ABSTRACT
Polish migrants who were socialized in traditional Catholic social environments have been leaving their country for centuries. Chapter 5 surveys how recent migration shapes Polish Catholicism. It examines the dominant concerns which form their decision to migrate and the relationship of their experience of migration to their experience of transcendence, within the context of their religious beliefs. I develop the analysis based on empirical research conducted among Polish migrants in Ireland. Based on the results of this study I argue that the natural concerns of the migrants, labeled as ‘well-being’, shape their biographies and also their relationship to the transcendental order. A key issue is explaining the link between the decline in religiosity, observed among recent Polish migrants, and the process which is often labeled as ‘individualization’. I make the case that this needs to be studied as a relational process. The empirical data contained in this chapter demonstrate that the new social context which Polish migrants encounter in Ireland affects their religious identity indirectly. Religious change is, to a degree, the result of social adaptation in a diaspora, but the factor of reflexivity, and migrants’ concerns shaped before leaving their home country, must also be considered.
