Our new article on housing experiences among the UK-based Polish migrant essential workers is now out in the International Journal of Housing Policy – a key forum for the analysis of housing policy and practice. The article explores variegated housing situations during Brexit and Covid-19 and reveals housing precarity as the missing link in understanding systemic resilience during times of polycrisis. It demonstrates that housing precarity is not only highly differentiated and compounded for individual migrants but also creates society-wide vulnerabilities that undermine the labour market, economy and society. The article is fully available online and you can read it HERE.

Our new article on stay-return motivations among the UK-based Polish migrant essential workers is now out in Mobilities – a major academic journal examining the movements of people, objects, capital and information. The article looks at what encourages migrant Poles to stay in the UK, return to Poland and/or migrate elsewhere and how the combination of Brexit and Covid-19 shapes these motivations. It conceptualises Brexit and Covid-19 as polycrisis, i.e. multiple, mutually reinforcing crises, and illustrates how the combination of both produces a new context against which migrant aspirations and transnational mobilities are negotiated. The article is fully available online and you can read it HERE.

Our new article presenting an innovative method of Facebook-ad sampling that we employed to recruit Polish essential workers is now out. The piece reviews our survey performance over a 4-week period in spring 2021 and how our ad campaign’s reach, impressions and survey clicks (conversions) changed over time. It also analyses whether we recruited different respondents at different stages of sampling in terms of response quality: attentiveness and carelessness (e.g. nonresponse). The article is fully available online HERE and its replication materials are published on the Open Science Framework’s website HERE. 

Our talk on stay-return motivations among migrant essential workers is on YouTube! The talk was delivered on 15 May 2024 as part of the joint seminar by the Center for Advanced Studies of Population and Religion (Cracow University of Economics, Poland) and the Jagiellonian Center for Migration Studies (Jagiellonian University, Poland) organised by Dr Michał Wanke and Prof. Konrad Pędziwiatr. In the talk, our own Dr Anna Gawlewicz reflects on how Brexit and Covid-19 shape stay-return aspirations among Polish essential workers in the UK. With thanks to Michał and Konrad for organising this!

Our new article on the impacts of Covid-19 on Polish essential workers in the UK is now out in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies – a major academic journal in the field of migration. The article presents key findings from our study and discusses examples of the health, social, economic, and cultural impacts of the pandemic on Polish essential workers. It shows how Covid-19 affects them in very uneven and sometimes contrasting ways depending on their individual socio-economic circumstances. The article is fully available online and you can read it HERE.

Publication alert! Our new mini-article is now out in Discover Society, an online platform publishing academically informed short pieces for a general audience. In the article, we explore how the combined (institutional, political, social) hostilities of Brexit and the pandemic have impacted Polish essential workers in the UK. We argue that Covid-19 has reinforced pre-existing challenges that Brexit had created for Polish migrants. The article is part of an excellent special issue on anti-immigration policies and discourses guest edited by Prof. Louise Ryan. By linking the Windrush scandal, Brexit, asylum regulations, and recently proposed ‘off-shoring’, the issue offers a critique of how UK immigration policies are affecting migrant communities and wider UK society. The full article can be found HERE.