Chapter Eight and Chapter Nine are complementary. This chapter explores integration in the sense of making links with British people and learning how to operate in British society, and examines the interviewees’ own perceptions about the most important ‘indicators of integration’, those aspects of inclusion which would particularly encourage them to remain in England. Chapter Nine looks at possibilities for maintaining Polishness in England and for making a ‘home’ abroad. The success or otherwise of both aspects of integration help determine families’ decisions about how long to stay in the UK. However, such integration does not take place in a closed box. Transnational networks, joining England and Poland, remain strong. The networking described in previous chapters usually goes on working when the Polish family is abroad and this can enhance the return migration potential of each individual and household, as discussed later in Chapter Ten.

The first part of this chapter addresses interviewees’ sense of connectedness to the particular towns and region where they lived in the UK, and their feeling of having ‘arrived’ where they wanted to make a home. Ways in which those local communities were adapting to the presence of Polish migrants are also briefly discussed. Integration, as argued in Chapter One, is best seen as a two-way process in which the receiving community has an active role to play in the inclusion of new migrants. This chapter looks at interactions between interviewees and the rest of the local community, their friendships and everyday encounters with non-Poles.

Other research on Central and East European migrants has suggested that a sense of temporariness may impede deeper integration, for example doing voluntary work locally or becoming involved in local politics, but that nonetheless there is often a sufficient level of engagement for the metaphors of ‘segregated’ or ‘parallel lives’ to be misleading. ‘Sheer proximity between different groups may sometimes lead to positive encounters. This counters arguments about “parallel communities”.’ As this chapter will show, in the course of trying to shape livelihoods in the UK Polish parents were not trying to become British but they were definitely attempting to integrate to a sufficient extent to feel comfortable in their new surroundings.