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 Migration,
Diasporas and
Citizenship

MIGRANTS AS
AGENTS OF CHANGE
Social Remittances in an Enlarged European Union

Izabela Grabowska,
Michał P. Garapich,
´ ´
Ewa Jazwinska and
Agnieszka Radziwinowiczówna
Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship

Series Editors

Robin Cohen
Department of International Development
University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom

Zig Layton-Henry
Department of Politics and Internationa
University of Warwick
Kenilworth, United Kingdom
Aim of the Series
Editorial Board: Rainer Baubock, European University Institute, Italy;
James F. Hollifield, Southern Methodist University, USA; Daniele Joly,
University of Warwick, UK; Jan Rath, University of Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.
The Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship series covers three impor-
tant aspects of the migration process: firstly, the determinants, dynamics
and characteristics of international migration. Secondly, the continuing
attachment of many contemporary migrants to their places of origin,
signified by the word ‘diaspora’, and thirdly the attempt, by contrast,
to belong and gain acceptance in places of settlement, signified by the
word ‘citizenship’. The series publishes work that shows engagement
with and a lively appreciation of the wider social and political issues that
are influenced by international migration. This series develops from our
Migraton, Minorities and Citizenship series, which published leading
figures in the field including Steven Vertovec, Daniele Joly, Adrian Favell,
John Rex, Ewa Morawska and Jan Rath.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14044
Izabela Grabowska • Michał P. Garapich • Ewa Jazˊwinˊ ska
Agnieszka Radziwinowiczówna

Migrants as Agents
of Change
Social Remittances in an Enlarged
European Union
Izabela Grabowska Michał P. Garapich
University of Social Sciences Social Sciences
and Humanities, Poland University of Roehampton
Centre of Migration Research London, United Kingdom
University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Agnieszka Radziwinowiczówna
Ewa Jaźwińska Centre of Migration Research
Centre of Migration Research University of Warsaw
University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland
Warsaw, Poland

Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship

ISBN 978-1-137-59065-7 ISBN 978-1-137-59066-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59066-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946997

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover image © Jon Helgason / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

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The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
To our interviewees
 Acknowledgements

This book is the result of three years of intensive and collaborative immer-
sion into the complex field of social remittances within the enlarged
European Union (EU). We would foremost like to thank the National
Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) for funding the project enti-
tled “Cultural diffusion through social remittances between Poland and
the UK”, which allowed us not just to collect data but to pursue an alto-
gether fascinating scholarly adventure.
This book is the best “crop” resulting from our research encounters
and although each one of us was responsible for a particular aspect of the
study and the corresponding chapters of the book, we freely exchanged
ideas, critiques and insights that enriched each other’s work. In this sense
it was a collective intellectual endeavour and we bear collective responsi-
bility for the outcomes presented in this book.
Any list of names will be marred by unintentional omission, but here
we would like especially to thank Justyna Sarnowska and Lidia Glowacka
for their involvement at different stages of this study, for their hard work
and insightful comments. The book would not be readable without the
linguistic help of Tony Rzepkowski and Jan Warndorff—thank you to
both. In addition, many friends and colleagues contributed to this book
by offering insights and encouragement during conferences, seminars,
workshops, and small and big conversations at the office. Thank you, all.

vii
viii Acknowledgements

This book is about real people and the consequences of their actions.
We are thus especially indebted to our interviewees. We would like to
thank all of you who generously gave us your time, and for your will-
ingness to share with us your experience and for allowing us to enter
into your lives several times over the course of this study. Unfortunately,
professional ethics and our commitment to anonymity prohibit us from
thanking you by name. However, we trust that we treated your experi-
ences and actions with the respect and understanding they fully deserve.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Social Remittances and “Hand-Made”

Change by Migrants 1

2 Process of Transfer of Social Remittances

in the European Union 11

3 Transnational Multisited Qualitative Longitudinal

Research in Investigating Social Remittances and Change 35

4 Researched Communities in Poland and in the UK:

Transnational Spaces of Diffusion and Social Remittances 53

5 Observing, Acquiring, Resisting: Migrants’ Agency

in the Web of Social Remittances 111

6 Collective Outcomes of Social Remittances: Reactions

of Local Communities (Acceptance and Resistance) 137

ix
x Contents

7 Migrants as Agents of Micro Social Changes 169

8 Conclusions 215

Bibliography 225

Index 243
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 An overview of ethnographic visits to selected

sites in Poland 46
Table 3.2 An overview of sampling of individuals according
to study site and type of interviewee 48
Table 4.1 Overview of key characteristics of three selected
communities 107
Table 7.1 Detailed overview of all selected testimonials:
bundles of return migrants and their followers 177
Table 7.2 Key features of social remitting trajectory
of cosmetician from Sokolka 181
Table 7.3 Key features of social remitting trajectory
of bar tender from Pszczyna 188
Table 7.4 Key features of social remitting trajectory of town
socialiser from Pszczyna 197
Table 7.5 Key features of social remitting trajectory of nurse
from Trzebnica 203
Table 7.6 Summary overview of social remitting trajectories
of all filtered agents of change 212

xi
 List of Charts

Chart 2.1 Conceptual model of social remitting process and

its modalities with human agency at the forefront
(Source: Own elaboration) 33
Chart 3.1 The general sketch of sampling procedure and field
simultaneity of researchers in transnational spaces
between Poland and the UK (Source: Own elaboration) 44
Chart 3.2 Research design and practice (Source: Own elaboration
inspired by Bishop and Neale (2012)) 50
Chart 7.1 Procedure of selection of migrants as agents of change
for further research processing (Source: Own presentation) 176
Chart 8.1 Summary of social remitting process
(Source: Own elaboration) 216
Chart 8.2 Combination of features of a migrant agent of change:
an overview (Source: Own elaboration) 220

xiii
 List of Maps

Map 4.1 Transnational Sokolka-Londyn

(Source: Designed by Radziwinowiczówna) 57
Map 4.2 Pszczyna and the British Isles where the migrants live
(Source: Designed by Radziwinowiczówna) 84
Map 4.3 Trzebnica and the British Isles where the migrants live
(Source: Designed by Radziwinowiczówna) 98

xv
 1
Introduction: Social Remittances
and “Hand-Made” Change by Migrants

Much attention has been given in migration literature to the role of

economic remittances, in particular in the context of the develop-
ment of origin countries and the relationship between migration and
modernity. In the heated debate on the long- and short-term monetary
impact of migration on the localities from which migrants originate, it
is sometimes overlooked that money is not the only “asset” to be remit-
ted between countries, but that migrants also transmit knowledge, skills,
codes of behaviour, norms and values, practices and social capital. The
research into these non-financial transfers, termed social remittances by
Levitt (1998), has been developing, but there are still a lot of unknowns
in this field, hovering over the fundamental question of the social and
cultural impact of migration and European Union (EU) integration at
the local level.
So far, the academic focus has mostly been on social remittances
between developed countries of Western Europe and the USA and less
developed African, Caribbean and Asian countries (Levitt, 1998, 2001,
2007; Levitt & Lamba-Nieves, 2011; Boccagni & Decimo, 2013). Social
remittances within Europe and in particular within the EU have received
much less attention (cf. Sandu, 2010). The reasons behind this omission

© The Author(s) 2017 1

I. Grabowska et al., Migrants as Agents of Change, Migration,
Diasporas and Citizenship, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59066-4_1
2 Migrants as Agents of Change

form a valid question in itself, suggesting a hidden assumption among

scholars that social remittances do not travel between developed countries
or that they do not produce the same effects as when they occur within an
unequal migration system. It may also be argued that social remittances
and their effects are evident, dramatic and easily observable when they
occur within largely unequal economic and developmental systems, and
are more nuanced, latent and textured when occurring within more or
less equal systems.
The “migration-development nexus” perspective (cf. de Haas, 2010;
Kapur, 2010) or “migration-development inter-linkages” (Katseli, Lucas, &
Xenogiani, 2006) are hardly appropriate to studying the social and cultural
effects of migration within the enlarged EU. The issue of whether migration
is good for development is only partly relevant to the EU New Member
States (NMS),1 leaving aside the fact that the developmental lens is tainted
by normativity, and that Western, and Central and Eastern European
(CEE) countries all have high or very high Human Development Indicators
(White, 2016).
Nowadays most analyses on the outcomes of the EU enlargements
of 2004 and 2007 are conducted within a framework of costs and ben-
efits and aim to deduce clear policy implications (cf. Galgoczi, Leschke,
& Watt, 2011). The existing body of research deals only with selected,
mostly economic and welfare, aspects of migration impacts, neglecting to
develop an approach permitting an examination of the free movement of
people and its combined social and cultural outcomes. Another issue that
hampers such research is the scant availability of data on both aggregate
and individual levels (cf. Eurostat, 2014; Recchi, 2015).
This book seeks to address this lacuna. The authors specifically exam-
ine the social and cultural outcomes of the major EU enlargement of
2004, which generated massive labour migration flows from East to West
(Black, Engbersen, Okolski, & Pantiru, 2010). Especially, the Polish-
British case proves very instructive, given the spectacular increase in
labour mobility between the two countries since Poland joined the EU
in May 2004. The case can actually be treated as a “natural experiment”

1
Countries that joined the EU on 1 May 2004: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary,
Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia.
 1 Introduction: Social Remittances and “Hand-Made” Change... 3

in the research into social remittances within an enlarged EU, especially

given that the outcomes of a unified EU were mainly conceived to be eco-
nomic ones, particularly through the enforcement of the Single European
Act regulating the freedom of movement of goods, capital, services and
people. By focusing on social remittances, this book demonstrates how
integrating CEE and Western countries into one migration system also
reveals shared social and cultural outcomes.
As some people settled in the receiving locations of the EU, others
engaged in forms of circular labour migration or returned to the send-
ing countries. A complex process of generating social remittances and
cultural diffusion between “new” and “old” EU Member States emerged
and grew over the years. Based on a transnational multisited qualitative
longitudinal research in three communities, this book examines social
remittances of post-accession migrants between Poland and the UK. By
identifying individuals who block and who transfer social remittances,
the book traces the complex processes through which the interplay of
human agency and structures influences social change in the context of
developed countries of the EU.
The relationship between migration and social change remains one of
the key puzzles in contemporary scholarship. This book offers, firstly, a
new theoretical framework that connects the concepts of cultural diffu-
sion, social remittances, human agency and social change. Secondly, it
offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of migration on a sending coun-
try outside the traditional migration-development nexus (de Haas, 2010;
Kapur, 2010). There is no simple causal relationship between migration
and social change, and in a mutually reinforcing process we need to
understand that migration is both a result and a factor of social change.
Although some scholars state that social change brought by migration
is not only difficult to trace but almost invisible (Portes, 2010; Castles,
2010), this book aims to make social changes visible that are related to
contemporary international migration within EU. In this analysis we
argue that one needs specific conceptual lenses to notice these social
changes. The concept of social remittances in combination with a focus
on migrants as agents of change uncovers latent, everyday, at times mun-
dane effects of transnational mobility between Poland and the UK. In
order to explore this, we grounded our study ethnographically into three
4 Migrants as Agents of Change

separate and distinct communities in Poland with “transnational ends”

in the UK. This approach yielded strategic research sites to analyse social
remittances and the roles of migrants as agents of change in their diversity
and complexity.
In sum, the key aim of this book is to reconstruct how individual
migrants operate as agents of change; to what extent some manage to
influence change and why; and how they are able to incorporate specific
social remittances in their local spaces for meaningful social contacts. A
second aim of this book is to demonstrate how everyday forms of local
resistance protect the status quo and work against possible social changes.
In pursuit of these goals, we applied a methodological approach of trans-
national multisited qualitative longitudinal research.

1.1 Socio-demographic Portrait of Migrating

Poles Since EU Enlargement in May 2004
The Polish migratory story can be a perfect case for observing the role
of migration and social remittances in social change in Poland since the
breakdown of communism in 1989 and the massive increase of outflow
of people from Poland, especially after the 2004 enlargement. Poles,
and especially well-educated Poles, constitute a major migrant group in
European Economic Area (EEA) countries. The number of Poles staying
abroad temporarily increased from around 1 million in 2004 to over 2.3
million in 2007. Since then the number has decreased slightly, mostly
due to the economic crisis, but still remains high at 2 million people
(CSO, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Kaczmarczyk & Tyrowicz, 2015). The
geography of Polish migration has changed as a result of EU enlarge-
ment. Germany, for decades a top destination country, lost its dominant
position, with countries of the British Isles and mainly the UK experi-
encing a spectacular inflow from Poland: the stock of Polish migrants in
the UK grew from 24,000 in 2002 to 700,000 in 2008 (CSO, 2013b).
The majority of post-accession migrants (some 90 per cent) moved there
for work-related reasons. The immediate post-accession migration from
Poland was highly selective (Kaczmarczyk & Okolski, 2008; Grabowska-
Lusinska & Okolski, 2009) and was driven largely by socio-demographic
 1 Introduction: Social Remittances and “Hand-Made” Change... 5

characteristics (Burrell, 2009; Kaczmarczyk & Tyrowicz, 2015). In gen-

eral, post-accession migrants were relatively younger than those from
the pre-accession period and much better educated, with almost 20 per
cent of persons holding university degrees (Kaczmarczyk & Tyrowicz,
2015). Those who went to the UK soon after May 2004 were better
educated compared to migrants choosing other destinations—more than
20 per cent had higher education. Forty per cent of the migrants mov-
ing to the UK originated from medium and small towns below 100,000
inhabitants; 33 per cent came from villages and nearly 28 per cent from
large cities numbering over 100,000 inhabitants (Grabowska-Lusinska &
Okolski, 2009).

1.2 Social Remittances, “Hand-Made” Social

Change and Research Questions
Social change is a fundamental topic of social inquiry. With the EU
enlargements of 2004 and 2007, researchers began asking about the rela-
tionship between migration and social transformation in post-communist
societies, specifically after the contribution of migration to the changes
there (cf. White, 2011a). Answers are not easy to give, and of course there
is a chance that the societal impacts of migration are diluted by other
social processes. White (2016) argues a need to map out areas of eventual
social changes in the national studies, but it is mainly at the local level
where these play out and this is the terrain which we sought to address in
our research. Faist claims that, in order to effectively observe social trans-
formations brought about by migration, “the local is increasingly coming
to the foreground with respect to policy, social processes, and as a site of
study” (2015, p. 1). This is exactly what this book does, and in doing so,
it avoids the too facile and over-generalised approaches marred by meth-
odological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002).
Social change in CEE following the breakdown of the communist sys-
tem was more profound than the changes in Western societies in the
same period (White, 2016). As White argues, further migration may
have contributed to this as it started intensifying since the mid-1990s.
The puzzle here is how migration fits/unfits with these changes.
6 Migrants as Agents of Change

Our book takes social remittances as a lens through which to examine

grass-root, nitty-gritty relationships between migration and change. We
focus on the micro and meso processes by which continuities and changes
in personal and community lives are worked out across time, borders
and transnational social spaces. Yet at present we know very little about
the meso and especially micro processes through which migration can
transform social lives in an enlarged EU. In particular, there is very little
understanding of individual agency in the process of social remitting.
These broad issues around social remittances and their impact on
individuals’ and community’s lives give rise to a number of substantive
research questions driving this book: (1) What is the process of social
remitting? (2) What counts as a social remittance? (3) What role does the
context play in acquiring, transferring, implementing and adopting social
remittances? (4) What happens with social remittances along the way? (5)
Why are some things more easily transferrable than others? (6) What
roles do individuals play in social remitting? (7) What characteristics
make an individual effective in social remitting? (8) How do individuals
and groups protect themselves against or even resist remittance-generated
social change?
To investigate the core subject of our inquiry—that is, the relationship
between migration and change—we consider the key concept of social
remittances (Levitt, 1998 and later) which is assumed here to be a vista
that brings features of the social world acquired and transferred by indi-
viduals in the process of international migration. Precisely how it does
so depends on the positions and dispositions of individuals (Nowicka,
2015b). Remittances are woven through a multiplicity of contexts that
need to be recognised and understood in relation to each other (Neale,
2012b), such as contexts before, during and after migration.
The advantage of our methodological approach was that, during our
transnational multisited qualitative longitudinal research process, we
were able to observe “the change in the making”. To capture its com-
plexity and immediacy and to acquire an in-depth, empirically informed
understanding, we needed to approach both stayers who served here as
local observers and migrants themselves in the UK, originating from sam-
pled communities, as well as returnees to these communities in Poland.
We wanted to understand how social remittances worked out, including
 1 Introduction: Social Remittances and “Hand-Made” Change... 7

their effects on individuals and communities and crucially how social

actors perceived these changes and shifts—in themselves but also in their
communities of origin. We have not predetermined and preconceived
that we would find social remittances in these locations and the selection
process took into account variables that could have been found in dozens
or hundreds of other locations in Poland. In that sense in approaching
the research sites we knew very little whether there would be any trace
of social remittances. This methodological experiment allows us to con-
struct some conclusions of the process of a broader nature which should
be applicable to other CEE contexts.
This grass-root understanding how and why social change is created,
lived and experienced through migration is important for a number of
reasons. Firstly, through the process of social remitting we can try to grasp
the nature of change in conceptual terms. Secondly, through the longi-
tudinally observed transnational social space of “here”, “there” and “in-
between” (Boccagni, 2014), we are able to discern how human agency
and structure, at micro and meso levels, are interconnected and how they
come to be transformed (Neale & Flowerdew, 2003). The puzzle here is
to understand the micro changes in views, attitudes and practices, and
how these may impact on other levels such as the meso level.

1.3 Context-Dependency of Migration

and Change: Three Communities Under
Study
Migrants operate in various contexts, both in origin and in destination
countries. The structure of the context may work both as a constraint and
as an enabler for social remitting. Migrants can experience continuity,
discontinuity and incongruity of the contexts of origin and destination.
Our transnational multisited qualitative longitudinal research started
in three communities in Poland and continued in the UK, as we followed
migrants in their destinations. We deliberately chose three small-sized towns,
each with a distinct geographical location, history and cultural profile. The
first town, Sokolka, is located in Podlasie region, in the north-east of Poland,
8 Migrants as Agents of Change

close to the Belarus border. The history of migration from Sokolka has been
long, traditionally with intensive migration flows to the west coast of the
USA and more recently to the UK, starting in the 1980s. The long history of
labour migration to London as well as its initially unauthorised nature have
contributed to the development of migratory social capital. In the course of
the research, we were able to observe how migrants socialise in London and
maintain transnational contacts back in Sokolka.
The context of migration and remittances differs in the second
researched town, Pszczyna, located in the economically well-developed
Upper Silesia region (south-west Poland). The complicated history of
the region (see Chap. 5) has contributed to intensive migration flows to
Germany, and migration to the UK started no sooner than the British
labour market was opened to Polish citizens. In Pszczyna, migratory stra-
tegies have been more individualistic, as reflected in the migrants’ desti-
nation sites: migrants from this town reside in various places throughout
the UK.
The history of UK-ward migration from the third community,
Trzebnica, to some extent resembles that of Pszczyna. This third researched
town is located in Lower Silesia, 15 miles from the city of Wroclaw, not
far from the German border. The town’s history, distinct from that of
Pszczyna, contributed to a smaller amount of pre-accession outbound
migration. Today, migrants from Trzebnica reside in different locations in
the British Isles, and although they rarely have contact with each other,
they do maintain intensive transnational contacts with their significant
others back in Poland.
This monograph is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 2 attempts to
reconstruct the process of social remitting in a transnational European
context. The aim is to discuss the primary factors of the process of social
remitting: acquisition, transfer and outcomes and their diffusion, trig-
gering three identifiable modalities: resistance, imitation and innova-
tion. Distinguishing various stages of the social remitting process, we
develop a number of hypotheses in a constant dialogue between theory
and empirical findings on how the process of social remitting functions
within the enlarged EU context.
Chapter 3 analyses the methodological considerations applied in
our study. Specifically, transnational multisited qualitative longitudinal
 1 Introduction: Social Remittances and “Hand-Made” Change... 9

research is applied, so far, an underexplored methodological approach in

migration studies. It requires repeated ethnographic visits to the sites and
repeated in-depth interviews with information-rich individuals both in
the UK and in Poland, filtered and selected from a wider set of interviews
with locally embedded informants and individuals knowledgeable about
the town, return migrants and circulating migrants. A qualitative panel
helped us to position social remittances in relation to time and space.
Only through time and translocal space were we able to discern the dif-
ferent stages of social remitting and the roles that individuals play in this
process.
Chapter 4 introduces the reader to the ethnographic context of the
communities under study in the Polish regions of Podlasie, and Upper
and Lower Silesia. Through the eyes of migrants in the UK, returnees
and stayers, mental maps of the communities were reconstructed, pro-
ducing a double insight perspective that helps uncover the relationship
between migration and social change. The chapter identifies important
milestones in the history of each community, presents economic condi-
tions and migration culture, and focuses on contemporary transnational
spaces that can serve as a channel to transfer social remittances. Various
sources are drawn upon in the chapter, not only official data and histori-
cal analyses, but also ethnographically grounded analyses, for instance,
based on observations and in-depth interviews.
Chapter 5 traces in detail what happens when migrants are exposed to
new settings, how they make sense of this logic of novelty and unfamiliar-
ity, what they identify as beneficial and potentially valuable or not, once
they start becoming familiar with the details of British social life. Faithful
to our understanding of social remittances as, ultimately, a process in
which individual agency is the dominant determinant, we follow the
routes, ideas, practices and values which travel within the transnational
social field between Britain and various localities in Poland.
Chapter 6 discusses outcomes of social remittances and their spillovers
in communities. They depend both on the socio-economic context and
characteristics of local inhabitants who are potential receivers of social
remittances. The chapter shows that local inhabitants see migration as
a general social phenomenon and not as new patterns, with examples
set by other people to be eventually followed and adopted. The impacts
10 Migrants as Agents of Change

of migration are perceived in a biased way. On the one hand, migration

is seen to modernise local towns (e.g. by creating new workplaces and
improving the quality of life). On the other hand, it is seen as adverse to
local communities (e.g. by breaking down family life). Likewise, the gen-
eral attitudes to the ideas and behaviour brought from abroad are rather
ambivalent among local inhabitants. Migrants display the social remit-
tances they acquired abroad through their own behaviour and activities.
Less often they disseminate them to others. The range of local spillovers
of social remittances depends on a “socially useful role” in a community
(e.g. local services and social actions) and on having a range of contacts
with different categories of local inhabitants. At the same time, social
remittances are often resisted by local inhabitants, more on the basis of
the general conservatism of local communities than on the content of
these cultural and social transfers.
Chapter 7 presents evidence that migrants, under certain conditions,
may act as local agents of change by transferring social remittances. Firstly,
migrants need to act actively and daily in given opportunity structures,
in both communities of origin and destination. Secondly, they need to
enjoy some degree of local social recognition (which does not necessar-
ily translate into a high social status in the community in general) in
order to disseminate forms of social change to such ideas and practices.
Thirdly, they need to have an extensive network of contacts. The chapter
is based on selected bundles of key individuals and their followers in three
researched communities, filtered out from the overall sample of 124 in-
depth interviews collected in the transnational multisited qualitative lon-
gitudinal research. At the end of the chapter we outline the typological
portraits of migrants as ordinary agents of micro social changes in their
communities of origin.
In the concluding part (Chap. 8) we bring together various threads of
the argument to point to the relationship between migration and social
change in the communities of origin. We stress how focusing on the
small-scale, and everyday actions of migrant agents helps to uncover the
micro social changes in question, or the lack thereof. By bringing forward
the theoretical framework described in earlier chapters we reaffirm the
core argument of the book, which is the centrality of human agency in
incorporating social change in transnational and translocal contexts.
 2
Process of Transfer of Social
Remittances in the European Union

2.1 Introduction
The concept of social remittances, coined by Levitt (1998 and later), evoked
many scholarly reactions, but in our view, its process still needs some
conceptual clarification and operationalisation. This chapter attempts to
theoretically reconstruct the process of social remitting in a transnational
European context which will guide our analysis and interpretations of the
data presented in this book. The aim is to describe, define and discuss the
primary factors of the process of social remitting—acquisition, transfer
and outcomes and their diffusion, triggering three identifiable ways: resis-
tance, imitation and innovation. By distinguishing the stages of the social
remitting process and its modalities, we develop some hypotheses, in con-
stant dialogue of theory with empirical findings, on how the process of
social remitting operates within the European context.
In the first decade of the new millennium, migration reached a climax
in Europe, as an increasing number of migrants began to engage in more
fluid forms of mobility (Castles, de Haas, & Miller, 2013; Engbersen,
Leerkes, Grabowska-Lusinska, Snel, & Burgers, 2013). The compressing
of migration in time and space within the enlarged EU brings questions

© The Author(s) 2017 11

I. Grabowska et al., Migrants as Agents of Change, Migration,
Diasporas and Citizenship, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59066-4_2
12 Migrants as Agents of Change

about its various effects, particularly non-material, unintended, latent

ones. These effects, beyond economic transfers and their immediate
impacts, referred to in the literature as social remittances (Levitt, 1998),
are understood as non-financial assets acquired as a result of migration
and eventually transferred to others, usually the localities migrants came
from. Levitt coined this concept to define specifically the diffusion of
ideas, values, beliefs, norms of behaviour, practices and social capital.
As stated in Chap. 1, up until now the academic focus on social
remittances has been mainly on the diffusion between developed and
developing countries. One of the aims of this chapter is to develop a
comprehensive conceptual framework enabling us to discuss how and
with what effects social remittances travel between developed countries of
the EU. The chapter takes into account the modernisation processes and
the context of system transformation of CEE countries from communist
and centrally planned economies to democratic systems with free market
conditions (cf. Okolski, 2012). This transformation in our assumption
is not linear but fragmented, multilayered and geographically uneven,
with some “leftovers” from the communist era, which delayed conver-
gence with Western democratic countries in many spheres of life. They
are visible especially locally (Sztompka, 1993), but also reconfiguration
of old norms and values (Buchowski, 2004) as well as clear signs of con-
tinuity and adaptation to new conditions (Nagengast, 1991; Buchowski,
2004; Rakowski, 2009) can be observed. Moreover, migrants who come
from post-communist societies, where human capital was put on hold or
even blocked for many decades, may also diffuse social remittances in the
communities of destination, into, so to speak, “old” developed countries
contributing to cultural diffusion.
We assume in this chapter that these conditions create gaps for social
remittances both in communities of origin and destination, which can be
captured in transnational social space (Faist, 2000) or transnational social
fields (Basch, Glick Schiller, & Szanton Blanc, 1994), also in Europe,
between East and West, especially after the EU enlargements of 2004 and
2007 (Black, Engbersen, Okolski, & Pantiru, 2010).
The other aim of this chapter is to reconstruct the process of social remit-
ting through a stronger emphasis on social actors’ agency. We demonstrate
that: firstly, the process is not flat and uniform but involves stages such
 2 Process of Transfer of Social Remittances in the European Union 13

as acquisition, transfer and outcomes of transfers; secondly, social remit-

tances at every stage are bound by human agency, hence can be blocked,
imitated or can be transposed in an innovative way which are described
here as modalities of this process. Neither of these stages and modalities of
social remitting are treated in this chapter in a normative way.
Contrary to de Tarde (1903), we separate here imitation from innova-
tion as a less advanced modality of social remitting connected to more
“copy and paste” social behaviours, while innovation means here a more
“translated adaptation”, re-invention, a change or modification of an
object, idea or practice to a given context. This approach will help to
bring to the forefront the focus on human agency and its ability to shape
the social structures. Furthermore, it will also allow us to distinguish con-
ceptually transfer from its outcomes in order to be able to capture the
effects of migration both on a micro and meso scale.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. Firstly, we review briefly
the contemporary concept of social remittances in relation to its past
reminiscences from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in
historical sociological writings relating to migration from Poland, mostly
to Germany and the USA. Secondly, the chapter will operationalise the
content of social remittances. Thirdly, we will analyse all stages of the
process of social remitting: acquisition, transfer, and outcomes of transfer
in relation to the modalities of its eventual “intake”: resistance, imita-
tion, innovation. The chapter ends with a sketch of a conceptual model
of social remitting and discussion of arguments brought throughout the
lines of these theoretical considerations.

2.2 Social Remittances in Migration Studies

The term social remittances has been very successful in migration studies
but paradoxically has not been theoretically developed further or empiri-
cally applied within the European context. Most studies limit themselves
to mention social remittances en passant, stating its potential importance
but without providing any additional empirical data or theoretical depths
and developments (Boccagni & Decimo, 2013).
14 Migrants as Agents of Change

The concept of social remittances itself was coined and revisited by

Levitt (1998, 2001, 2007, with Lamba-Nieves 2011) to define the dif-
fusion of ideas, values, beliefs, norms of behaviours, aspirations, prac-
tices and social capital. Levitt categorised them into three domains: (1)
normative structures (ideas, values, beliefs that include norms of behav-
iour, the notion of family responsibility, principles of neighbourliness,
community participation, aspiration for social mobility); (2) systems
of practices (actions shaped by normative structures such as organisa-
tional practices: recruiting and socialising new members, goal setting and
strategising, establishing leadership roles, and forming interagency ties;
including how individuals delegate household tasks and how much they
participate in political, religious and civic groups (acts, actions, rituals);
(3) social capital based on values and norms which form the resource for
collective actions and facilitates the circulations of norms and values.
In the general spectrum of migration theories, de Haas (2010) explains
social remittances with reference to a feedback process in migration system
theory. He claims that social remittances are contextual, second order effects
of migration in the domain of culture (de Haas 2010: 7, Table 1) calling it
“migration-driven forms of cultural change”. Migration through confron-
tations with other norms and practices can influence identity formation,
norms, values and behaviours in migrant-sending communities, especially
when migration is associated with social and material success. According to
scholars, this development is part of a wider presence of the “culture of migra-
tion” which channels and stimulates changes and continuities in peoples’
behaviour and systems of norms and values on both ends of the migration
chain (Kandel & Massey, 2002; Cohen, 2004; Cohen & Sirkeci, 2011; for
Polish migration culture cf. Elrick, 2008; Garapich, 2013). Such migration-
affected cultural change can further strengthen migration aspirations along
established pathways in communities and societies that can become involved
in continuing long-lasting migration practices. It is important to distinguish
the increasing effect of these aspirations from the more instrumental migra-
tion-facilitating role of networks and remittances (de Haas, 2010).
In one of the few studies on non-material aspects of migration from
Poland in the 1990s and 2000s, Elrick (2008) pointed out, based on
his studies in two locations in Poland, that the non-material impact of
migration on origin communities is dependent on the temporality as well
as the type of migration. Those persons who experienced, according to
 2 Process of Transfer of Social Remittances in the European Union 15

Elrick, “visible” (contrary to “hidden”, undocumented) migration with

stabilised, regular employment are more able to have an impact on local
normative structures and bring back values and goods (and also have bet-
ter relations with their school-aged children left behind). He argues that
apart from the economic consequences of migration, there are social and
cultural consequences for community cohesion and the lives of its mem-
bers. Elrick (2008) found out that migration changed care arrangements
in the two villages he studied due to the temporary absence of members
from the local communities. One important change is the substitution
of mutual, neighbourly support by help from private professionals. As
a consequence, informal support structures are being replaced by com-
mercial support systems which may lead to a “commercialisation of life”
(2008, p. 1515) corresponding to change from more collective and tra-
ditional ways of support, to more neoliberal, individualistic strategies.
Social remittances between Poland and destination countries have their
own history in migration studies. Sociological writings at the turn of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries without explicitly naming them very
often contain discussion on social remittance impacts. Although the con-
cept literally was coined and conceptualised not so long ago (by Levitt,
1998), the idea itself has existed in migration literature for many decades
especially in the early migration sociological writings of the late nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth century (Krzywicki, 1891;
Thomas & Znaniecki, 1918; Duda-Dziewierz, 1938). There are a few
common findings of the historical authors mentioned above: (1) individu-
alisation of attitudes among migrants which make the transfer of social
remittances (not named in that period) smoother both ways; (2) breaking
the social isolation of rural, peripheral areas and the promotion of a new
type of man: mobile, world-savvy bon vivant emancipated from the feudal
system in Poland; (3) being mobile was associated with opportunities for
higher positions within the local social strata of the sending locations.
Krzywicki (1891) noted that participants of Sachsengangenrei (migra-
tion, mostly peasant, from the Prussian part of partitioned Poland to
the German land of Sachsen) were changing their everyday practices in
terms of outfit (started wearing shoes) and using household tools (used in
Germany). More, Krzywicki noted that female migrants after migrating to
Germany, started executing more gender equality in Polish, male-centred
households. They also started bringing home more of the protestant ethic
16 Migrants as Agents of Change

embodied in the ways of accumulating and investing money, new norms

related to the value of money and social mobility within the local strata.
Duda-Dziewierz (1938) in her monograph of Babica—a village in
Malopolska, Poland—said explicitly what migrants transferred from
abroad to home, besides money. It may be argued, that identification
of migration effects on the meso scale was more feasible in this period
due to the lack of other sources of innovations, and migrants were liter-
ally the embodiments of novelty and change. Duda-Dziewierz wrote that
through letters, newspapers, books, pamphlets sent from the USA and
direct contact with either visitors or even more with return migrants, the
novelties and innovation got transferred contesting old and creating new
normative structures. Using established terminology in anthropology, she
called it then a “diffusion of custom patterns”. Duda-Dziewierz wrote
also about another social remittance—the rationalisation of social atti-
tudes: both individual and collective, for example the rational limitation
of the influence of the Catholic Church on many spheres of life, such as
criticism towards its social control and a more selective approach to reli-
gious dogmas. This pattern combined with the emergence of new forms
of leadership had contributed to individuals’ actions aimed at social, cul-
tural and structural reorganisation of the village. She also found new eco-
nomic attitudes resulting from this new form of rationality, for example
investing money in land or starting one’s own business. However, in this
context, buying land, in particular in impoverished regions of Poland,
may not be classified as innovation, but rather as a tradition-bound form
of use of migration funds. The size of the land plots was a sign of position
in the local social strata, hence acquiring more of it would be strongly
embedded within the traditional social structure.
Classics of sociology also observed and described transfers of social
remittances the other way round, from origin to destination communities.
For instance, Thomas and Znaniecki (1918) do not refer directly to social
remittances but in fact they say quite a bit about transfer from origin to des-
tination communities and the intermingling of old and new norms, values
and practices. They talk about “social becoming” in the new context which
means the refashioning of the way of life of individuals and families. In
their analysis families fuse old normative systems from the sending country
along with new normative systems of the receiving country.
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