Transmission of the Culture of Migration: Growing Up to Transnationalism

Today’s students of primary, junior high and high schools represent a generation that has grown up during a period of significant mobility of Poles. Both pre- and post- EU-accession migration involved a large share of their parents, siblings, relatives and members of local communities (Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski 2009). Widespread experience of transnationalism raises a question about the strength of the culture of migration in Poland. In this article I would like to focus on migration readiness and its determinants, basing conclusions on a nationwide survey of a random sample of over 4,000 students. I treat migration readiness as an indicator of the sustainability of the migration culture. I would like to test a number of factors that shape migration readiness on the level of individual and primary group characteristics. The key question is: What are the most important determinants of migratory readiness at the micro level? Measurement of the importance of growing up in a transnational family, among others factors, should let us see whether the experience of transnationalism in childhood increases the probability of the child’s future mobility. The first part of this article contains a description of the term “culture of migration”, followed by a review of the research on factors shaping migration readiness. In the second part, the methodology and sampling are described. The third and fourth parts are devoted to the migratory readiness scale and analysis of its determinants.