Seasonal migration from Poland to Germany has a long history, yet, there has been a lack of research which would discuss the perpetuating seasonal migration and its entanglements with the family relations. Drawing from the research on seasonal migrants in Germany and in the local community in Poland I look at the situation of male migrants and their family relations in order to add to this research strand. Doing so I built on the context of gender relations in Poland and the still dominant role of men as economic providers and breadwinners. In the economically challenging post-socialist context, fulfilling this societal obligation placed upon them proved to be problematic. Thus migration has become a strategy of social protection, aimed to minimize the social risks to family's wellbeing linked to unemployment and unstable labour market. Seasonal migration pattern and family relations have mutually constructed each other in a way that, instead of creating transnational familyhood, it may translate into defamilisation: estrangement or marginalisation of the migrants. It thus demonstrates how men's recurring absence affects gender dynamics and their position within families. The way families have adapted to prolonging absence of the migrant and in fact living apart together can be viewed, as I argue, as the noneconomic reasons for the perpetuation of seasonal migration of Polish men to Germany. This paper also addresses modernisation of gender roles and points to the importance of the class dimension. Whilst the discourse on fathering or conjugal relationship usually builds on egalitarian gender roles, this paper, applying the intersectional lenses, brings in the perspective of the working class and rural migrant workers.
This article reviews seasonal migration from Poland to Germany from the perspective of functioning of the Polish-German agreement on seasonal work. The title calls for attention to two issues -firstly, the new agreement which was -as compared to other signed by EU member states with third countries -of outstanding relevance due to the scale of migration; on the other hand -migration that followed was well known and established among Poles. The paper suggests that seasonal migration in the state as it is today, has its roots in the distant past and concludes that development of particular migration schemes may be considered as a result of power relations and inequalities between states, which are reproduced on the actors level.KEYWORDS: migration-Poland-Germany; seasonal workers; bilateral agreement; agriculture; migration network.
RESUMEN:Este artículo se detiene en la migración estacional polaca hacia Alemania a partir del análisis del funcionamiento del acuerdo polaco-alemán sobre trabajo estacional. Su título destaca dos elementos principales. El alcance numérico del nuevo acuerdo en comparación con otros acuerdos firmados por Estados de la Unión Europea y terceros países y la corriente migratoria derivada de este acuerdo. El artículo sugiere que la actual migración estacional tiene sus raíces en la historia migratoria polaco-alemana y concluye que el formato y desarrollo de este sistema de regulación migratoria puede ser considerado resultado de las desiguales relaciones de poder existentes entre Estados, que se reproducen en la esfera de los actores.
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