To Be an Immigrant in Poland
An Analysis of the Experiences of Immigrants from Non-EU Countries
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Polish Academy of Sciences
Publication date: 2008-02-05
Polish Sociological Review 2007;160(4):401-416
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ABSTRACT
This article analyses the experience of immigrants who have migrated to Poland from the point
of view of the major social dimensions of this experience: the organisational dimension which involves the
immigrant’s relations with various formal public and civic institutions, the economical dimension which
determines the immigrant’s material standard of living, the socio-cultural dimension which involves the
immigrant’s relations with members of the receiving society and the identity dimension which involves the
immigrant’s empowerment and self-identification. The emergent reconstruction of immigrants’ vision of
social reality uncovers many subjective meanings, positive and negative emotions, heterogeneous experiences
and individual strategies of coping with the status of “being an immigrant.” This analysis is based on
the assumption that differences in immigrants’ focus on the different social dimensions and the resulting
hierarchy of importance of the dimensions are a very powerful indicator of an immigrant’s conditions of
life in a given country.