Breaking the Gendered Pattern: Multivocal Reflections by Polish Women Over the Age of 50 on the Embodied Experience of Migration to the UK Post-2004

Sabina Fiebig Lord

doi:10.5958/2347-6869.2020.00014.X

Authors

Sabina Fiebig Lord Ph.D. Candidate, University of Gloucestershire, UK

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5958/2347-6869.2020.00014.X

Keywords:

migration and gender subjectivity, older Polish women migrants in the UK, emancipatory potential of migration, embodied experiences of migration, autoethnography, feminist qualitative inquiry

Abstract

Since the Accession 8 (A8) of the European Union in 2004 the United Kingdom has experienced a significant influx of European Union Member State migrants. Although the A8 migration has been studied widely, gender and gender roles are still in need of further research in particular in relation to older Polish women migrants. The focus of this paper is to provide an insight into the experiences of mobility as reflected by older women migrants from Poland. The findings are crafted into a multivocal account composed around the theme of ‘the embodied experience of migration – age, invisibility, social and economic exclusion’ by drawing on reflections from a life-story interview as well as literary accounts interwoven with ‘authorial stiches’ and connected to the wider migration discourse. The different women’s voices presented in this article point to the fact that the experience of migration can have an empowering and emancipatory effect in relation to gender subjectivity. In contrast to previous studies on female migration with a focus on economic factors, this paper demonstrates that the experience of mobility could be understood as an opportunity to redefine gender subjectivity and offer a route to escape undesirable gender ideology in Poland.

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