Polish Integration in Irish Society

Here's an interesting article about the Poles in Co Kerry and how well they've integrated into the local community.

irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/kerry-s-polish-community-feels-right-at-home-1.2653929

What I find quite significant is the ones who moved back to Poland, found that they had changed and become culturally more 'Irish', found it hard to settle and ended up returning to Ireland. Maybe the Poles will end up like the Normans of whom it was said that they became 'more Irish than the Irish themselves'.

I did read this article and it is clear that neither politics nor religion make people choose one country over another. Money make most of them move at first, but later on there comes the question of integration. The main barrier against intergration is naturally the language. Once this barrier is overcome, there come other factors you take into account.

The main factor I would call "civility". That is hard to define precisely, but I am sure that there is a big difference in "civility" between Poland and Ireland or in a broader sense between Eastern and Western Europe. One Russian spy once put it very bluntly in a conversation with a Polish spy: In Russia as well is in Poland there live cattle stock. The true civility begins in Germany ("U was w Polsce jak i u nas w Rosji mieszka bydło. Prawdziwa kultura zaczyna się od Niemiec" - that was in the early 1990s, so I hope we have gained some more civility in Poland since then :-).

I also heard a story from a Polish psychologist who lived in France. Although she said the French seemed superiour and "venomous" towards the Polish immigrants there, she also said it was much easier for a child from Poland to integrate to a primary school in the so-called West than vice versa.

Why are you surprised? Travelling and/or living in another country for an extended period of time almost always changes people. At some point you have to open your mind and adapt; otherwise you will be very lonely abroad or end up in a ghetto.

It's called "reverse culture shock" and can be more traumatic than plain old culture shock because most people don't realize it exists and so it hits them harder.