‘The Undeserving Polish Migrants: Outsiders in a Place Called Home.’ Different Ways of Explaining the Self, Belonging and Home While Homeless on Exile

Considering the negative politicisation of Poles within the UK’s politics, media and public, blamed for straining NHS and benefit systems, those experiencing homelessness in exile constitute the others, failing to adapt to established codes of conduct. Various studies have shown that otherness and social exclusion have a negative impact on an individual’s sense of self and community belonging. This study investigates how homeless Polish migrants construct and maintain their sense of self, community, and home while living in the UK. Building on the established and the outsiders’ theoretical assumptions and the deserving discourse, it aims to explore the complexities of inferior vs superior power relations within the homeless sector and its impact on the issue of home, identity and belonging.

This research uses ethnography and qualitative methods of inquiry by delving into the lives of twenty-three Polish homeless individuals and ten service providers from two homeless organisations in the East Midlands aged between 21- and 68 years old. Through systematic analysis, participants’ responses indicated the interconnection between the self, belonging and home triggered by a social context and a socially constructed nature of homelessness and migration at a specific time. The participants’ construction of home, identity and belonging was primarily a consequence of individuals’ vulnerability and self-loss as living in a neoliberal state characterised by pro-immigration policies.

This research proposes a new understanding of home, identity and belonging that should be analysed as situation-specific and connected to the deserving criteria and the established and the outsiders’ figuration. On this basis, it is recommended that social attitudes around migration and homelessness should be changed, placing individual needs at the heart of the homeless provision, and building solid relationships with the service providers should be invested in, not just in the short term. Further research is needed to identify other factors in sustaining positive selfhood even when classified as undeserving homeless migrants