Indian and Polish Migrant Organizations in the UK

Abstract

Indians and Poles are among the most important immigrant groups in the UK. In 2009, with 625,000 persons, Indians were the largest foreign-born group, and the Poles are now the largest group of foreign nationality (494,000 persons) (ONS, 2009). The decision to choose these two groups as case studies was driven by the intent to compare a long-standing immigrant population with a recent one to see whether the history of migration might have influenced the shaping of their respective associational fields. The difference between the ethnicities (Asian non-Christian and European Christian) was another aspect which influenced this choice: the race relation policy in the UK has focused primarily on black and ethnic minorities (BME), setting aside white populations such as the Poles. Interestingly, the comparison between the two populations turned out to be very relevant, but not for the expected reasons. In fact, we discovered that the Polish associational field has older roots than the Indian one: it was established primarily during the immediate post-war period. In addition, contrary to what the perceived cultural ‘proximity’ led us to believe, Polish organizations tend to be more distant from the rest of the British civil society and are therefore less sensitive to mainstream social change. These unexpected findings increased the value of the comparison.

The author is extremely grateful to the readers of preliminary versions of this paper for their fruitful comments. He would like to thank the TRAMO team and the members of the scientific committee, in particular Peggy Levitt, Alejandro Portes, Luin Goldring, Patricia Landolt, Marta Biernath, Dirk Halm, Zeynep Sezgin, Ludger Pries and Miguel Martinez Lucio. Last but not least, he would like to thank Stephen Castles for his invaluable support and guidance.