Anne is an expert in Polish migration and social change in Poland, based at UCL’s School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. She has designed and manages the Polish Migration website, an excellent resource for anyone interested in contemporary Polish migration (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/research/polish-migration). Anne’s current preoccupation is understanding the impacts of migration on Poland, as a sending country.
Anne gave us many practical suggestions from how we might go about contacting Polish nationals working in the UK. We were also very interested to learn more about Anne’s work, especially about her book about ‘Polish Families and Migration Since EU Accession’ (http://www.policypress.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781847428202), and think about how it might relate to our project. Anne’s work has emphasised to us the emotional and familial reasons why some Polish families move to the UK to join the (often male) breadwinner who is working here. These whole family migration patterns mean that there is now a developed Polish community in the UK, spanning the generations. This may be a useful and productive source of stability and integration. How would David Cameron’s proposals to restrict access to, for example, child benefit, affect whole family migration? If whole family migration were to decrease because of these changes, in favour of increased single male ‘guest working’ in the UK, what might be the social and economic consequences of this?