Expat, immigrant, foreigner. Not all foreigners in Poland are expats.

A lot of French I knew were recalled suddenly when the economic crisis kicked in, but seem now to be returning.

Maybe, the only Irish I know with kids in the A/S are long term married to Poles, they also live on Konstancja. Since AIB sold off its assets in PL, they no longer have the friendly bank service.


1. Its cheaper.
2.Location to where they live.

To borrow from the terms often used on PF by some posters themselves I'd say such persons would be correctly classified as "paper" or "plastic" Poles.

Indeed. There are a few organised squats in Warsaw, indeed one has a regular English conversation evening however as I remember, the squatters in them are all Poles.

Two in Poznan as well. Can't say I agree with them or their politics, but they certainly are Poles and not foreigners - I know one of the main women behind one of them.

Personally, I've never come across a resident originally from another country who's a squatter here, nor is there really much effect on the housing market. Żoliborz used to be thought of as an area for foreign residents but nowadays there's not much evidence of that. Sadyba was always popular pre-1989 and the bottom end of Wilanów nowadays. There's also that housing estate near the American school which Americans like. Saska Kępa still has a healthy French community, Os. -elaźna Brama has plenty of Vietnamese and quite a few Arab and Turkish residents towards the top end of Jana Pawła. Expats are often in company accommodation round the Marina Mokotów development.

Primarily expat is a person who is voluntarily absent from home or country.

As part of their job.

There is no way that Irish people would use the term expat, it just doesn't roll off the Irish tongue.

An expat is a migrant with delusions of grandeur.

I've known two in Warsaw who've used that term about themselves. Both senior managers for multinationals here for a couple of years.

That's odd the term is just not used by Irish people it would be like a British person using the term Fatherland.

Both of the people I'm thinking about are very well travelled and neither I think have their main home in Ireland. I expect it's something they picked up along the way.

Maybe the Irish expats in Paris have forked tongues.

Agree to a certain extend with Barney, the Irish don't really call themselves expats.

For the simple reason that to be an expat you must be sent abroad by your company to work in a foreign country.
Other than AIB's failed attempt to get into the banking market here, SFA Irish workers were planted here by the companies they worked for.....a few failed construction ones too.

But the vast majority have come of their free will.........well, mostly their Polski wimmin dragging them here!, but most would have to be defined as immigrants and not expats.

What kind of people live in such squats?

Mostly young ones. Beyond that I don't know. There's at least one thread on here made by someone from a squat.

Mostly middle class types pretending to slum it, at least in my experience.

There were some notable examples where this wasn't the case, such as in the now-dead Tacheles in Berlin - but mostly, these places are the same old story.

I liked Tacheles. It showed what people could achieve together with very little support. True grassroots initiative. The original one, Köpi, is still going, however it's less welcoming to visitors. There used to be a Tacheles style place in Powisle - a real creative gem however the people were evicted and it's now an empty site, chained up and unused.

Indeed, it had a certain charm about the whole place. What was interesting for me was that most of the artists were actually friendly and approachable - they didn't seem to have that sulky attitude that other places have.


This is what I dislike about most squats - they claim to be open minded, but most of them are very closed minded in their mentality. It's what I loved most about Tacheles - they weren't pretending that they were doing anything other than squatting and selling their art. They were also very keen on simply being left alone - they weren't getting involved with all the childish politics that tends to occur in such places.

For me, it was a great shame that for all the money spent in Eastern Germany, money couldn't be found to keep Tacheles as it was. It was an oddity in a very odd city, and should have been preserved.

As a wider phenomenon didn't that go out with the hippies? Is a squat more formalised than a bunch of homeless living together in abandoned buildings or allotment garden sheds? They probably couldn't be too structured because I should think the squatter lifestyle would attract those with anarchic leanings.

The idea is centuries older than that.

A wonderful way of bringing back unused sites for the common good. Perhaps you'd prefer places locked up and full of weeds.

Not that this has much to do with the thread, since migrants to Poland rarely (as far as I know) get involved in these things. What, by the way do you think of guerrilla gardening?

Sad to say I'm not the cutting-edge tedny you appear to be. This is the first time I've heard that term. I presume it could mean mean cultivaitng an abandoned garden. If it's truly abandoned and ownerless then what's the harm? But squats can often become health and fire threats. Bowels and bladders need release even in buildings devoid of plumbing, and the drunk falling asleep on a pile of rags with a lighted fag is an old story....

Organised ones like Tacheles, Köpi and the one that used to be in Powiśle didn't have piles of rags or any squalor. All have been visited by health inspectors (they often serve food) and all passed. Worth checking one out.

It depends. Some of them are well run, well organised places - but not all. The problem is that some of them are run by very standoffish people who have rich parents - the kind that Pulp's famous "Common People" criticised.

Some of them certainly are just places for homeless people to congregate, but others are flourishing cultural spaces. There's no hard rule.