Anna Gawlewicz
Mobility and Encounters with Difference: The Impact of Migrant Experience on the Transmission of Values and Attitudes
Supervisors: Gill Valentine (University of Sheffield) and Nichola Wood (University of Leeds)
Start/end date: 2010-2014
Research summary
My project tries to understand what (if anything) happens to people’s values and attitudes when they leave their country of origin and start a life in a super-diverse society. That said it investigates the impact of encounters with difference on migrant values and attitudes. It also seeks to find out whether (and – if so – how) a cross-border transmission of values and attitudes takes place between migrants and their significant others in the sending country. Difference is primarily understood here in terms of ethnicity, religion, social class, gender, age, sexual orientation and disability.
Nevertheless, I am also interested in how difference is perceived by individuals who are constantly mobile and have experienced a major shift from a relatively homogeneous to a diverse social space. The focus is put on Polish post-2004 migrants in Leeds UK and their significant others in Poland. The project explores the possible circulation of values and attitudes between these two distinct social contexts – Poland (a post-communist county isolated from diversity since the WWII until recently) and the UK (a diverse post-colonial country).
This study is a part of the LIVEDIFFERENCE research programme which explores the extent and nature of everyday encounters with difference and is funded by the European Research Council (ERC).
Research interests
- social diversity, otherness, attitudes towards difference
- mobility, transnationalism, migration experience
- Polish migration to the UK
Publications
- Gawlewicz A. and Yndigegn C. (2012). The (in)visible wall of Fortress Europe? Elite migrating youth perceiving the sensitive Polish-Ukrainian border. In: Jagetić Andersen D., Klatt M., Sandberg M. (eds.) The Border Multiple: the Practicing of Borders Between Public Policy and Everyday Life in a Rescaling Europe. Ashgate.
- Andersen D., Gawlewicz A. and Yndigegn C. (2012). EU edges and border practices: Slovenian-Croatian and Polish-Ukrainian borders as laboratories of borderwork on a post-national level’ in Jańczak J. (ed.) De-Bordering, Re-Bordering and Symbols on the European Boundaries. Logos Berlin.
- Gawlewicz A. and Yndigegn C. (2011). Multi-layered identities as a consequence of a regular border experience: trans-nationally migrating elite youth facing “sensitive” Polish-Ukrainian border’ in Kalogeresis A. (ed.) The Multifaceted Economic and Political Geographies of Internal and External EU Borders: Proceedings of the 2010 European Conference of the Association for Borderlands Studies. Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Department of Spatial Planning and Development, Veria, Greece.
- Gawlewicz A. and Mikulowski-Pomorski J. (2009). Family Europe: the shaping of the European Union’s image in the Polish press at the time of Poland’s accession to the EU (2004) and in the fifth year of membership (2008). In: Skotnicka-Illasiewicz, E. (ed.) 5 years of Poland’s Membership in the European Union in the social context. Urząd Komitetu Integracji Europejskiej, Warszawa.
Academic/career background
2009-2010: Research Assistant, Department of Border Region Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg, Denmark
2003-2008: MSc International Relations (European Studies), Cracow University of Economics, Cracow, Poland
Contact Details
Address: Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Winter Street, Sheffield, S10 2TN, United Kingdom
Email: ggp12ag@sheffield.ac.uk