Expatriate community: The Poles are already in Maastricht!

There are 370 Polish citizens living in Maastricht and not all of them are illegal workers or car thieves as public opinion sometimes portrays them. But how did they end up settling in Maastricht?

Barbara Topa, chairwoman of the Polish community organisation “Polonia Universalis”, knows everything about Poles in Maastricht.

Around 1900, the Poles were one of the biggest national groups that came to Southern Limburg to work in coalmines in the area around the cities of Brunssum and Heerlen, known as the Eastern Mines area (Oostelijke Mijnstreek), Barbara explained. At the end of World War II, many Polish soldiers were afraid to return to communist Poland and therefore remained in Limburg to work in the coalmines like their predecessors. The ‘third wave’ of migration, which primarily consisted of asylum seekers, occurred in the 1980′s, prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Dutch government provided them with almost all the help they required. In De Heeg in Maastricht there are still six families who arrived during that period.

Jolanta Magon embodies this ‘wave’. She emigrated in the 1980′s, three months before Poland introduced the martial law. She arrived in Maastricht via a temporary asylum seekers centre in Austria. Once in the Netherlands, she attended the parties and other initiatives organised by Polonia Universalis in Maastricht. But because “one does not have to know every Polish person living in the vicinity, especially if it is a person one would never find interesting in Poland”, she stopped frequenting the club. Currently Jolanta is well integrated and has many friends, some of whom are also Dutch.

In the 1990′s, many Polish women arrived to marry Dutch men but – as Barbara put it – “some Dutch men did not realise that a Polish woman is a lady, an emancipated woman who will not let herself be treated as a beautiful domestic servant just because she is from a poorer country or because divorce is not common practice in Poland” and so about half of these marriages consequently broke down, according to Barbara’s sources.

Another wave of migration included people who came looking for jobs (first illegally, later also legally) mostly in agriculture and construction. The Dutch published job offers in Polish newspapers, especially for Poles with dual nationality (Polish/German). Barbara gave an example of a firm which also employed Poles without a German passport, but “such firms rarely respected workers’ rights: employees were underpaid, overworked and often simply cheated and mistreated”, she stated emotionally without disguising her disapproval.

The latest ‘wave’, according to Barbara, includes Polish students coming to the University of Maastricht. Michal Gondek- a PhD Candidate at the UM, found the city of Maastricht rather small at first, but after three years he is used to its size and now he really enjoys living here. He likes Maastricht’s ‘cosmopolitan’ touch which is “not intimidating like in Paris or London because, after all, Maastricht is quite small and not overwhelming at all”. Michal believes one should not choose friends according to their nationality. He enjoys talking to his compatriots from time to time but he is not sure whether this is necessary on a regular basis and he tries to integrate with many people from various nationalities.

Magdalena Pakulniewicz – a Polish Masters student in Maastricht has a similar approach towards Maastricht. She loves the fact that Maastricht is so internationalised. Maastricht is a city that more than any other lives for its students. …” If you are new and have just arrived, you don’t feel it, because the majority of the students are new and have just arrived. You walk around the city, enter pubs, clubs, and cafes and meet groups of people from different countries. The main question asked is “Where are you from?” and you end up being really surprised if you hear that someone is actually from Maastricht…”

Magdalena is impressed with the Dutch language, art and atmosphere: “When you come from a city like Warsaw – a big, loud and crowded capital – Maastricht delights you with the little streets and tiny houses, known around the world from albums, catalogues and postcards – so Dutch in its essence’. ‘What I found confusing, though,’ she added, ‘is that no matter how hard I try to articulate myself in Dutch when doing shopping in a grocery store, I will always be answered in English – I guess the local people are used to foreigners and are eager to help us out in the universal language. Paradoxically, when I speak English in those daily situations – shops, stores, market – instead of trying to use Dutch, the local people always stick to their mother tongue – as if they wanted to remind me that we are in the Netherlands and that Dutch – not English – should be spoken here! Stubborn, but always kind, smiling and helpful”.

Although very open for the Dutch culture Magdalena is adamant in going back to Poland after her studies. She likes to talk about Poland, its culture and history. “I want to explain to foreigners that the current situation of Poland is a logical consequences of being on the other side of the ‘Iron Curtain’ and convince them that something like ‘Central Europe’ – and not only ‘Eastern Europe’ which they all know – actually exists,” she says enthusiastically. As she states: “I want to feel and experience the Dutch culture to the highest extent but at the same time I really need to stay in contact with my own language and compatriots because then I feel even more at home in Maastricht. In that context I am really glad that I have met so many nice and interesting Polish people here and that something like Polonia Universalis, an organisation that enables such relations, exists” she adds with conviction.

Alexandra Jurczynska

January 2006

Poland in the Netherlands:
Polish Embassy in The Hague
Polish dancing and singing group Syrena in Brunssum