Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:40:06.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Tolerance and Pluralism. Civic Components of Polish Pendulum Migrants’ Identity in Belgium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Dariusz Niedźwiedzki*
Affiliation:
Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Instytut Europeistyki, ul. Jodłowa 13, 30-252 Kraków, Poland

Abstract

This paper focuses on the reconstruction of social identity in which Polish pendulum migrants to Belgium engage, and pays specific attention to the civic components of this process. Social identity is here understood as an interactional, changing, and contextual phenomenon. Migration means being in a world in which neighbouring families and surrounding actors represent completely different cultures with different customs, traditions and lifestyles. The reconstruction of identity is an essential condition for adaptation and assimilation in the new place of settlement. This process of identity reconstruction, based on changes in stereotypes, is linked with the acceptance of pluralism as an important feature of the socio-cultural reality. The acceptance of a pluralist world brings migrants to a wider tolerance of diversity. This paper examines different circumstances of the processes mentioned in concrete empirical reality.

Type
Focus: Labour Migration
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Bokszański, Z. (1989) Tożsamość – interakcja – grupa (̡ódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu ̡ódzkiego), pp. 33–34.Google Scholar
2. A. Jacobson-Widding (1983) Introduction. In: A. Jacobson-Widding (ed.), Identity: Personal and Socio-Cultural. Acta University Upsala, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology, 5, 13–32, esp.19.Google Scholar
3.Mach, Z. (1993) Symbols, conflict and identity. Essays in Political Anthropology (Albany: SUNY), p. 5.Google Scholar
4.Ardener, E. (1991) Tożsamość i utożsamienie. In: Mach, Z. and Paluch, A. K. (eds) Sytuacja mniejszościowa i tożsamość, Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Prace Socjologiczne 15 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego), pp. 2142.Google Scholar
5. T. Luckmann (1983) Remarks on personal identity: inner, social and historical time. In: A. Jacobson-Widding (ed.) Identity: Personal and Socio-Cultural. Acta University Upsala, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 5, 67–91.Google Scholar
6.Burke, P. J. (1991) Identity process and social stress. American Sociological Review, 56, 836849, esp. 841–844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Hahn, H.-H. (2001) History and national stereotypes. In: Purchla, J. (ed and selected by) From the World of Borders to the World of Horizons (Cracow: International Cultural Centre) 2333, esp. 23–24.Google Scholar