Indian and Polish Migrant Organisations in the UK Thomas Lacroix
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Indian and Polish Migrant Organisations in the UK Thomas Lacroix To cite this version: Thomas Lacroix. Indian and Polish Migrant Organisations in the UK. 2011. halshs-00820303 HAL Id: halshs-00820303 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00820303 Submitted on 6 May 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Indian and Polish Migrant Organisations in the UK Final report of the Transnational Migration Organisations (TRAMO) project Thomas Lacroix 14 April 2011 1 Table of contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 4 Methodological note ........................................................................................................ 5 1. The shifting ethos of the Indian migrant organisations in the UK ................................... 6 1.1. Migrant India: a brief history .......................................................................................... 7 1.2. Indian organisations in the UK ........................................................................................ 8 1.2.1. Main categories of organisations among Indians in the UK .................................... 8 Figure 2: Recent trends: diversification and transnationalisation of Indian organisations .......................................................................................................................................... 10 1.3. Indian Workers´ Association, Birmingham ................................................................... 11 1.3.1. Historical background ............................................................................................ 12 1.3.2. Goals and field of work .......................................................................................... 13 1.3.3. Regional distribution of resources ......................................................................... 14 1.3.4. Main external activities and events ....................................................................... 15 1.3.5. Main internal activities and events ........................................................................ 16 1.3.6. Analysis of organizational field and organisational pattern ................................. 16 1.4. The Sikh Human Rights Group ...................................................................................... 18 1.4.1. Historical background ............................................................................................ 18 1.4.2. Goals and fields of work ......................................................................................... 19 1.4.3. Regional distribution of resources ......................................................................... 19 1.4.4. Main external activities and events ....................................................................... 20 1.4.5. Main internal activities and events ........................................................................ 21 1.4.6. SHRG: a transnational pressure group................................................................... 22 1.5. Indian transnational organisations in the UK–India migration system ........................ 22 1.5.1. The UK context: liberalisation policies and selective immigration policies ........... 23 1.5.2. Ebbs and flows of the Indian diasporic policy ........................................................ 24 1.5.3. Diversification and diasporisation of immigrant communities and their impacts on organisational structures ................................................................................................. 26 1.5.4. Market citizenship and the re-composition of UK-based Indian volunteering ...... 27 2. Polish organisations in the UK ..................................................................................... 28 2.1. Polish migration and Polish organisations .................................................................... 29 2.2. The Polish associational landscape today ..................................................................... 31 2.3. The Polish scouting organisation (UK) .......................................................................... 36 2.2.1. Historical background ............................................................................................ 36 2 2.2.2 Goals and fields of work .......................................................................................... 37 2.2.3 Regional distribution of resources .......................................................................... 38 2.2.4. Main external activities and events ....................................................................... 39 2.2.5 Main internal activities and events ......................................................................... 40 2.2.6. Synthesis................................................................................................................. 40 2.3. The Polish Catholic Mission .......................................................................................... 41 2.3.1 Historical background ............................................................................................. 41 2.3.2. Goals and field of work .......................................................................................... 42 2.3.3. Regional distribution of resources ......................................................................... 43 2.3.4. Main activities and events ..................................................................................... 44 2.3.5. Local and international embeddings of the Polish Catholic Mission ..................... 46 2.4. Polish migrant organisations in a European post-communist context ........................ 47 2.4.1. The UK: a new space for Polish migration ............................................................. 47 2.4.2. Poland and its émigrés: representations and policies ........................................... 48 2.4.3. Polish migration after 2004 and its consequences for the Polish volunteer sector .......................................................................................................................................... 50 3. Migrant organising and cross border embedding in the UK .......................................... 52 3.1. Migrant organisations and their context: a comparative perspective ......................... 52 3.2. Other factors: context sensitivity of migrant organisations ......................................... 56 3.4.1. The quest for legitimacy: MOs and their associational fields ................................ 56 3.4.2. Strategic patterns of leadership of migrant organisations: accommodators, protestors and conservatives ........................................................................................... 59 Conclusion: characteristics of Indian and Polish transnational organisational fields and their effects upon migrant associations .......................................................................... 61 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 64 3 Introduction1 Indians and Poles are among the most important immigrant groups in the UK. In 2009, with 625 000 persons, Indians are the largest foreign born group, the Poles are now the largest group of foreign nationality (494 000 persons) (ONS 2009). The choice of these two groups was driven by the intent to compare a long standing immigrant population with a recent one to check whether migratory historicity might have influenced the shaping of respective associational fields. The difference of ethnicities (Asian non Christian vs European Christian) was another aspect which influenced this choice: the race relation policy primarily targeted Black and Ethnic Minorities (BME) and therefore left aside white populations such as the Poles. Interestingly, the comparison between the two populations turned out to be very relevant but not for the expected reasons. In fact, the Polish associational field has even older roots than the Indian one: it was basically established during the immediate post-war period. In addition, contrary to what the perceived cultural “proximity” let us to foresee, Polish associations tend to be more distant from the rest of the British civil society and therefore less sensitive to mainstream social change. These unexpected findings have rendered the comparison all the more fascinating. Two main questions have driven this research: what are the characteristics of transnational associations of migrants? What are the main factors explaining the shape and contents of this associational transnationalism? This work is based on the systematic analysis of four case-studies: the Sikh human rights Group, the Indian Workers´ Association in Birmingham, the Polish Scouting association (UK) and the Polish Catholic Mission. This paper successively examines the Indian and Polish associational fields in the UK. When analysing the four case studies, specific attention will