by Geraldine Lee-Treweek
Geographical movement necessarily brings with it myriad emotions and experiences for those relocating. Recently,... more
Geographical movement necessarily brings with it myriad emotions and experiences for those relocating. Recently, policy and media attention has cast a spotlight upon transnationalism and migration; the movement of people across national boundaries and through global spaces. These movements are often dictated by migrants’ dire need for work (encapsulated by the term ‘economic migration), for personal safety (as in the case of asylum or refugee status) or may involve the proactive seeking of a new, better life in which chosen identities may be followed. The emotional life of migrants is an under researched area but it is clear that, as with other experience that involves intense personal change, emotions are crucial if we are to understand the lived experience of migration. Migrants bring with them aspirations, hopes, fears and skills, many of which are capitalised upon by the receiving society; often with poor rewards for migrants themselves. The work migrants do in the UK is, in the main, low paid, low status, repetitive and demoralising, involving considerable emotional management and self-control (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2002). Moreover, the experience of relocating and integrating is often hampered by ‘established’ community and work place rejections. Sometimes this involves outright aggression and racism, on other occasions this may take the form of alienation and social exclusion.
Migration is an intensely emotionally strenuous activity that demands ongoing emotional labour and work. Whilst these experiences can be damaging, friendship and affiliative networks have been presented in the social policy literature as pivotal in fulfilling the role of emotionally balancing and supporting the individual (Perri 6 2002:23). However, there is a potential cost to be borne in using close (and sometimes closed) social relationships to buffer one from negative emotional consequences; emotional strategies that allow one to cope on a daily basis might also have a longer term negative effect on integration into more diverse social groups and networks. There is a crucial need to understand the short, medium and longer term effects of what one could term the ‘emotional defence strategies’ of the outsider. This paper begins to map the emotional worlds of post EU accession Polish migrants in a small town in the North West of the UK, as they struggle to establish themselves in a sometimes hostile, sometimes disinterested, working class community. In this article, Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of ‘symbolic violence’ is deployed in the discussion to examine the cumulative effects of physical and emotional assaults upon self, identity and the group.
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