ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Polish migration to the UK since the Second World War and how academic authors have framed these different movements in their publications. Polish migration has, since 2004, become integral to wider discussions about migration in the UK. The chapter presents the different tropes which have emerged in the representations–soldier, wife, worker–exploring what they tell us about Polish mobilities, and what they tell us about the limitations we face, and create, when writing about migration. The collapse of the Socialist regime in 1989 gave new impetus to Polish emigration, and with this change the site of mobility tensions relocated from the difficulties of leaving Poland to the complications of being in the UK and grappling with visa and border arrangements. This post-socialist period has an obvious dividing point in the form of the 2004 expansion of the European Union.
