, and tell me that they can 'help' me find a flat (no thanks, but I could help them find somewhere if they want).
So no easy answers, but even though Lidia's question is a sensible one, the next person who asks "How long You are in the Poland?", "What do you like about`our country?", "Did you ever try Bigos/pierogi/oscypki?", or "Why did you come to The Poland?" may well get it in the pysk.
Jon M. edytował(a) ten post dnia 08.06.08 o godzinie 19:01
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