Goodwin, KM; (2017) Class, Gender and Ethnicity Performance Amongst Polish Women in the United Kingdom and New Zealand/Aotearoa: an Intersectional Perspective. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the migration of Polish citizens within Europe, especially post EU accession. There is, however, little research on the movement of such migrants further afield, especially in the context of individualised lifestyle migration. This thesis is based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation/participation with Polish women living in United Kingdom and New Zealand/Aotearoa. Using Butler’s theory of performativity and Goffman’s dramaturgical approach to self-presentation I consider how class, gender and ethnicity intersect, and how they are expressed in Polish women’s behaviour in two very different geographical, socio-economic, cultural and political environments. My data show how Polish women’s femininity and gender practices change in a response to their different social location in both New Zealand and the UK, and how these are affected by varying levels of social inclusion of women, Poles and migrants in both these countries. My findings demonstrate that although in both NZ and UK Polish women feel more included as women, in the UK their ethnicity and migration status locate them in a lower societal strata. Further, in NZ Polish women felt more included as women, Poles and migrants, and the way they performed gender and ethnicity did not require ‘resistance practices’ to counteract ethnic and class stigma. I also show how discourses of migration to both these places are rooted in the history of the Polish-English and Polish-New Zealand relations, and inform the way Polish women narrate their experience. As I use an intersectional approach in both methodology and theoretical framework, the focus is on the intersecting nature of my respondents’ social identities, and the way their migrant experience is classed and gendered. Although my work is anthropological/sociological in its approach (ethnography) and subject (e.g. focus on class), I also draw on my background from crosscultural and social psychology (e.g. the work of Hofstede) to broaden the theoretical perspectives traditionally adopted in migration studies.

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