Iceland review - 2019, Page 38

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Iceland Review
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Nearly one half of all immigrants in Iceland come from
a single country: Poland. Polish nationals were among
the first foreigners to start settling here in the modern
era, initially drawn by work in fish processing plants. In
the early aughts, a boom in construction drew them in
even greater numbers. In recent years, younger Poles
have been flocking to the country for jobs in tourism
and other industries. Their community as a whole now
numbers 20,000.
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 tra-
ditional 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 her-
self is a member. “There were two main and related
focuses. One: the labour market, and two: the links
between Iceland and Poland, how immigrants main-
tain contact with Poland and their families there.”
While interviewing members of the Polish com-
munity in Iceland, Anna found that many don’t nec-
essarily plan to settle in the country permanently
– even after being here for many years. “I opened
my doctoral defence with a quote from one person,
“I've seen how much pressure there is to
equalise representation between sexes,
and that’s really great. The next step is
to give the same percentage of rights to
immigrants.”