POLISH | familylanguagepolicy

THE POLISH COMMUNITY

The presence of Poles in Britain can be traced back to the 18th Century. Thousands of Polish-speaking migrants came to the UK after the First World War, most settling in London. During the communist era, some Poles also emigrated to Britain for both political and economic reasons. However, not until 2004 when Britain opened its market to Eastern-European migrants did the UK become the primary destination for Poles. Within just over ten years, the community has grown to be one of the largest immigrant communities in the UK. In 2011, the Office for National Statistics estimated that there were 558 000 Polish residents with almost 160 000 (27%) living in London. The 2011 census shows that there has been a significant increase in the number of Polish immigrants in the UK since 2001: nearly all (92%) of Polish born usual residents had arrived since 2001. In British society, Poles are seen as a fairly homogenous ethnic group (Garapich 2008). However, the community is quite heterogenous both in terms of social characteristics and motivations to migrate. Various Polish organizations have been established all over the UK. According to the Polish Educational Society, there are approximately 100 Polish Saturday Schools in the UK, where students learn the Polish language, history and geography; they often also have religion classes with Catholic priests (White 2011). It has been reported that Poles do not often live surrounded by other Poles or in predominantly Polish communities (Błasiak 2011).

The Polish-speaking community constitutes a new type of migrant community, where migrants were able to make use of cheap transportation and new technologies from the beginning of their transnational experience, which allows them to maintain their language of origin and speak English at the same time. Various levels of language competence in English have been observed among Polish-speaking migrants living and working in the UK (Błasiak 2011, White 2011). Some have been observed to use ‘Ponglish’, a combination of Polish and English replete with insertions, calques, interferences, code-switches, alternations, etc. from both languages (Błasiak 2011).