This is particularly evident if we take into account the once popular but now somewhat forgotten theory of convergence (Bell Rostow), or newer ideas of universalisation (Fukuyama) or globalisation (Robertson). 5Īccepting such a point of view is a short step from formulating the general ‘law’ that a highly immobile traditional society inevitably transforms into a highly mobile modern one. Many researchers of human mobility during the period of European industrialisation have assumed the existence of a specific paradigm, according to which traditional society was characterised by very limited mobility, including spatial mobility, 4 and it was modernisation which stimulated mobility in all its aspects – social, occupational and spatial. Generally, these have been considered part of the modernisation process (although other terms are sometimes used). This has led scholars to suggest the existence of a number of universally observable features of spatial mobility. The impact of industrialisation on the mass outflow of people from rural to urban areas had been at the very least significant, if not decisive, in many West European countries. Creating industrialised areas was – it must be emphasised – a difficult task. Previously there had existed only isolated localities with an ‘industrial’ economic structure. Industrialisation in Poland was completed only after the Second World War, under the communist regime. Such a meaning is undoubtedly Eurocentric and somewhat misleading even with reference to Europe, as it overlooks (for example) regional differences between and within national economies. By industrialisation I mean a fundamental and abrupt change in the economic structure – a transition from a predominantly agricultural economy to one where most of national product is generated by industry. To consider ‘industrialisation’ as one of the circumstances leading to incomplete migration is to risk over-generalisation. These trips largely supplanted commuting and performed some of the same functions. With time, however, many of these people – increasingly followed by others from different social backgrounds – started to earn money from trips abroad. The surplus rural and small-town labour force first engaged in mass circular migration to nearby industrial centres. 2 As a result, and because of specific historical and regional circumstances, they were more or less trapped in their original places of residence, despite the structural unemployment which typified local labour markets. As a working definition, it can be considered a form of international labour mobility of a certain category of people who did not join the initial mass outflow from rural to urban areas in the industrialisation period. The concept of incomplete migration is defined more precisely later in this article. The same can be said of the primary type of international mobility of Polish citizens at the beginning of the 21st century, a phenomenon I call incomplete migration. The migration phenomena observed during the transition period in Poland have their roots in the rather distant past – the circumstances following the Second World War or even earlier. It was first thoroughly examined and empirically tested in the late 1990s when the CMR experimented with the ethnosurvey approach to migration study (Jaźwińska, Okólski 1996 2001 Frejka, Okólski, Sword 1998), and later substantially modified and used as a theoretical background in further CMR projects (e.g. More important, the theory of incomplete migration had earlier become the fundamental conceptual premise of the research programme pursued by the Centre of Migration Research of the University of Warsaw (CMR) that began in the mid-1990s. The theory itself has already been presented in earlier author’s works (Okólski 2001a 2001c). This article includes basic analytical considerations which led the author to systematisation of the existing knowledge about migration from Poland in the transition period, in a conceptual form of the incomplete migration.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |