The Migration of Poles as a Moral Issue: On the Political Power of Terminology and Exclusion

The construction of Roma as a people fundamentally different, without history and thus without a future, without an anchor in the physical and social space, has been discussed in much of the literature on the life of the contemporary Roma (Mirga-Kruszelnicka Reference Mirga-Kruszelnicka2018; Kapralski Reference Sławomir and Piotr2007, Reference Sławomir2012; Hasdeu Reference Hasdeu2008; Vermeersch Reference Vermeersch2008). In this arsenal of tropes, the stereotype of the eternal wanderer and nomad has been particularly important, as it helps the state to deprive people of their local and national belonging, their homeland, and to deny them a place in society. In other words, this stereotype serves to validate a moral worldview that values a sedentary, rooted existence, and reinforces this social construction as the norm and pathologizes mobility (cf. Castles Reference Castles2010). Thus, the idiom of the eternal Roma wanderer serves as a useful fiction to justify the nationalist essentialist and quasi-biological discourse of people anchored and eternally attached to one place, one country, and one nation only.

Immigration and integration policies also approach it as a sort of aberration that has to be dealt with while also normalizing the migration- and ethnicity-related differences (Dahinden Reference Dahinden2016) placing the migrants in the migration (and ethnic) container. This view has its roots in the nationalist, hegemonic naturalization of social life, where a vision of populations being divided into neat territory groups is transported from the domain of historical peculiarity to that of biological necessity. In this model, migrations are an unwanted distortion, a stain on clean sheets of national purity and a dangerous empirical falsification of “timeless” nationalist ideas. This “metaphysics of sedentary life,” (Malkki Reference Malkki, Gupta and Ferguson1997), constructs a biological link between people and land. Supposedly, this link is severed in the case of nomads and migrants, or in the highly mobile and diverse settings of modern cities. As scholars note, in case of Roma, sedentary bias plays a decisive role in historical and ethnographic exhibitions depicting Roma as strangers to the local sedentary populations (Hasdeu Reference Hasdeu2008; Vermeersch Reference Vermeersch2008).

Interestingly, in the case of Poland, migration and mobility became an intrinsic element of a wider national community building process through the centuries. In that grand narrative, emigrations in Polish history are structured and morally hierarchized. Polish emigrants were thus morally judged, as possessing the migration ethos in relation to their political activism aimed at the rebirth of the Polish state. This discourse was also highly militarized and gendered, with an important exclusion of movement based on class, gender, or freedom from oppressive post-feudal social relations (Garapich Reference Garapich, Reed-Danahay and Caroline2008a, Reference Garapich2010, Reference Garapich2016a). The emigration of women, minorities, Jews, and peasants escaping the hardships of post-feudal Polish society of the nineteenth century and later did not reach the national pantheon discursively silenced (Garapich Reference Garapich2016a; Horolets and Bielecka-Prus Reference Horolets, Bielecka-Prus, Czyżewski, Horolets, Podemski and Rancew-Sikora2017). This moral hierarchization thus places emigrants who left Poland for “political” reasons above those whose reasons were solely and egoistically “economical,” which Mary Erdmans defines as an important feature of Polish migration culture, calling it a “moral issue” juxtaposing collective loss against individual gain (Reference Erdmans1992).

In this nationalist model, minorities are a systemic anomaly that has to be dealt with, either in radical form through physical expulsion, or academically by silencing their voices. One of the outcomes of this position in relation to the Polish postwar society was a continuous normalizing of ethnic and religious homogeneity, as an ideological aftermath of the massive changes Poland underwent due to World War II. Normalizing here relates to the treatment of homogeneity as a natural and desirable state of affairs – how Polish society should look, instead of the consequences of genocides and the unprecedented forced migration process in the aftermath of the war. Minorities in this ideological view are to some extent accepted, in principle only as an exception, and are analytically evicted to the domain of “ethnic” or “minorities” studies, which treat them as separate, and marginal to the whole body of Polish society. Unsurprisingly, Roma migrations from Poland do not fit that dominant hegemonic discourse on migrations from Poland. Despite the fact that only some Roma in Poland led a nomadic lifestyle, with other groups living in the same villages for more than two centuries (Ficowski Reference Ficowski1989; Bartosz Reference Bartosz2004), Roma are mysteriously excluded from these narratives of emigration, moral worth, and nationalist projections of the purity of Polish lands. Constructed in an essentialist way as characteristic of Roma, their mobility cannot be framed through external determinants, since Roma migrate because of “who they are,” due to some internal deterministic drive, and not because of the world they live in. Despite living in Poland for half a millennium, Roma were not treated through the same metaphysical sedentary lens. Therefore, their mobilities have in fact endangered the nationalist project. They also did not fit into the moral obligation to create formal and active Polish diasporic groups whose task of building “Poland abroad” was meant to extend the struggle for statehood and nationalistic ideas while outside the sacred sphere of the territory.Footnote ¹

The international, and especially pendulum, migration strategies of Poles living in the post-transformation period of 1989 were largely the outcome of a mismatch between the rapid industrialization of communist Poland and under-urbanization, forcing many rural inhabitants to work in factories but live in villages (Jaźwińska and Okólski Reference Jaźwińska and Okólski2001) and restrictive migration regime in the destination countries, what made them “settled in mobility” (Morokvasic Reference Morokvasic2004). This strategy fits well with what we learned about the migration of Polish Roma in the very same period (Fiałkowska, Garapich, Mirga-Wójtowicz Reference Fiałkowska, Garapich and Mirga-Wójtowicz2019b).

Here again, Roma migrations did not fit the theoretical framework dividing migrations according to motivations – economic versus political. In fact, as we demonstrate in this article, Roma migrations from Poland prior to 2004 were ambiguous as they could not be categorically classified as political or economic (Acton and Ingmire Reference Acton and Ingmire2012). From Roma narratives collected during our study (Fiałkowska, Garapich, Mirga-Wójtowicz Reference Fiałkowska, Garapich and Mirga-Wójtowicz2019b), it is clear that the decision had also to do with a personal sense of security, perspectives regarding education for their children, more opportunities, and finally being able to live in a country where one is not an outcast.

Roma, along with vast sections of the Polish working class and rural population, were among the first victims of economic transformation. What was clear for anthropologists at the time (Nagengast Reference Nagengast1991; Buchowski Reference Buchowski2004; Dunn Reference Dunn2004; Rakowski Reference Rakowski2009), as is widely accepted today, was that the transition to the new system brought enormous social costs. These costs were cushioned by the largely irregular and informal nature of Polish international mobility and participation in the labor markets (Morawska Reference Morawska2001; Garapich Reference Garapich2016a), or in the case of Roma, by confronting these changes, highlighting their increased fear for their personal security, and the threat of violence in the new conditions. The transition period was followed by the raise of antigypsyism and anti-Roma violence. Local conflicts resulted in Polish Roma seeking asylum in Western Europe (Matras Reference Matras2000, 37–38) which generated an interesting series of diplomatic exchanges between Poland and, for example, the United Kingdom, which we also analyze in this article. The economy-centered logic of migration scholarship is another reason why scholars did not focus on Roma, instead turning their attention to the fiscal and labor market outcomes of the migration and the issues of supply and demand that came out of the growing interconnectedness of East and West of Europe (Kaczmarczyk and Okólski Reference Kaczmarczyk and Okólski2008; Okólski and Salt Reference Okólski and Salt2014). In this approach, macrostructural determinants did not fit the essentialist perception of the migrating Roma, who were allegedly migrating due to some cultural or genetic features, not due to structural and economic factors.

Methodological and Conceptual Approach

In this article we adapt a bottom-up anthropological approach to mobility regimes, border controls, asylum rules seen as the loci of power structures which are constantly tested by people attempting to move from one state to another. This article is based on outcomes of a study on migration of Polish Roma. Through multi-sited ethnography we simultaneously researched a selection of Roma families from two main groups in Poland – Polska Roma and Bergitka in few locations in Poland, Germany, and in England. Classical anthropological methods were employed with long periods of participant observations, oral history with the elder members of communities, unstructured interviews, at times conducted in a family group setting at the kitchen table, at times with individuals willing to share more on a one-to-one basis. During several intensive periods of ethnographic research, we followed several transnationally dispersed families, took part in family events, conversed with them daily in person or via modern means of communication, and listened to gossip, stories, and comments on Roma migrations. These conversations also involved considerable reflections on past migration experiences, retold many times, by different members of the households in question.

In parallel, the study involved archive and media search, looking at how states responded to Roma presence. In Poland, in the decades preceding the transformation in 1989, it mostly referred to sedentarization and productivization policies, both preoccupied with disciplining Roma population and turning them into “useful” citizens of the state. Countries of destination responses to migrating Roma were triggered by them using the asylum system. The analysis of how people make sense of the state actions and interpret them through the lenses of theirs and other people’s experiences and rumours, as well as how the state’s actions are locally and relationally embedded, has proven particularly useful (see Humphris Reference Humphris2017). In this article we, too, juxtapose on an equal epistemological basis both Roma narratives and the state’s responses to them, as these provide a key insight into the adaptation of Roma to the structural shifts as well as to the dynamic of ethnic networks.

Overall, we bring forward the notion of “unequal citizenship” not to offer another conceptual framework into what is already a theoretically crowded domain (see for overview, Sardelić Reference Sardelić2021). In recent decades, the debates on citizenship, when it comes to Roma, have produced an impressive array of debates on how dominant societal structures try to contain, control, and discipline Romani communities, in particular those who migrate. As Sardelić rightly points out “there has been less discussion on how Roma contest the invisible edges of citizenship as non-activists in their everyday lives” (Sardelić Reference Sardelić2021, 11). Furthermore, we argue, there has been actually even less ethnographically and historically rooted research on how Roma make sense of the shifts and changes in the institutional maze of the Gadjo world, in a longer time perspective, that is too much “here and now” analysis without a longer view encompassing more than one generation’s experience. In other words, this article aims at discussing Polish Roma “experiences of citizenship” in the context of mobility and migration prior to and after the EU’s 2004 eastern enlargement (see Vermeersch Reference Vermeersch, Isin and Nyers2014).

It is clear that in the context of making sense of their own status within society when it comes to migration, the people we interviewed and spent considerable time with are not passive actors. Far from it, the high levels of agency and reflections of Polish Roma is manifested in their vast experiences of international migration since the late 1980s, passed on to next generations in the form of localized, social praxis. Similarly to Sardelić (Reference Sardelić2016) we see these enactments of agency as the reaction to marginalization by the state and protest against the restriction of their rights as citizens. They were navigating a complex and changing web of immigration restrictions between the East and the West. In many ways they have become an experts in detecting structural shifts, legal ways, administrative issues, and changing immigration law because it usually hits them the most as the underprivileged and minoritized group – identified also as semi-citizens (Sardelić, Reference Sardelić2016) they do not possess all the rights their citizenship should grant them. This, however, was only possible due to highly developed social networks structuring their migration patterns, stimulating specific collectivism of migration culture and becoming a major driver of social change among some groups.

We argue that capturing the phenomenon of migration of Polish Roma, which in many instances differs from that of their non-Roma compatriots and the grand narrative of Polish migrations, requires methodological and conceptual tools that are different than the ones normally used. The bottom-up transnational approach allows their experience of mobility regimes and subsequently evolving mobility practices, as well as formation of transnational networks in the context of highly unequal and asymmetrical relations with the majority society and capitalist economy impacting European mobility regimes, to be scrutinized (see also Grill Reference Grill2012). But this also needs a deeper engagement across generations of Roma, as the knowledge of the institutional framework is embedded in intergenerational dialogue within one family. The case described below involves oral history accounts from Roma encompassing time from the late 1940s to the early 2000s – at least three or four generations of accumulated knowledge being tested, activated, used, and evaluated by our interviewees.

The ethnographic research this study is based on involves multiple locations in Poland and abroad, among two major Polish Roma groups – Polska Roma and Bergitka Roma. Thus far we have reached over 100 persons, among them the pioneers of migration from both groups, migrants, circular migrants, return migrants, as well as those who have not migrated and included comparable number of representatives from both groups. In addition, we have included those from mixed families (also with non-Roma). The discussions, interviews, and observations enabled us to reconstruct the migration histories from locations in question and to observe the functioning of the migration networks, spanning across two or more countries. In line with the transnational lens and methodology, our fieldwork locations were connected by the life of transnational families (Amelina and Faist Reference Amelina and Faist2012). The presence of the team members in all of these localities enabled a better understanding of the importance of the place as well as the networks and the effort (and at time resistance) invested in their maintenance. Finally, the composition of the research team, combined of both Roma and non-Roma scholars, is crucial, especially since Roma still lack researchers of Roma origin especially in Poland (Mirga and Mróz Reference Mirga and Mróz1994; Acton Reference Acton1997; Bartosz Reference Bartosz2004; Mirga-Kruszelnicka Reference Mirga-Kruszelnicka2018). The ongoing paradigm shift in Romani studies (Ryder Reference Ryder, Beck and Ivasiuc2018, 92) means that we are seeing an increase in “insider” accounts, challenging – though not without controversy – the hegemony of non-Roma, Gadje scholars (Corradi Reference Corradi2017). The inclusion and participation of scholars of Roma origin in the production of knowledge and public discourse about Roma, therefore, brings a decisive empowerment to those who have been and still are neglected, silenced, and omitted as those who have, for centuries, been spoken about by others. Our research contributes to these efforts to overcome the asymmetries in academic knowledge production on Roma and brings in the emergent Romani scholars’ voices.

Post-World War II (Im)mobilities

As argued by Huub van Baar (Reference Van Baar2018), the increased securitization of the European societies made Roma subjected to regimes of forced mobility and immobility. This involved the practices of Roma deportation, as “threatening” the life of the society or endangering the social welfare system forced mobility and contained circulation at the European level in the post-1989 period, as well as the racialized ghettoization and durable segregation which were close to forced immobility. These paradoxical strategies of both expulsion and containment and control are one of many examples of a modern nation state’s ambiguous position versus Roma (Fraser Reference Fraser2001; Stewart Reference Stewart1997). In this section, we will show how these practices were reflected on the Polish ground with the socialist state policies targeting Polish Roma, and how these were negotiated and resisted.

The socialist states implemented similar assimilationist practices towards Romani populations that had been applied to these groups in the past (e.g. attempts to produce “new Hungarians” in the late 18th century Habsburg empire, a citizens useful to the state, working either in the agriculture (“new peasants”) or in the craft, see Barany Reference Barany2002, 94, 113). In Poland this happened after the seizure of power by the Polish United Workers’ Party and the first decree addressing Roma was signed in 1952, offering Roma housing and employment in order to end their nomadic way of life in the spirit of socialist productivization. The first years after World War II, those of the unsettled Roma were able to continue traveling in caravans and this time has been remembered by the elders who we had a chance to talk to:

This elderly Roma recalled his childhood memories of family meeting after the war, in the woods of the town which was known to them from their pre-war travels. The town, the name of which we choose to keep anonymous, was an important trade center in the region with a sizeable Jewish population which perished during WWII, where the trading routes and proximity to the pre-war borders provided favorable conditions for traders and travelers alike. The place of the meeting was not random, but must have been known to their members from the times before the war, thus family could meet there and see who survived the war, exchange information, and reorganize their life according to postwar circumstances.

The caravans of nomadic Roma could still travel on the Polish roads, at least until the 1960s, when the action of productivization accelerated, following the unsatisfying results of the first settlement attempts (Drużyńska Reference Drużyńska2015). Jadwiga Depczyńska (Reference Depczyńska1970), in line with the official assimilationist and productivist approach of the state towards Roma, mentions “the obligation to provide comprehensive assistance” on the part of all the local authorities, in order to speed up the process of sedentarization and productivization and turning “Roma criminals and spongers” into useful, hardworking citizens (243). The following decades until the late 1970s witnessed the sedentarization of most of Roma population in Poland:

Bogdan educated himself to become a driver and with this job he was able to support himself and a family, even if the family changed the location, as he explains, initially every other year before settling down in the town in which we met: “They arranged a meeting, by the militia’s station, [where they said] that caravans are not allowed” as Bogdan repeated, with invited guests, who sanctioned the high importance of such meetings, “some minister from Warsaw” would explain the local Roma the needs of the state. However, as it was not entirely clear where they should settle, the elders we spoke with stressed that they have had some degree of freedom of deciding where to settle down. Choosing of location was random at times, but in this case of our interview partners their choice was based on the prewar links with the town they have eventually settled in. Similar accounts comes from Wojciech Olszewski (Reference Olszewski1985, 243) who mentions the settlement of Sasytka Roma (Sinti) in a part of Poznan, the city near which they used to camp during summers in the previous years and where other members of the family could find accommodation. This also demonstrates that the nomadic strategies of Roma were not a case of a rootless population, but a group of people with long lasting connections to towns and villages on their trails.

Things looked a bit different for other Roma group in Poland – Bergitka Roma (also known as Carpathian Roma). Socialist productivization was linked with, for example, work in the factories, such as Nowa Huta near Krakow (a new industrial and urban type settlement built under the communist regime) where many members of Bergitka Roma – Roma from the Tatra mountains and near surroundings of the highlands – were able to find jobs. This group of Roma, living mostly in the rural settlements, on the outskirts of the villages of the highlanders, were sedentarized during the Austro-Hungarian rule. As such they differed from nomadic Roma population and this distinction between them and other Roma groups was frequently raised by our interview partners (regardless of the group they identified with) as it is also reflected in the literature (Bartosz Reference Bartosz2004; Kamiński Reference Kamiński1980; Mirga and Mróz Reference Mirga and Mróz1994). Their rural-urban type of migration was possible due to the industrialization of the country, allowing many formerly rural Roma to resettle to Nowa Huta, or further westward, to Silesia and Lower Silesia:

There were Roma families living in few first blocks of flats built in Nowa Huta in early 1950. And these times were reflected with both pride and nostalgia by our respondents. This settlement was also part of the socialist state’s attempts to “turn” Roma into productive members of a socialist economy, which many Roma in fact achieving tangible social mobility in the process. The local socialist officials however were rarely able to distinguish between different Roma groups, boundaries of which sometimes were deliberately blurred by Roma themselves. So, paradoxically, the sedentarization and productivization policies of Roma populations in Poland resulted in enforced immobility for the formerly nomadic groups, and stimulated mobility in the case of the already sedentary groups.

When this forced immobilization of nomadic Roma occurred, along with the immobilization of non-Roma majority society by turning Poland into “a country with no exit” (Stola Reference Stola2010), some found ways of escaping to the West, particularly Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden (Kamiński Reference Kamiński1980; Sobotka Reference Sobotka2003) and more recently and in smaller numbers to Finland, Canada, Belgium, and the United Kingdom (Matras Reference Matras2000). This was not easy as Roma were seen as nomads, continuously traveling to gain economic benefits, and as such they were not recognized as refugees – this term from the early 1950s was linked with the sedentary populations, from which Roma were excluded, a practice described as sedentary bias of the refugee policies (Joskowicz Reference Joskowicz2016).

However, the approach of the Western democracies has not been consistent to the citizens from behind the Iron Curtain, with Roma being no exception to the rule (Clark and Campbell Reference Clark and Campbell2000) – in the mid-1970s not only finding employment but also receiving a residence permit was allowed in the West, then in the late 1970s until early 1990s they were allowed to enter illegally or to apply for refugee status, while the 1990s witnessed a mixture of measures to contain “the tidal wave of Romani westward migrations” (Matras Reference Matras2000) or the “Gypsy invasions” (Clark and Campbell Reference Clark and Campbell2000) from post-socialist countries.

Our findings as well as the literature provide us with information of several ways of getting into the West – either through asylum seeking, being granted or not, it allowed for stay for some period of time, or to join the families being part of the family network. Eva Sobotka (Reference Sobotka2003) illustrates the ways of entering Germany by Polish Roma – either using the Aussiedlers scheme (people of German citizenship prior to the war, who remained on Polish territories after the border change), as asylum seekers, or as irregular migrants in the late decades of the socialist regime in Poland.

This combination of strategies was evident in the story of our interview partners from Polska Roma about their brother’s escape from Poland, who eventually got asylum in Germany and settled in Hamburg. From the information is became clear that the family had some contacts with other Roma in Germany, be it the Aussiedlers, or post-war refugees:

The members of the family joined them several times, organizing passports and paying bribes to get them. They would work temporarily in the shadow economy, and witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Despite the encouragement of the brother to stay with them in Germany, the siblings wanted to return to Poland, where they invested money into the construction of the house. Circulation and work in the shadow economy with the help of the family members residing in the country of immigration made this possible, the opportunity of which was also frequently exploited by non-Roma Poles in the early 1990s.

The communist state policy was to prevent the crossing of the border, especially for economic purposes, but this policy was liberalized in the eighties with the socialist state entering a critical decade of economic and political decay. Germans and Jews, whose expulsions and emigration in the late 1940s and 1950s (and ensuing decades) and following the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968 was orchestrated by the state (Stola Reference Stola2010), were exempted from restrictive migration policies, realizing the vision of a state without numerous ethnic and national minorities, with those remaining being silenced and controlled. The fact that after the riot in Oświecim in 1981, authorities expelled a group of Roma giving them a “one way ticket” (meaning a travel document without right to return) to Sweden, which made them the third ethnic group to be physically evicted from the state under the communist regime, is little known to the general public. As it happened, it also means that as an ethnic group marginalized within the “imagined community” they were evicted from the state not only physically but also symbolically, by stripping them of their citizenship, and remained potentially “evictable” in the future (Van Baar Reference Van Baar2017). This happened in the eve of imposing martial law in Poland (December 13^th, 1981), thus the events had been overshadowed by what followed and as a consequence largely forgotten:

• – In the last months at least 33 persons from Poland arrived in Ystad, they were in possession of documents making their return to the country impossible. Half of them had the documents stating that they are no longer citizens of Poland. However, the investigation proved that they were citizens of Poland prior to the journey. The rest are in possession of Polish passports which are not valid for the return journey. These practically force them into exile from their country of origin. This practice is against any norms and standard codes of conduct in international relations.Footnote ²

The authorities issued Roma from Oświęcim so-called travel documents or emigration passports. The former were instruments already tested by the authorities in mid-1950 in relation to Germans and their orchestrated emigration from Poland and in full scale in 1968, with a majority of Jews leaving Poland with such a document. It explained that the document holder did not possess citizenship of the People’s Republic of Poland (Stola Reference Stola2010). The latter were used as an instrument of an exit-policy implemented by the authorities, also in relation to emigration of Jews from Poland (Stola Reference Stola2015). Owners of either travel documents or one-way passports were effectively stripped off their Polish citizenship, which practically made them loose their rights to re-enter Poland. These affected mostly Lovari, Kelderash, and Polska Roma. In response to these arrivals, which totalled 100 persons, Sweden imposed a visa regime on Polish citizens. Importantly, such a procedure was not a new phenomenon – this way of stripping citizenship of minorities labelled undesirable was already tested on the ethnic Germans post-1945 and on Jews following the anti-Semitic campaign orchestrated by the communist regime in Poland (with actually some support of some parts of the Polish society).

From Poland to Germany and from Germany to England

The problematization of Roma migration in the West entered into full light after 1989, with post-socialist countries seen as being a source of the problem – countries “producing” migrants that endanger Europe’s security (Van Baar, Reference Van Baar2018, 444). Among them were the growing numbers of Roma, for example those from Nowa Huta. In previous years many of them would work in places like the city’s cleaning and recycling services or in the steel mill, but with the transformation their employment opportunities decreased:

As our respondent explains, the transformation change brought in economic insecurities for Roma employed in the state-owned sector, where the employment cuts affected them almost immediately after 1989, while the private employers were reluctant to hire Roma. Migration was then seen as a way out of rather gloomy prospects for Roma in post-1989 Poland. The transition period was followed with the rise of antygypsyism and local conflicts as a result of which Polish Roma were seeking asylum in the West (Matras Reference Matras2000, 38), as Bogdan explains: “it happened when this boy drove over a Gadjo boy and he got caught, but there was this riot, people would burn Roma houses […] destroy them, a lot of police came, after this many of Roma went away from here, to apply for this asylum.”

Bogdan’s relative, Beata (mid-fifties) recalls that her family have tried to get asylum both in Germany and Britain. In both cases they had troubles with crossing the border, not with Polish border guards but with the ones of the destination country. Eventually none of their application succeeded and the family lives now in Poland. Some have exercised this route before the 1989 hoping that the asylum procedures would be available to the citizens of the Eastern bloc and following the rumours and gossips spread among Roma in, for example, Nowa Huta, they were encouraged to try their luck:

As Daria explained, the organization of travel relied on networks of Roma, both from Polska Roma and Bergitka Roma. Those who already made their way across border shared their insights as to how safely cross the border. Unlike other migrants they were not entirely free to come and go back if needed, with the lengthy asylum procedures some of them needed to drop their case and return back home to do things like taking care of elderly parents at home. This is why the asylum procedure of Beata’s family was interrupted:

In similar manner Daria mentions their stay in Germany and reasons for dropping their asylum case:

While the asylum procedures severely limited their options for returning back home when needed, it is clear that many of them did not see other options for migrating to the West other than via the asylum route available to Roma when other migratory channels were difficult to access. What came out from many narratives about failed attempts for asylum is that because of their limited options for migration, the needs of transnational families, especially taking care of elderly and sick family members, could not be satisfied. Finally, the sentiments towards the place of origin, despite experiences of racism and discrimination, highlights the degree to which our respondents are attached to a place and share deep-seated sentiments towards the locality of their origin and upbringing. This contradicts some claims made by scholars related to loosing this attachment (Matras Reference Matras2000, 35). A return was also a way of preserving continuity, returning to the known social and cultural environment, where the relations amongst the members of the community are not engendered by new, unexpected phenomena from the outside unpredictable world (cf. Grill Reference Grill2012).

The number of people applying for asylum grew, although not everyone had the means to travel and access the migration networks, also among the Gadje. Migration networks were highly valued social resources, especially since the communist administration imposed mobility restriction, thus access to them was rather limited to social networks, and shared along family lines. Importantly, migration networks of Roma were different from those of the Gadje and they crossed only sporadically, and while there is a number of academic books and articles in journals on Poles working in the shadow economy in Germany, among other places (Jaźwińska and Okólski Reference Jaźwińska and Okólski2001; Irek Reference Irek2018), there is little or no mention of other, especially Polish Roma being included in the migratory networks at the time.

Increased Roma migration from Poland prompted the securitization processes and was accompanied by the development of discourses and programs which were then enacted in most of the post-socialist countries, with Poland being one of them. While asylum seeking in Germany was the main entry route to the West by Polish Roma at the time of the transformation, it was not possible or made extremely difficult in the early 1990s. Those who entered the country from Poland in the previous decades did so through the Aussiedler scheme, as asylum seekers, labor migrants, or on a family reunification basis and in the mid-1990s, however the new arrivals could not be sure of their right to stay. Additionally, the rising level of xenophobia and racist attacks, especially in eastern Germany, prompted politicians to take on some of the rhetoric used by the extreme right in order to neutralize the power of the far right organizations. This also impacted some of our respondents. As Robert (mid-thirties) explained, it made his father return out of concern for his family safety: “we got a place to live, in a countryside, near Hamburg, but some [other Roma] were panicking, about those skins [far right] attacking refugees in Germany, that they will kill us, and one day my father said to my mum, no, we go back home.”

Soon also the readmissions agreements were to be signed, with justification that the influx of refugees would “spark a national emergency,” which spurred criticism of the human right activists that Germany is not happy with the “quality” of the migrants who arrived, especially the Roma from post-socialist countries (Sobotka Reference Sobotka2003, 86).

The readmission agreement with Poland was negotiated in early 1993, regarding mostly readmissions of Roma from Romania, who were entering Germany through Poland. This and the changing climate around migrants of Polish descent (Roma or non-Roma) in Germany and also their possible readmissions had been one of concerns of the Polish government since the early 1990s (in fact the expulsions started in 1990). According to the documents of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), in 1966 the Permanent Conference of the Ministries of the Interior of the German states adopted a resolution forbidding the expulsions of foreigners arriving from the Eastern bloc. However, in April 1989 the same body refrained from this position and allowed expulsions. To the knowledge of the MFA, in 1989 alone there were 26,000 asylum applicants from Poland and only 1% of them were successful. The readmissions according to the estimations of the ministry could affect even 150,000 persons, among them Roma, whose residence status in Germany was not regulated. In the mid-1990s there were still about 30,000 Roma from former German territories in Poland living in Germany (Sobotka Reference Sobotka2003, 84) and this is also confirmed in the documents archived by the Polish MFA:

Similar to Roma from the Czechia and Slovakia (Uherek Reference Uherek2018, 85), we came across documents and personal testimonies confirming that in the mid-1990s the UK became the main country for those seeking asylum among Polish Roma, which coincides with rising deportations from Germany to countries of origin – like Poland.

How did these structural and political developments impact networks, ethnic boundaries, and negotiations between groups? The story of a man we call Sergio illustrates this perfectly in a longer time perspective. Sergio comes from Bergitka Roma group, but married into Polska Roma having thus relatives in both groups. Through his connections in Polish non-Roma world, he began acting as a migration facilitator, a broker, being able to acquire “one way” passports during communist times (claiming that he knew a local official who was able to get them). He has spent considerable time in Germany (also in the asylum procedure) where he established contact with Roma from other groups and nationalities. He was acutely aware also of the political activism of Roma and Sinti in Germany in that time and took part in some political activities then, getting to know some respected activists. Then in late 1980s and early 1990s he personally began to help willing families to migrate to Germany, either by smuggling them by car or offering a go between. Among his kin in the Bergitka group he is perceived as the pioneer migrant, the one who went first and then helped others to migrate. There were diverse ways of payment for his services – favors, cash or simply respect. He was the one to go to if you needed advice, information, or help in getting to Germany. It is clear that it is his unique position as a person bridging several layers of Roma identity and non-Roma world that he was able to act as a migration facilitator. For his Bergitka Roma kin, it was also clear that it is his association with Polska Roma through marriage behind his status. In common stereotypes among the Carpathian Roma, Polska Roma are much more entrepreneurial and aware of how to navigate and negotiate hostile migration regimes, so Sergio’s role here was vital but at the same time sustaining a hierarchy between groups. Sergio’s case again points to the crucial importance of human agency in these processes.

Government records, media reports, and the narratives of our respondents point to the fact that the tightening of restrictions in Germany makes Roma from Poland turn their attention to England. Whilst migration and settlement in Germany became less of an option, the UK became a destination country for many Roma families from Poland seeking migration possibilities (Matras Reference Matras2000, 38). The peak of Roma seeking asylum in the UK was in the mid-1990s, and then in the late 1990s, this caused the government’s discussion:

In Britain, the increased arrivals of Eastern European Roma, (i.e. from Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia but also Romania, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) caused a “moral panic.” As emphasized by Clark and Campbell (Reference Clark and Campbell2000, 29) and Guy (Reference Guy2003, 70) the relatively small number of Roma asylum claimants from Czechia and Slovakia in 1997 (approximately 1,000 persons) spurred unusual unrest in the media if compared with a much bigger number of asylum seekers from Somalia, Nigeria, or the former Yugoslavia. This, as authors argue, can be attributed to the long-standing antgipsyism and historical aversion towards Roma from the British but also these popular stereotypes, which, with media attention, had the power to inform and steer emerging policies (see Leggio Reference Leggio, Magazzini and Stefano2019).

The media storm in the mid-1990s happened on the Polish side as well. Polish newspapers covered cases of Polish Roma seeking political asylum in Great Britain. The underlying theme in these media reports is the notion of separateness and the distinction between ethnic Poles, who seek work or are tourists, and Roma, who abuse the system and thus put the reputation of the former in jeopardy, along with accusations of unjust claims that Roma were being mistreated in Poland. The claims for political asylum were also difficult to accept for the public as it historically “belonged” to the oppositionists, who – as previously mentioned – were supposed to be involved in fights for independence (Garapich Reference Garapich2016a), hence things “higher” than mere survival or work. No Roma would fit into this national pantheon, as explained earlier, yet, at the same time, the case of Roma claiming asylum was interpreted as an act of selfishness and egoism towards a country that “gave” them home, education, and work. This interpretation alone proves how Roma were not only paternalized but also othered by such discourses from the majority of the population as a second-class citizens or unequal citizens, indeed.

Crucially, at the very same time throughout the 1990s until the enlargement of the EU, hundreds of thousands of Polish migrants were navigating hostile mobility regimes, working in the shadow economy, and without legal status, some even pretending to be Roma while seeking asylum (Morawska Reference Morawska2001; Garapich Reference Garapich2008b, Reference Garapich2016a) Political attention, however, turned on a few thousand Roma, who were seen as a problem by definition. The year 1995 saw a drop in the numbers of Roma asylum seekers from Poland to the UK, however, similarly as in the case of Roma migrating to Germany, word of mouth was enough to encourage other would-be migrants to try their luck in the following years:

This interviewee was among the rising numbers of asylum seekers in the late 1990s which caused a series of diplomatic conversations between the British Home Office and the Polish MFA. At some point, even the British Prime Minister stepped in, writing – and reproducing the distinction between the “working” Poles and “cheating” Roma – to his counterpart in Poland:

In what followed, the Home Office ostensibly warned about the possibility of imposing a visa regime and slowing down Poland’s EU accession – which eventually did not happen in the case of Poland but other CEE countries were pressured to implement measures of ethnic profiling to prevent Roma from leaving the country (see, for example, Vermeersch Reference Vermeersch, Isin and Nyers2014, 479). Suddenly, in that hegemonic discourse, Polish Roma and their practices (but not that of other non-Roma Poles) became an internal danger (cf. Van Baar Reference Van Baar2017, 2), threatening the country’s aspiration to EU accession. In a series of letter exchanges between Tony Blair and two Polish prime ministers (Leszek Miller and Jerzy Buzek) prior to Poland’s EU accession, the asylum applications of Polish Roma are a central topic. The Polish side continuously reassures Downing Street that measures are being taken in order to deal with unfounded claims about the discrimination of Roma in Poland and that a substantial amount of money is being spent on development programs aimed at stopping this migration. As analyzed by Sardelić, “migration and asylum seeking could also be interpreted not just as an act of desperation, but also as an act of claiming rights that were inaccessible in the country of citizenship. This was also a protest against inaccessible rights. The outcome – that is, the endangering of mobility rights for all citizens – indicated that there was an instance of citizenship sabotage in the place” (Reference Sardelić2021, 140). The steps taken to improve living conditions of Polish Roma with special “integration programs” can be interpreted as an act of differentiated citizenship, aimed at inclusion of marginalized citizens, however, it was only because of their former act of “sabotaging citizenship” (i.e asylum claiming), that their rights and needs were recognized. In a paradoxical twist, this recognition was further strengthening their unequal position against other Poles, as it was primarily aiming at preventing Polish Roma from leaving the country.

Dialogue on improving living standards and social inclusion, which is mentioned in a letter of Jerzy Buzek and, later also by Leszek Miller, shows the paradoxes of the unequal citizenship of Polish Roma – Roma are perceived as the “inferior other” (Kóczé and Rövid Reference Kóczé and Rövid2017), both in Poland (in need of special programs aimed at their social inclusion) and in the UK (unwelcome, and the design of social inclusion programs in the countries of origin should stop their migration). It is also seen as a scar on the image of Poland, an accessing state to NATO and the EU:

• - Polish authorities are deeply concerned by the reappearance of this problem, which – although the British authorities are fully aware of the motives of its emergence – does not serve well the image of Poland as a future member of the European Union and a member of NATO. [ … ]. Nevertheless, the Polish authorities conduct consistent activities for the improvement of its standards of living and its situation in terms of education and culture, among other things through a special government programme for the years 2001–2003, implemented in the Małopolskie Province. […] I wish to inform that my own Chancellery […] has already established direct cooperation with their British partners in order to undertake both short term and long term actions.”Footnote ⁶

While Tony Blair suggests that actions of Polish Roma are well organized and that there is a network of people involved in it – who help those in need to fill out the application for asylum, or would inform them about the procedures, questions, and help them in overall preparations for the asylum hearing – this, as we were told during our research, was not as efficient as both prime ministers were suspecting:

Daria was laughing when she recalled her experience of seeking entry to the UK via the asylum route and repeatedly stated how naïve she was to believe all the tips she had received. In managing her way through the system, it was finally her own determination that secured housing for her family, and education for her children.

Migration prevention was one of the aims of the various development programs (Van Baar Reference Van Baar2018, 445) and the cooperation of the Home Office with the Polish administration regarding Roma is understood as a means to prevent further migration.Footnote ⁷ Migration policies and their securitization saw the irregular migration as a potentially destabilizing phenomenon (Van Baar Reference Van Baar2018) – however, as we can see from the case of the exchanged letters and diplomatic notes it was a racialized phenomenon as well. Polish Roma were not treated like other Polish citizens whose irregular migration to the British Isles was well known and tolerated – the scale of illegal employment of Polish workers in the run up to the enlargement convinced the British government to open up its labor market in 2004 (Garapich Reference Garapich2016b). Yet, it is the (more or less) one thousand Roma who were centered in this dialogue as particularly problematic, even though the numbers would not suggest it (Clark and Campbell Reference Clark and Campbell2000). In an ironic twist it is also known that one of the ways Polish non-Roma were able to gain entry to the UK prior to the opening of the borders in 2004 was to pose as a Roma and claim asylum. This sometimes involved coloring one’s hair dark and tanning one’s skin. A practice witnessed by Garapich in late 1990s and early 2000s (Garapich Reference Garapich2016b) was then later confirmed by one of our own interviewees, who told a story that while on the bus to England to claim asylum he and his kin spotted another group of “strangely” looking Roma, who quickly revealed themselves as Poles posing as Roma. Our interviewee even claimed that the Home Office immigration officials were made aware of this practice and employed a special “spotter” who spoke Roma and who was able to detect the posers.

The practices described in these narratives demonstrate not just elaborate ways of dealing with and negotiating hostile migration regime constraints, but crucially how migrants are very well aware of ethnic categorizations, racialized discourses, and inner workings of state control. This makes the case for the ethnic closure of the migration networks which during the restrictive mobility regimes were a guarded resource for non-Roma Poles and for Polish Roma alike.

Finally, mechanisms of bordering and securitization in Europe in the case of Roma tend to overlook their citizenship and emphasize and problematize the racial component. While the EU citizenship officially allows freedom of movement, it was Roma, who, as citizens of new EU member states, were continuously seen as a problem, especially with regard to Roma from Romania and their removal from France (see Fereira and Kostakopoulou Reference Ferreira, Kostakopoulou, Ferreira and Dora2016; Owen and Toke Reference Owen and Toke2013).

Conclusions: The Impact of Kinship and Ethnic Boundaries on Migration Networks and Practices

As a result of long-experienced marginalization, a lack of trust in institutions encouraged Roma to take the risks of migration as a response to insecurities. It is not to say that Romani migrations are unique and therefore must be treated differently, it is to stress that that their migrations, especially prior to 2004, were – similarly to that of other citizens of Poland – restricted by migration regimes of the Western Europe. Yet it was their arrival (and departure) that sparked unusual unrest and provoked a certain set of responses. And while we do not suggest that Romani people, who in Poland are predominantly settled (with the last itinerant groups settled through the decades of Poland’s People Republic), are more inclined to migration because of their cultural DNA (as claimed by some authors), we need to state that Romani communities, albeit numerically small, have been proportionately more affected by negative outcomes of the 1989 transformation than Gadjo population, and their ensuing migration should be interpreted as a direct consequence of these changes.

In such circumstances the collectiveness of the migration project – i.e. migrating as an extended family group (see Matras, Reference Matras2000) – becomes a component of the moral economy of Roma mobility, as it is mutually produced by mobility regimes and strong moral obligations stemming from kinship ties. As argued by Van Baar (Reference Van Baar2018, 450), the formation of conditions of evictability has become vital to the political economy of international migration management and its intersections with the development-security nexus. With this process, the strengthening of the ethnic bond and intra-group solidarity in transnational social space came to the fore as enabling the resistance against the state measures, a form of “defensive mechanism” (Mirga and Gheorghe Reference Mirga and Gheorghe2001) or broadly speaking Scott’s “weapons of the weak” (Reference Scott1985).

In the perception of Polish Roma with whom we conducted our ethnographic study, this carried with itself certain costs, which we observed in the forms of managing intragroup solidarity and cohesion as well as tensions related to, for example, the extension of social control beyond the border and attempts to preserve the norms and traditions. The migration networks of our interview partners to the UK consist essentially of members of Polska Roma, Bergitka Roma, and other Romani groups. Polska Roma, a group which is usually more affluent in Poland, held a more established position in the UK among Polish Roma due to their longer migration experience and accumulated knowledge (Acton and Ingimire Reference Acton2010 do not mention Carpathian Roma). As the case of Sergio informs us, the members of Bergitka Roma needing help in arranging accommodation, documents, or work were supported by Polska Roma, especially prior to Poland’s accession to the EU, when the entry to Britain was restricted. This statutory difference between the two groups later on also reflected on the relations between them, the process which we witnessed in our ongoing research and which sheds light on the thus far less studied aspect of transnational social ties, as well as reconfiguration of the intra-group hierarchies (more on this – anonymized reference).

Finally, the call to historicize our understanding of the nexus between the security and development polices in Van Baar’s work (after Duffield 2001, 2007, and 2018, 445) in our case appears elucidated by the changes within the restrictive mobility regime that differently affects different categories of citizens. The current biopolitical demarcation of Europe of which Van Baar writes (Reference Van Baar2017, 4) unveils the processes of problematization of Roma intra-EU migration, which may, in turn, strengthen their ethnic boundaries. In order to grasp the current development of increased discrimination of European Roma and their mobilities, it is vital to understand the detailed historical developments of these issues traced along individual and family stories. In hegemonic regimes where mobility is a precious resource, political earthquakes and structural changes reconfigure the distribution of that resource. But how do Roma migrants themselves perceive these constraints, in particular in the long historical view? And how do they adapt their own migration and transnational strategies to this situation of deeply seated historical injustice? This article took a closer look at the yet-unstudied past decades of political and macroeconomic changes and subsequent migration regimes seen through the eyes of several Roma families from Poland with whom conducted extensive ethnographic research. For our research participants, instead of raptures or shifts of political systems (e.g. the collapse of the Berlin Wall, EU enlargement, Brexit) these changes are perceived as simply links in a long chain of persecution and problematization of Roma mobility, regardless of their citizenship, hence they trigger old tested ways of making sense of the world of Gadje (non-Roma) and ways of resisting it (cf. Donert Reference Donert2017, 10).

With their agency, Polish Roma do not only show how these ruptures target Roma specifically, but also point to certain discrepancies that govern the system and how, by its racializing nature, it differentiates between different categories of citizens, Roma, and Gadje. In the same way, the racialized logic of the nation state gives space and voice to Gadje at the cost of Roma to construct the grand narrative of migration, part of the national history, while continue to silence those whose narratives complicate this picture.

What needs more scholarly attention and analytical sensitivity is the impact these mobility regimes have on intra-Roma relationships. For instance, in the case of the various Polish Roma groups and their migratory encounters, we observe the strengthening of the moral economy of migration. In the context of Brexit and yet again the tightening of the migration regime, it may unwillingly place a premium on kinship and ethnic boundaries maintenance, hence reproducing particular sets of migration strategies and resistance mechanisms. It also bears certain costs with it, such as the extension of norms and social control onto transnational families, and efforts required to maintain the intragroup solidarity against centrifugal tendencies – in brief how it reproduces cultural meanings, central to maintaining a Barthian understanding of ethnic boundaries (Reference Barth1969). In addition, it reproduces specific hierarchies within certain Roma groups. These are the processes that deserve further careful attention and an interpretation of their significance for transnational families of Polish Roma.