The identity of an emigrant in a new society – state: between constancy and change

An emigrant wants to enter a new society – state as soon as possible, and at the same time s/he maintains their own ethnical-cultural identity. Research conducted among emigrants from Poland in Germany, France, the USA and Great Britain in the years 2003-2007 with the use of the same questionnaire confirms this statement. For Polish emigrants, even though they have been living outside their own country for a relatively long time, most of them having jobs, and many of them having the citizenship of the country they live in, Poland still remains the point of reference. Being conscious of which ethnical-cultural group they belong to, they try to combine their Polish homeland with the new society – state, which is not always easy. This is why, in a way, they live in two worlds: in their private lives, at home, in the religious cult-places, in the area of symbolic culture they remain Poles. However, in public life, in the area of the culture of being and of social culture, they try to adapt to the society they live in. It is difficult to define at which point of this peculiar continuum of identity and of the process of adaptation particular individuals are in particular societies, and the more so it is difficult with the whole Polish community of emigrants. William James argues that an individual living in two cultures gradually disposes of one of them, that is his/her original cultural identity, and s/he adopts the other one, that is the ethnical-cultural identity of the community s/he lives in [James, 1929]. Robert Park thinks that the same individual may live and fully participate in several groups, and hence in more cultures than one. Thus an emigrant does not have to dispose of his/her ethnical-cultural identity when s/he settles and lives in a new society – state [Park, Miller, 1969]. Louis Wirth has a similar opinion. He states that Jews can at the same time assimilate into the society – state they live in, and differ from it, keeping their ethnical-cultural identity [Quoted, 1975: 24]. Today this position is generally accepted. Bi- or even multiculturality existed on the eastern territories of Poland before World War II, as the ethnical and religious diversity was great there, even within one family [Stempowski, 1971: 18-19]. To a large extent, this depends on the conception of the society – state, on the people wielding power in it, on the ideologists of the state system, on whether they care about the state as an independent entity, or on the people who belong to the society – state country and constitute it, as well as on the school education that today is extended and prolonged.Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelsk