To Bridge the Chasm
How bilingual immigrants navigate borderlands
At the conclusion of the second world war, Polish Cadet Michał Giedroyć was attending cadet training in Palestine when he received a letter from the British government urging him to return home and rebuild his country.[1] Like many Poles, Giedroyć’s former home was east of the Curzon Line and now within the new borders of the Soviet Union.
To return home would mean being subject to the same government which had tortured and killed his father and deported his family to Siberia. He instead waited and chose to accept the forthcoming offer of the British government to immigrate to Great Britain.
After being offered the possibility of resettlement, approximately 150,000 Poles chose to settle in England and Scotland. They would become known as the Emigracja or emigration. They and their children would exist in the borderland.
Life is full of borderlands. There are lines on maps and barbed wire fences, but there are also spaces between ideas, religion, and culture. These, too, are borderlands. As society fractures and our circles become increasingly homogenous — the forced experience of confronting another culture, language, or identity is uncomfortably significant. Borderlands offer a wealth of knowledge. The stories of those who successfully bridge the chasms and communicate with both sides, without losing their identity, offer a road map for building a way forward.
Britain and Poland do not share a geographic borderland, yet the experiences of immigrants and their children form a border area between the two cultural identities. Immigrants who gain language fluency and work actively to integrate into their new home can bridge the gap. Yet it is often the children of first generation immigrants who are most successful achieving the level of cultural fluency that allows the to successfully navigate the borderland. Unless there is a strong immigrant community and significant resistance from the host population, most third generation immigrants will have lost fluency in grandparents culture and have thus crossed from the borderland.
An immigrant’s experience cannot be mapped by a cartographer, but it can offer a roadmap for building connections in our own lives.
Listen in the discomfort
The immigrant experience is wrought with discomfort. Going to the grocery store, making a phone call, or asking for directions in a new place and language can be deeply uncomfortable experiences wrought with misadventure. Yet immigrants must do these things every day. Jan Nowak wrote during the war that ‘[s]ince the fall of France the eyes of all Poland were fixed on London. To get to London was like getting to Heaven.’ [2] Life as an immigrant in Post-war Britain was not without its difficulties.
During the war, the British were happy to have the Poles living in Britain, their soldiers fighting alongside the Allies. Yet one former serviceman reflected, ‘After the war…some people in Scotland, mostly politically motivated, were hostile to us. And I remember an instant that a woman came to me as I was waiting in a queue at the bus station and she loudly said to me, ‘Why don’t you go back to Poland? Because of you, I get a shilling less for my child.’ …it was all right when we were fighting for our and your freedoms — that was alright. But now that our usefulness has ceased, so we should go.’ [3]
George Orwell once wrote of a conversation he overheard between two Scottish businessmen. They blamed the Poles for the coal shortage, lack of available homes, insufficient Scottish doctors, and increased immorality. Orwell, highlighting the disconnect in information, wrote,
‘The thing that most depressed me in the above-mentioned conversation was the recurrent phrase, ‘let them go back to their own country.’ If I had said to those two businessmen, ‘Most of those people have no country to go back to’, they would have gaped. Not one of the relevant facts would have been known to them. They would never have heard of the various things that have happened to Poland since 1939.[4]
Other people’s experiences rarely parallel our own. When their beliefs oppose ours, or their experiences challenge our truth, we might need to recalibrate. When we truly listen, washed of confirmation bias, we acknowledge their reality and we see them as human.
While many Polish immigrants faced initial opposition and cold shoulders, as their neighbors and coworkers got to know them, they were accepted into society. One serviceman remembers, the town of ‘Huddersfield was in a cocoon at the time, and suddenly this influx of foreigners, Poles — it was something unheard of — we were oddities. People wanted to know what we thought…and they began to accept us. When they discovered that we are a hardworking lot, they began to like us, I think.’ [5]
When we listen and learn more about those who are different from us, we see them not as a faceless enemy, but instead as a reflection of humanity. Immigrants are challenged with this every day. They are existing between two cultures and encountering new ideas that challenge old beliefs. Their ability to learn and exist in the discomfort gives them the ability to navigate the borderland.
What can we learn from listening to another’s experience? From shedding our own confirmation bias? What can be gained from acknowledging the discomfort of others? From doing something uncomfortably hard ourselves? We learn what it can be like to live in the borderland. And if we understand it well, we can bridge the gaps in our own lives. By listening, we see past our own limiting barriers
There is nuance in identity
When the Polish Emigracja arrived in Great Britain, assimilation was still considered the goal of immigration. For many immigrants, assimilation is the loss of something deeply important to their identity. For many exiles, reluctant immigrants, and refugees, cultural or national identity may be all that remains of their formal life.
The Polish Emigracja was unique to many immigrants as they had a strong cultural presence in Britain. They was a government-in-exile, Polish Red Cross, veterans services, schools, and churches. The strong émigré community available to Poles in Britain provided a social network and framework that helped maintain their culture. When several members of the second generation were surveyed about their nationality and cultural identity: 37 responded ‘Polish’ and 14 answered ‘English’ or ‘British.’ The rest answered in some form of ‘50 percent Polish, 50 percent English’, ‘I am English with a Polish streak’ or ‘I am both Polish and British at the same time.’ [5]
The question of identity is especially fraught and nuanced. One respondent explained it as, ‘Louis Armstrong being asked to define jazz. If you have to ask, then you’ll never know…Alright, I’m a British subject. I’ve got a British passport…but I’ve never felt that this was mine in the broader sense…When I go to Poland, I think…this is where I belong.’ [7]
According to one interviewee, ‘I spoke Polish at home. I never spoke English there…With Polish friends I had outside my home, I would speak English. It was like two different worlds — An English and a Polish world. I walked into my house, and I became Polish.’ [8] This existence can seem almost schizophrenic. Yet when navigated successfully, those who comfortably speak both languages bridge the gap between two ideas — translating the experience of each for the other side.
A nuanced view on identity, allowing for multiculturalism, provides space and acknowledgment. We can be both English and Polish at the same time. We can be conservative and liberal, with heritage from across the globe. We can be devout and doubting. Choose not to put those around us in labeled boxes. Instead learn who they are as individuals.
Stay grounded in who you are
Borderlands are fluid, expanding and contracting over time. At times standing in border areas feels like standing in ‘no man’s land’. By having a solid understanding of who we are, we can navigate the spaces between us. It is the difference between navigating with a compass and clear skies and trying to find your way with only dead reckoning. Skilled navigators can find their way unaided in cloudy skies. For most of us, having something to ground ourselves to, something to show us the way, keeps us from going adrift.
Fátima Disla, whose mother had immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, felt lost in a new school in a new town, where she felt very different from her peers. One night after noticing her distress, her mother took out a map, pointed to the Dominican Republic, and told her daughter, ‘That’s where we come from — it’s a great country. Next time people call you names, don’t take it personally; educate them; show them where you come from!’ Fátima was still carrying this map in her back pocket when she was in her twenties; she explained, ‘It gave me a sense of place. Now I knew who I was, and I couldn’t wait to show everyone else.’ [9] Young people who are taught about their ancestral country and family origins are more likely to develop a dignified self-definition.
For many, it is the family narratives that becomes the foundation for personal development; the family stories and recollections promote a more expansive views of society and propel achievement. For many second-generation Poles, it was their parents’ wartime and immigration experiences that formed their own back pocket map. Their parents’ places in battles such as the Battle for Britain or Monte Casino provided them with social capital not only in the Polish community but also in British society.[10]
By acquiring education, language fluency, and social networks, immigrants can help others (often their parents) navigate a new country independently. Ideally, while continuing to remember where you come from.
Immigrants carry a heavy load. They are the translators for their families’ futures and the memories’ of their past culture. By bringing new ideas and stories into the general population and consciousness — they can accelerate growth and development. Immigrants build bilingual bridges across multiple borderlands. Their experiences can teach us much about how to navigate borderlands.
[1] Michał Giedroyć, Craters Edge (London, 2010), p. 174.
[2] Jan Novak, Courier from Warsaw, (Detroit, 1982), p. 110.
[3] Kirklee Sound Archive in Nocoon, ‘A Reluctant Welcome’, p. 81.
[4] Orwell, Orwell in Tribune, ‘As I Please and other writings 1943–7’, p. 354–355.
[5] ‘Kirklee Sound Archive’ in Nocon, ‘A Reluctant Welcome?’, p. 79.
[6] Anna Zebrowska, ‘Integration or Assimilation’, pp. 126–128.
[7] Keith Sword, Identity in Flux, p. 160.
[8] Sword, Identity in Flux, p. 219.
[9] Patterson, ‘The Polish Community in Exile’, p. 97.
[10] Patricia Fernández-Kelly, ‘The Back-Pocket Map: Social Class and Cultural Capital as Transferable Assets in the Advancement of Second-Generation Immigrants’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 620, (Nov., 2008), pp. 116–117.
