“Migrants on the Outskirts of Middle-East Europe”

Abstract

The fall of communism in the 1990s, started a complex process of development of the market economy, political democracy and national sovereignty in the area of the Kresy. Polish community maintaining inter-generation heritage in the Kresy, expressed in the language, symbols and traditions of Polish families, focused around the church at the same time creating schools and a number of Polish organizations and associations. Young people of Polish origin began arriving to the country to study. The largest obstacle for them in integration with the Polish society is poor command of the language, therefore peers treat them as the so-called “Russians”. All immigrants from the Kresy holding the Polish Card are similarly called. Meanwhile, a private sense of national identity is dictated to the representatives of this group by declaring the Polish national identity. They chose it consciously as the “better” one, still in the country of birth, increasing their status in the post-soviet reality of ethnically mixed families. When coming to Poland, they carry elements of Polish national culture canon preserved in the Kresy that they identify with. In the process of social integration immigrants from the Kresy attempt to become incorporated into the basic part of the Polish society, aiming at obtaining a rightful status of a Pole. As representatives of the Polish national group they keep the ties with the country of birth, by communicating with the use of signs and symbols common for Poland and the Kresy. Immigrants from the Kresy is a group having influence on strengthening the countrymen, concentrated around Polish associations and organizations in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine or Moldova. They form a network of transnational interrelations in the region of central eastern Europe, directly affecting the formation of new ties and new elites throughout the whole region.