Dorota Praszalowicz - Böcker

The volume contains papers presented at the fourth Workshop «American Ethnicity: Rethinking Old Issues, Asking New Questions» which took place in Krakow, Poland, on May 24th-25th, 2010. The event was organized by the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora of the Jagiellonian University, and supported by the (American) Immigration and Ethnic History Society. The tradition of organizing bi-annual workshops goes back to 2004 and continues to be a forum for discussing ongoing research and sharing ideas. The texts included in this volume provide a comparative context to immigration studies, contribute to the gender perspective, bring up new issues and remind the most important aspects of migrants’ life, such as remittances and poverty. There is also a set of the articles on American Jewish experience, studied from a variety of angles, and the Polish-American section presenting texts on local immigrant communities.

The book explores intra-EU mobility of Polish families as seen by the migrants themselves. The author analyses in what way mobility has influenced their choices regarding if, when and where to have and raise their children. She evaluates how the family dynamics have affected their decisions regarding long-term settlement. The analysis is based on narrative biographic interviews with Polish migrants in Great Britain and Italy. A recurring experience of migrants in the UK was that work and welfare conditions improved their families’ quality of life, allowed them to fulfil desired fertility, and offered better prospects for the future. The opinions on welfare conditions in Italy were more critical, however it also offered long-term stability to the ones who had been struggling to survive in Poland.

The contributions in this book focus on U.S. migration policies, receiving society, ethnic communities and return migration. The authors analyze various aspects of migratory history ranging from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. They cover such topics as the times when Eastern European immigrants in the USA encountered hostility and marginalization, the efforts to create American Polonia military formations during the WWI, the problem of ethnic mobilization among Ukrainian political migrants in the U.S. as well as how state policies influence the movement of people. All the contributions are extended and revised versions of the papers presented at the 7th Workshop American Ethnicity and Ethnic Community Building.