Paula Pustulka

The article discusses the processes of meaning-making which are connected to the significance of work/employment as it intersects with the passage of time. we focus on the narratives of young people (aged 19–34) with a university education at different stages of entering adulthood. Drawing on research linked to education-to-work transitions, we rely on the notion of flexible social time [adam 1998] to present how individuals subjectively construct breaks and turning points in their biographies. It is argued that the passage of time alters the experience and evaluation of events on the labour market. Based on empirical material from the project entitled Education-to-domestic and-foreign labour market transitions of youth: The role of locality, peer group and new media, we discuss three stages tied to varied meanings of work, from late adolescence to adulthood. in particular, we give voice to the interviewees who shared their reflections about: (1) working during high-school, (2) combining university education with employment, and (3) transitioning from education to work, and later career trajectories.

The paper employs a lens of reproductive justice (RJ) to discuss the events of the 2016 mobilization against a total abortion ban proposal in Poland. By presenting the context of women’s rights in Poland, especially the abortion debates, we argue that the 2016 Women’s Strike showed that taking a stand for reproductive justice was countered by governmental actions. By using a case study approach, the paper analyzes the Strike as a tumultuous act of women’s solidarity while simultaneously assessing its implications for RJ issues. We discuss the aftermath and the socio-political reticence to acknowledge the complexities of women’s lives and reproductive choices. Further, we provide arguments for applying the RJ framework into discerning the notion of ideal citizens and gendered social control in Poland. This localized analysis has a global relevance by reflecting the impact of worldwide trends in women’s rights activism and RJ in the context of resurfacing nationalisms and populism.

The main aim of this working paper is to introduce the conceptual and methodological frameworks of the Peer groups and migration project, which is the flagship longitudinal, multisited undertaking of the Youth Research Center of the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, lasting from 2016 to 2020. In this paper we discuss how a peer group is made up and how migration influences transition to adulthood with special focus on school-to-work transitions.
The paper is constructed around a macro-meso-micro model wherein the peer group with various cohorts: movers and stayers, school and non-school friends, age groups is at stake. Three selected local communities operate at the macro level, peer influences and family at meso level, and the individual trajectories and transitions of the participants at the micro level. The combination of the three levels helps to answer our research questions on the impact of a peer group on the life trajectories marked by migration and determines the interlacing roles played by family, local community and new media in these processes.
In order to grasp the complexity of the project we apply the methodology of Qualitative Longitudinal Study (QLS) developed and promoted by Neale (Neale and Flowerdew 2003; Neale forthcoming). We approach individuals in peer groups in three selected local communities in Poland and walk along side with them throughout the course of three waves (36 months). With this approach we aim at linking notions of migration/sedentarism, peer group, and locality, in order to highlight the advantages of the project’s approach. We see it as means for developing a comparative and temporally-embedded understanding of youth experiences in the medium-sized towns, seeing them as a lens to the realities of the dynamic Polish post-1989-transformation and post-EU-accession society (post 2004).

Pustułka P, Ślusarczyk M. (2016) Understanding foreign future and deconstructing Polish past: the experiences of schooling under a communist rule recollected by contemporary Polish migrants, European Education. 48:3, 220-237.

The article elaborates on the recollections of schooling under the communist rule in Poland as presented in biographical interviews with contemporary Polish migrants living in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway. An analysis of childhood and schooling nexus is elicited on
two platforms, specifically as (1) interviewees’ first-hand experiences of school life and (2) through the picture they paint by comparing their education pathways with those of their children growing up abroad. The focus is on how the need to reflect on one’s past of an upbringing under a communist rule is necessitated by encountering the contrasting schooling systems abroad. The analysis can help deepen the understanding of Polish socialist childhood.

Ślusarczyk, M., Pustułka P. (2016, in press) Mobile Peripheries? Contesting and Negotiating Peripheries in the Global Era of Mobility, in: A Van Weyenberg, E Peeren (eds.) Peripheral Visions in the Globalizing Present, Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race, Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi, 141-163.

Abstract:
Alongside interconnectedness, individualization and globalization, the categories of polarization, peripheralization and othering remain crucial for understanding postmodern identities. We examine multi-level framings of peripherality for people migrating from the peripheries of their own country to the peripheries of their destination society, those leaving the peripheries behind (spatially and metaphorically), as well as those pre-emptively situated in the “neither-nor” land of European fringes between its center and (remote) socio-spatial (class- and geography-driven) peripheries.
Narratives presented in this paper demonstrate a range of inherent discrepancies between people’s accounts of their positionalities/identities and the labels that migration scholars use to describe the participants of contemporary and globalized cross-border flows. Empirical data from several research projects focused on recent mobility between Poland and the West (UK, Germany, Norway) is used to showcase findings that pertain to the categories of rural/urban, peripheral/central and local/global, and, more importantly, go beyond them.

The paper discusses the short-term visits to the home country among
Polish female migrants residing in the United Kingdom and Norway.
Grounded in the theoretical approaches of transnationalism, as well
as return and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) mobility, it analyzes
empirical material from in-depth interviews. The main argument points
to the feelings of ambivalence that accompany the maintenance of
family ties during stays in Poland. In addition, it categorizes examples
of intergenerational compensatory, cultivation, and indulgent family
practices. In reviewing the intra-European setting of transnational
familyhood, the paper addresses the significance of the particular
Central and Eastern European context.

Pustulka P, Ślusarczyk M, Strzemecka S (2015) Polish Children in Norway: Between National Discourses of Belonging and Everyday Experiences of Life Abroad, in: Z Millei, R Imre (eds), ‘Childhood’ and ‘nation’: global identities, local subjectivities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 207-227.

This article discusses heterogeneity of family and parental practices among Polish migrant fathers in Norway.
The paper begins with a recollection of the contemporary approaches to masculinities, and addresses the
emergence of “new fatherhood” in both family scholarship and migration studies. In the conclusion to the
theoretical section, we refect on transnational parenting in the context of male mobility. The empirical basis
for the study stems from a combination of biographic and narrative interviews with members of Polish migrant
families in Norway: ten Polish couples and two interviews conducted with fathers alone (the interviews were
reviewed for this article from the broader research dedicated to the Polish families in Norway). In the analysis,
we draw on the signifcance of the institutional support and social expectations for creating new patterns of
being a father, yet we also underline the salient importance of individual, biographical elements that certainly
infuence the every-day practices of Polish migrant fathers. We put forward a general conclusion that there is
not a singular fathering or fatherhood type among the Polish men in Norway, but rather a continuum of various
family arrangements, often propelled by men, is observed. It is therefore crucial to look at the biographies
which suggest social change and a shift towards a “new fatherhood”.