Yet despite its size and the length of time it’s been around, the Polish community’s impact on Iceland often goes overlooked. That’s partly because it’s very hard to see in the first place. “Icelandic people, they don’t really know what’s going on in the Polish community,” Tomasz Chrapek who moved to Iceland in 2006 tells me. “It’s because of the language barrier and the cultural barrier.” Tomasz runs a cultural organisation called ProjektPolska, founded by a group of friends in 2012 in order to break these barriers.
It appears a large number of Poles in Iceland aren’t particularly focused on integration in the traditional sense, however. According to the research of Anna Wojtynska, many within the community see themselves as only temporary residents. But what drives these feelings? And are Poles here to stay? It turns out that many Polish people themselves find such questions difficult to answer.
Transnational living
Anna Wojtynska is an anthropologist at the University of Iceland. Her doctoral research focused on the Polish community in Iceland, of which she herself is a member. While interviewing members of the community, Anna found that many don’t necessarily plan to settle in the country permanently – even after being here for many years. “When I interviewed one woman, she had already been in Iceland for 17 years, and yet she told me ‘I’m only temporarily here.’ It illustrates that people are not making the decision to stay, yet still they are living here. She’s spent half of her life in Iceland, but she’s still not decided.”
If at one time migration consisted of leaving one country, settling in another, and starting a slow process of integrating, today the reality is much more complicated. Air travel and improved communication have made it much easier for migrants to make multiple moves or split their time between countries. Jobs and labour markets also cross borders so that Poles in Iceland aren’t necessarily encouraged to put down roots. “Many come as posted workers or workers through staffing agencies, which don’t create an environment for people that encourages them to settle. Some people choose to do it, but they are still working in these migrant circles so they don’t maybe interact with Icelanders very much.”
More interaction, more inclusion
While there may be little infrastructure that encourages immigrant communities to participate in Icelandic society, some Poles, like Tomasz, are creating it themselves. Tomasz chairs ProjektPolska, an organisation which he co-founded with friends in 2012. While previous groups within the Polish community in Iceland focused on supporting its members, Tomasz says that’s not what ProjektPolska had in mind. “We wanted to look outside our community, reach out to Icelandic people and other foreigners, and even people back in Poland – the wider the better. Our message was very simple: more diversity and inclusion.” Since its founding, ProjektPolska has aimed to organise events that spark dialogue and challenge the prevailing image of multiculturalism.
“We collaborated with one of the biggest Polish newspapers, Metro, to make a special issue in Icelandic that was all about Poland. We distributed that in the streets. We made a Polish living library: we rented a couch, put it in Kringlan shopping mall, and invited people to chat with Poles. We did a competition to design an Icelandic sweater with a Polish cultural motif. We wanted to think outside the box and do things that promote culture but in a different way. Young, creative, hip – not just something to display in a museum.”
A voice for immigrants
Tomasz’ next project extends beyond the Polish community in a different way. He is part of a group working to establish an umbrella organisation to unite all immigrant organisations in Iceland. VERA, as the organisation is called, is meant to be not only a space for collaboration, but also a voice for immigrants.
VERA goes beyond the Polish community. “That’s what we wanted: to broaden the spectrum, and also to take more responsibility for the entire immigrant community.. Whenever there is an immigrant group or consultative body they always look to Polish people to be represented because they are the biggest group within immigrants. I know that some Polish people don’t really want to be out there raising their voice, and that’s fine. But at the same time it kind of creates this vacuum of leadership, for someone to be the voice. We want to be that voice, Polish people. We want to carry this voice up to another level.”
Work, work, work
While some Polish people may not be interested in speaking out, others may simply face too many hurdles. Anna Marjankowska, a recent immigrant to Iceland, sits on the board of Efling, one of the country’s largest unions. This gives her a clear look at the struggles many immigrants face: mainly, working so hard to make ends meet that they’ve got little time or energy for anything else.
While some Polish immigrants, particularly younger, more recent immigrants, are involved in the arts or activism in their off hours, others are very isolated, Anna says. “You cannot see them in the city. You won’t see them sitting in a café having a drink, they are just separate.” For such people, says Anna, “It’s very hard to make friends, it’s very hard to enter the community that is benefitting from your skills.”
Labour unions, Anna says, have the potential to make a huge impact – and dialogue is their most important tool. “The reality of migrant workers is that we are spending a lot of time in our workplaces: 8, 12, 14 hours a day. Sometimes one honest, open conversation or a few pieces of advice, not even how to make a claim in the union, but even listening to how people are feeling at their job, can make a huge difference. If you can show people how valuable they really are in the workplace, it really changes people’s lives, because it changes at least eight hours of their day.”
