Millennials on the move? Gender, family roles and international mobility of young Polish women

Seminar hosted by the Centre for Research on Families, Life Course and Generations and Leeds Migration Research Network

Dr Paula Pustułka, Youth Research Centre, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw

Abstract

Although quite a substantial number of studies focused on international migration of Polish women, the main wave of gendered research on mobility covered the experiences of women who went abroad during 1980s and 1990s, up until about five years after the EU accession (2009). In the context of examining the biographies of subsequent generations of women, the existing studies investigate primarily the mobility paths of the Generation X. However, a decade later, migration continues to be present in the biographies of the Polish women from the Generation Y (i.e. Millenials). At the same time, any traits that potentially differentiate the current mobility of the Polish women born between 1980 and 2000 from their migrant counterparts from earlier generations have not been explored. What is more, the majority of the analyses that pertain to the trajectories of Millenials illustrate their labor market experiences. In this presentation we discuss how international mobility intersects with gender and social roles that young women take on in their personal/family life (e.g. being a partner, wife, mother, daughter, friend). While the generational theory constitutes a conceptual backdrop for this work, we analyze migrant biographies of Polish women through a comparative lens, specifically looking at transition markers from the family realm. The paper is based on empirical material from a Qualitative Longitudinal Study called “Peer-groups and Migration” (2016-2020, National Science Center Poland, Sonata-Bis 5 scheme). A subsample of narratives from two-waves of interviews with internationally mobile women representing Gen X was used for this analysis.