Competing obligations and the maintenance of physical co-presence – The impact of migration and structural constraints on post accession Polish families in the UK

The focus of the paper is on individual case studies selected for the purpose of illuminating the experiences of post-accession Polish migrant ‘family lives’ in the UK, including: lone fathers living in the UK, entire families who have relocated to the UK and families split between Poland and the UK. These case studies demonstrate what Morgan (1996) calls the movement of individuals through households and family relationships, simultaneous with the examination of the enlargement of the spaces in which family lives are conducted as a consequence of movement across the ‘open borders’ between the UK and Poland (Ryan 2010).  Our focus is on how our interviewees articulate what they present to us as the impact of particular structural constraints (in terms of education, pensions, childcare and employment) on their future plans to settle in the UK or return to Poland. However, the central focus of the paper is the relationship between these structural constraints and the tensions associated with fulfilling competing familial obligations – a central aspect of the latter is our interviewees’ concerns about the impact of migration (and return migration) on their ability to maintain physical co-presence with family members in the UK and Poland in the future (despite their abilities to maintain vitual intimacies through various tele-communication media). This paper examines the emotional responses of individuals at particular stages of the life course who are 'torn' between two different countries and often two sets of family members (and associated obligations), that is, those 'left behind' and those who have migrated with them, but also in the context of the open borders between the UK and Poland, some of our interviewees' fears of being left behind in the UK by their grown up children who could return to Poland.