Polish Emigrants in Düsseldorf. The Migrants’ heritage of Identity and Entry into German Society

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the possibilities for Polish migrants entering the German society in Düsseldorf. Their ethnic and cultural heritage can be an element which facilitates or hampers this process. The studies carried out was of a diagnostic character (N: 150) and the research problem touched the course of the process of the socio-cultural assimilation of the Polish emigrants in Düsseldorf. The results indicate that Polish emigration is internally varied and the emigrants integrate with the German society to a different extent. The features that vary the most include the place which they come from and which they grew up in, as well as the time of their leaving Poland. Migrants from the territory of Silesia (historically an ethnic-cultural borderland itself) find it much easier to adapt to the new socio-professional situation in Germany than their compatriots who have come from other parts of Poland.