Expressions of diasporic belonging: The divergent emotional geographies of Britain’s Polish communities

Poland’s accession to the European Union contributed a new wave of migrants to a diaspora comprised primarily of Polish communities settled in Britain since the establishment of World War Two resettlement camps. Despite some speculation that recent Polish emigrants are relying on this post-war diaspora to provide networks for employment opportunities (Garapich, 2005), there has been little investigation into the socio-cultural relations within this newly enlarged diaspora. This paper proposes that post-war and recent post-accession migrants that constitute the Polish diaspora express their diasporic belonging in very different ways, leaving the waves socially and spatially distanced. Although both groups share a strong emotional attachment to their original homeland, understood through a common culture of symbols, values and practices, the way in which these markers of belonging are experienced and perceived varies according to their migration story. Four themes that dominate the emotional maintenance of a ‘Polish identity’ are identified through in-depth interviews with High Wycombe’s post-war and post-accession Polish migrants: family, religion, language and food. An exploration into the varying emotional responses derived from the practice of these cultural markers contributes to our understanding of what it means to belong to a homeland within the context of diaspora.