Project title:

Trans-(semi)peripherality? Skilled Migration from Poland to Central Eastern Europe.

Project description:

Project focuses on international mobility of young skilled migrants from Poland who voluntarily take up employment in countries of “new” European Union. Main aim of the project is to analyse migrants’ motivations, migration trajectories and constructed meanings of the migration from the individual perspective of the migrants. Research addresses young people from Poland in four selected countries of Central Eastern Europe: Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania – countries that in the recent years have transformed into the most important European centres of outsourcing and offshore services for international companies. Research is based on individual in-depth interviews with the migrants in each of the studied countries and complimented by participant observation in the field. Trans-(semi)peripheral lens applied in this project serves not only to analyse the characteristics of chosen migrations, but also to reflect on general mechanisms, determinants and significance of intra-European mobility differing from the dominant perspective which follows the centre-peripheral / East-West paradigm. Project also aims to add to the research concerning processes of transformations of Central Eastern European economies and new migration spaces, as well as to the debates on the unique position of Central Eastern Europe in the centre-periphery structures of dependencies.

Research interests:

• international migrations
• CEE labour markets
• racialisation and whiteness in Eastern European context
• centre-periphery relations