Comparing%20life%20trajectories%20and%20adaptive%20strategies%20of%20Ukrainian%20and%20Vietnamese%20female%20immigrants%20in%20Poland%20%20Weronika%20Kloc-Nowak,%20CEFMR,%20Poland

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Comparing life trajectories and adaptive
strategies of Ukrainian and Vietnamese female
immigrants in Poland Weronika Kloc-Nowak,
CEFMR, Poland

• 8th European Sociological Association Conference
• Glasgow, 5th September 2007

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Acknowledgements
FEMAGE Need for Female Immigrants and Their
Integration in Aging Societies funded through EC
6th Framework Programme. Prof. Charlotte Hoehn
(BiB, Germany) - Project Co-ordinator Dr Attila
Melegh (DRI, Hungarian Central Statistical
Institute) - the narrative interviews methodology
design. Izabela Korys (CEFMR) coordinated the
interviewing and led the analysis in Poland,
especially in the Vietnamese part.
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Plan of the presentation
1. About the research 2. Motives for
migration 3. Strategies employed 4. Trajectories 5
. Conclusions
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Aims of the research

• to compare and contrast the migratory experience
  of female immigrants from Ukraine and from
  Vietnam who settled in Poland
• to identify the factors influencing the female
  migratory experience in the life course
  perspective
• to investigate the degree of social and economic
  integration available to settled female
  immigrants
• to identify the needs and attitudes concerning
  integration into the host society to be responded
  by policy means
• to assess the future of immigrants (stay, return,
  further migration) in the context of their
  stories and future aging

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
5
Data on the immigrant groups

• Ukrainians the largest immigrant group
• 9 840 residence permits
• up to 400 000 present each year at peak (est.)
• feminisation (2/3) due to mixed marriages
• largest share among foreign students and workers
• best suited for integration?

• Vietnamese the unique immigrant community
• 1876 residence permits
• 100 000 at peak, now ca 35 000 (est.)
• ethnic niche trade business
• concentration and segregation

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
6
Hypotheses on migration patterns

• Ukrainians
• migration was easy, and cheap massive,
  available to individuals
• post-Soviet society broken ties, weak families
• historical and family ties across the border
  (ethnic minorities)
• cultural proximity, invisibility, ability to
  assimilate

• Vietnamese
• migration was expensive, difficult, often
  illegal family resources and channels
• Confucian values, strong clan and family ties
  cooperation, collective strategies
• cultural and physical distinctiveness, fear of
  racist attacks, segregation

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
7
Selection of interviewees

• Long term documented 1st generation migrants
  (1989 onwards, 3 years, residence permit)
• Variety of age (20-34, 35-49, 50)
• Variety of social and economic status
• Vietnamese (15) recruited through an insider,
  only in Warsaw, only through personal ties,
  interviewed in Vietnamese
• Ukrainians (16) recruited through Greek-Orthodox
  parishes, Internet, NGOs, employers, media
  (celebrities), in Warsaw and 3 peripherical
  regions, interviewed in Polish

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
8
Narrative interview

• Based on biographic-interpretive method (BIM) by
  Fischer-Rosenthal and Rosenthal (Rosenthal 1996,
  Wengraf 2001), analysis of the told story and
  lived life.
• Modified for FEMAGE by Melegh, stress on
  lifecourse.
• 1. opening unit
• Question We are interested in the migration of
  women.
• Could you please tell the history of how you
  got here.
• Result a passage of her story, uninterrupted,
  she decides the end.
• 2. catching the threads
• Questions posed only in reference to the events
  mentioned, starting from the earliest ones, words
  of the interviewee.
• Result filling in missing parts in her
  lifestory, biography reconstruction.
• 3. untouched aspects family, work, legalisation

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
9
Analysis of the narratives

• Reconstruction of the biography
• Events in chronological order. (1 person,
  interviewer)
• 2. Questionning the biography development
• Predicting (alternative) scenarios, producing
  hypotheses on active forces in her life. (team)
• 3. Identification of major turning points,
  driving engines.
• 4. Gendered aspects
• Presentation of herself as a woman, her attitudes
  and choices in typical gendered moments.
• 5. Discourse
• active/passive self-presentation, dichotomies...

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
10
Motivations for migration

• 1. Generally speaking, a woman has two reasons
  life and family marriage and family reasons
• Marital migration (both)
• Family reunion (Vietnamese)
• Turning temporary to settlement due to a Polish
  parter (Ukrainian)
• Migration as reaction to personal trauma (both)
• eg In Vietnam these love affairs are not
  considered as in the West - this means in the
  West its pretty normal, isnt it? But in Vietnam
  theres something wrong about it of course not
  for me myself but in general this is not good
  since you loose anyhow your students disrespect
  you thats why I had to leave. VN16

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
11

• 2. Everyone else goes abroad labour or
  welfare migration
• Looking for better income and standard of living
  (both nationalities)
• First my husband came to work here and I came to
  visit him () three months after my arrival I
  started to trade and the first day I noticed
  that there could be profits out of it. VN2
• I could only afford to buy a handbag or a
  lipstick in a month. To buy a pair of shoes I had
  to save my salary for four months. U9
• Unemployment (Ukrainian, young Vietnamese)
• Then there was such a situation, that there was
  unemployment, there was an unemployment benefit.
  The benefit in the beginning was quite good, as I
  had been earning good money at school the
  benefit was first equal to the lost salary and
  then less, and less, and less, and then appeared
  the question what to do?. In the country, there
  was no work near by, further away one didnt
  know. U10

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
12
3. An opportunity to study what I have always
wanted migration as a response to blocked
upward social mobility in the country of origin

• Migration to study - Ukrainians
• Journalism was something I had dreamed of since a
  long time and in the university of home
  town there was no such faculty. There is one in
  the University of Lviv, but unfortunately
  unfortunately I have to mention about the
  possibility of getting into a university. It is
  very difficult, I should say. A great role is
  played by money and personal contacts. None of
  them did my family possess so I chose a less
  ambitious faculty philology at local university
  but as the journalism was still somewhere inside
  me and, and I found such an opportunity to study
  what I have always wanted in Poland. U13

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
13
3. migration as a response to blocked upward
social mobility - cnt

• Labour migration due to failed entry exams -
  Vietnamese
• If you didnt graduate from a school and didnt
  find a job after the school, it was a complete
  unemployment and I would be an ordinary sales
  person it would be very difficult. VN13
• After high school I didnt get to the
  university and I was left at home and my
  friends I had good friends at these times
  many people failed the entry exams in my times
  almost everybody so for some of them the
  families managed to find a placement, some were
  sent abroad like me here later when I was
  flying to Poland I saw that everyone has made it
  succeeded majority succeeded thanks to trade.
  VN4

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
14
Vietnamese trading strategy

• The path of development followed by the majority
  of interviewees
• investing ones savings into merchandise or
  taking some goods in commission from a wealthier
  trader.
• selling them in a rented stall in the Stadion
  an open air market place in the centre of Warsaw.
• buying ones own stall/box and moving to a
  better part of the Stadion (from retailing to
  wholesale).
• moving to the East Asian Commercial Centre (the
  China centre).
• The most successful one turned to
• large scale import from China.
• ordering and importing own brands of clothing.

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
15
Vietnamese trading cnt
Photo Bozena Navicka
1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
16
Vietnamese trading cnt
Photo EACC materials
1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
17
Vietnamese trading cnt

• Problems
• In the Stadion we had cool heads we didnt
  need to worry about imported goods we did not
  import anything, we did not think, but the life
  was very hard. You see, we needed to worry about
  caring goods, about everything but it was a
  physical, not an intellectual difficulty. Now
  its much easier physically because I dont
  need to drag heavy packages myself as I employ
  Polish workers to do so, but the whole day I need
  to think, to account so therell be some
  commodities, therell be some money, therell be
  some profitsVN9
• effort, extermely long hours, monotony routine
• risk of being arrested for tax/duty offence
• organising child care in unusual hours

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
18
Ukrainians variety of jobs

• Casual jobs
• Cleaners, child minders, elderly carers
• Frequent changes, abandoning jobs
• My studies I had such a need to go out, sit in a
  library, get a book. They were paying me quite
  well, so I could by these books, but I needed
  company. I realised that it was very hard to live
  among Poles all the time, because I had no
  Ukrainians near me. (...) The girl was very sad
  when I as leaving, she was crying and couldnt
  understand. U9
• Full time professionals mostly teachers
• The situation was such that there were only two
  English philologists in X, two persons who were
  able to translate in our big town. People made a
  lot of demands on me this school offered me
  hours, that school, the company. People who had
  some private companies asked,- asked me to call
  somebody in the USA at midnight, because it is a
  different time zone and so on. At first they
  tried to exploit me, but then I didnt allow for
  it. U15

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
19
Exceptions

• An Ukrainian Vietnamese selling textiles
• In the town X I met an Ukrainian, I thought
  that he would help me, simply as another person
  to ask, and he made me run away from that town.
  Why? Competition. U17
• Am I a president or a company or who am I? A
  prole. Like a horse.() I carry the burden, not
  my employees, me. U17
• A Vietnamese intermediator
• a Poles wife, tried many professions, runs legal
  and accounting advising company
• When I opened this accounting company it was
  mostly to serve to the Vietnamese but besides
  it serves others, mostly my friends get clients
  for me, one tells to another Ukrainians,
  Russians, English, these are all friends I have
  this big advantage from my husbands side his
  friends thanks to which, thanks to which my
  contacts are wider, this is my advantage. VN14

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
20
Family strategies

• Ethnicly mixed marriages (Ukrainians, one
  Vietnamese)
• Ethnic (in-group) marriages (Vietnamese, two
  Ukrainians)
• Single (Ukrainians, one Vietnamese)
• Yet, if I continue my studies and start a family
  here - - I would like him i.e. her future
  husband the most to be an Ukrainian. I mean it
  doesnt matter to me if he is from the Action
  Vistula member of the Ukrainian minority living
  in Poland, or an Ukrainian from Ukraine, or an
  Ukrainian who came and settled here, that
  wouldnt matter to me. I would only like him to
  be Ukrainian, so that - we wouldnt have
  conflicts on the matters of religion, Church,
  upbringing of children, he would have to speak
  Ukrainian apart from Polish, then I would 100
  sure stay in Poland. U8

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
21
Negative opinions about mixed marriages

• I saw among my friends Vietnamese who married
  Polish women they are young people - but
  majority of them - regrets. VN10
• 100 of men, who have Polish wives have also
  extramarital relationships with Vietnamese women.
  VN13
• It is hard for a foreign woman to survive alone
  unless you get married then youre oppressed by
  the husband, an alcoholic, a miser or some other
  moron. It is rare that one marries a normal man
  - U17
• Hypothesis
• Poor quality of partners available to immigrant
  women,
• Bad experience from bogus marriages

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
22
Mothering - strategies

• Ukrainians
• limiting economic activity due to parenthood (not
  only for maternity leave)
• bearing children when one doesnt have right to
  work yet
• Vietnamese
• providing children with financial means, mostly
  for education
• delegating upbringing tasks on hired persons or
  institutions
• leaving children with relatives in the host
  country

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
23
Trajectories

• 1. Ripening gradual development (both, more
  Vietnamese)
• Vietnamese aim higher and higher, diligent and
  hard-working, having lofty aspirations and
  climbing upward, as this is an only way leading
  to a success. VN 6
• 2. Starting from scratch crisis and recovery
  trajectory (both)
• And I gave my first concert, it was the first
  concert, I wanted to do it in the underground
  passage where she trades as I was born again
  starting to recite her poem
• I was born again in the beautiful town G.
• here I found my luck, while I was in a trap,
• I found peace next to anxiety,
• my sweet joy fights with bitter toil. U17
  (translation by WKN)

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
24

• 3. There was no single moment that I would be
  happy that I live in Poland subjugation and
  degradation scenarios (both)
• Trading, I forget about many things so Im robbed
  or I forget to charge, that is when I sell I
  happen to forget to take money from clients, you
  know its my head, I cant concentrate, I dont
  have a gift for it.(...) frankly speaking I dont
  like it now and I never did I compelled myself
  to trade since we need some money apart my
  husbands wage to afford some food and clothes.
  VN5
• 4. Life has its own scenarios stories of
  prolonged temporality
• And now after the studies I didnt know if-
  because I, I am not sure if I want to come back
  home, kind of I still dont have this certainty
  where I will stay. (...) Thats why I wanted to
  study and long I couldnt make my mind what
  faculty, I thought I will take psychology, as I
  had wanted to before, so I would try for the
  third time. U8
• I do not really know what to do with it right
  now. I am not a pedagogue. I am neither a
  religious instruction teacher, nor a pedagogue,
  nor anything. In general everything, in practice
  nothing. U9

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
25
Conclusions

• Motivations
• Viet family reunification, family welfare,
  independence
• Ukr studies, labour, joining the Polish partner
• Economic strategies
• Viet trade in ethnic niche profitable, high
  personal cost
• Ukr limiting ec. activity or full time at
  primary labour market
• Family strategies
• Viet in-group marriages, child care delegated
  outside
• Ukr mixed marriages, many singles, own child care

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions
26
Further research questions

• Channels
• Very positive effects of institutionalised
  channels for Ukrainians (regional cooperation)!
  Other such formal channels?
• Purposeful isolation
• Uneasy company of Poles as a reason for avoiding
  primary labour market, Vietnamese 1.5 generation
  reluctant to integrate. Why?
• Secondary marital market
• In both groups negative opinions on mixed
  marriages based on bogus marriages? Quality of
  partners available to immigrant women!
• Secondary education market
• Illusion of higher education value when it was
  primarly a means for legal residence? Information
  on labour market needed!

1. About the research 2.Motives 3.Strategies
employed 4.Trajectories 5.Conclusions