ABSTRACT
Poles can be described as a nation of emigrants, in a double sense. The problem of the new emigrants or exiles is further complicated by the fact that emigration has become a metaphor of the postmodern condition. Zygmunt Bauman, one of the leading authors searching for signs of new identities for Westerners and himself a Polish emigrant, almost equates 'contemporary woman' or 'postmodern woman' with a person who betrays the habits, tastes and views typical of an emigrant. In the 1980s, following first the victory of Solidarity and then the introduction of martial law, emigration became a nationwide and highly politicized issue. In this period over one million Poles left their country, many times more than in the whole period between the end of the Second World War and 1980. Emigration was never as common a phenomenon among Poles as it became after the fall of communism, and especially after Poland joined the European Union in 2004.
