DEALING WITH RELOCATION: PROBLEMATIC INTEGRATION OF EAST EUROPEAN MOTHERS WITH PRESCHOOLERS IN POLAND

Abstract

This research examines the agency and integration of skilled Eastern European migrant mothers with preschool children living in Poland, who relocated through family migration channels accompanying IT professionals. Drawing on 15 semi-structured interviews with women from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the study investigates how these mothers navigate structural, cultural, and institutional constraints while reconstructing their professional and social identities in the host society. The analytical framework integrates Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory-particularly the concepts of the duality of structure, routine, and reflexive monitoring of action-with Hannah Arendt’s notion of agency, Andrea Thuma’s four-dimensional model of subject visibility, and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and capital. The findings reveal that migrant mothers construct alternative spaces of empowerment within online and offline migrant communities, where their pre-migration cultural and professional capital is revalorized and transformed into social and symbolic capital. These informal networks provide social support and partially compensate for the lack of institutional integration measures in Poland. However, Poland’s current migration policy is not geared toward the integration of migrant mothers, and for the mothers themselves, integration is not a priority. Additionally, they feel that Polish society is not ready for integration as a two-way process. Therefore, the potential of habitus is not fully utilized to foster the creation of a multicultural society. In turn, habitus determines practical activities that, in the absence of effective integration, continue to stem from dispositions formed before relocation. This perpetuation of pre-existing social patterns may contribute to growing interethnic tensions between Poles and Eastern European migrants.
The study concludes that recognizing and mobilizing the agency and resources of skilled migrant mothers is essential not only for their empowerment but also for fostering social cohesion in contemporary Poland.