Poland is not a member of the Commonwealth, but a recent analysis of Polish migration to and settlement in the United Kingdom highlights the current significance of historic and cultural links in international migration. This was a theme argued powerfully by the Ramphal Commission on Migration and Development, 2011, and especially in the commission’s first report prepared by Alan Gamlen ( see this website ) which was looking at migration patterns in today’s Commonwealth.
Notoriously, the United Kingdom government forecast that only 13,000 Poles would come to the UK after Poland joined the European Union in 2004. But by 2011 the number resident in the UK had risen to 597,000, although some had already returned to take advantage of rising living standards after EU accession.
The scale of this influx should have been no surprise. A quarter of a million Poles had chosen to stay in the UK in 1945, rather than return to a communist Poland, and indeed the reason that the UK had gone to war was because Nazi Germany had invaded that country. The British parliament in 1947, grateful for their wartime help in spite of some xenophobia even then, passed the Polish Resettlement Act which offered British citizenship to Polish troops and airmen and their families.
From 1947 until 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, significant Polish communities and clubs survived in London, Leeds and other cities. While intermarriage and assimilation took place, many families retained contact through the Iron Curtain. Historic friendships were not forgotten. It was therefore inevitable that, when it was possible for Poles to move freely across Europe, so many would chose to bring their skills and energy to a country seen as a land of asylum and opportunity – especially since the UK was one of only three EU states which lifted barriers at once.
Recent would-be Commonwealth migrants to the UK from the Caribbean and South Asia have not been so lucky. They face increasing obstacles compared with their predecessors who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s, as nationality acts and migration rules have tightened up. But the Polish case should remind planners throughout the Commonwealth of the power and value of cultural, family and historic links when they consider issues of migration, as well as movements for higher education.
Destination states – which include states like South Africa and Singapore, as well as states like Canada and the UK – have to be sensitive to the underlying links of family, friendship and mutual respect, so easily upset by bureaucratic regulation. Xenophobia is a zero sum game if everyone plays it.
Written by Richard Bourne