Magdalena Mostowska, a scholar at the University of Warsaw, is currently living in Leuven to do research at HIVA, the Higher Institute for Labour, that functions as an interdisciplinary research centre of the K.U.Leuven. Mostowska was given the opportunity to run a project that ‘aims to trace the life trajectories, family relations and construction of identities’ of the Polish homeless in Brussels.

As a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Architecture of Warsaw University of Technology, Mostowska was involved in the examination of social housing policies. She found out that what interested her most were not the housing policies, but the people who lived in the communal houses. Mostowska changed tracks and is currently working on a master thesis in sociology. Polish migrants are a considerable group in almost every Western European city. The Polish migration to Belgian cities has a specific character. Especially in the 1990’s there has been a flow of Poles performing undocumented work, for the most part as construction and domestic workers. That has not really changed, today, in Brussels, an estimated 20 000 to 30 000 Polish migrants correspond to that pattern. Some of those migrants do not have any roof above their heads. Mostowska came up with a project herself and HIVA, an institute that is concerned with social problems in different fields of civil life, offered support to raise more awareness for the problem.

VOICE – What is the aim of the project? In what way will the results be used?

MOSTOWSKA: In the first place, it’s an exploratory research. I am trying to look at a problem of which we know that it exists but of which we, both Belgian and Polish researchers, and also policy makers in Belgium, do not know much about. The aim is to locate the roots and scale of the problem. How large is this population of the Polish homeless, what do their daily lives look like, how do they manage to survive? The research is not commissioned by any official body but I’m sure it will be relevant to the welfare policy here in Belgium. Organizations in Poland could profit from it as well, as they are actually expanding their services abroad. There is, for example, a large Polish NGO that has started to send its people to London because it is such an acute problem there right now. They feel responsible.

VOICE – During your field work, you are in direct contact with the homeless; is it hard to reach them?

MOSTOWSKA: Although they are invisible in most of the statistics, it is not hard to find them in the streets. The field work I perform consists mainly of participant observation and interviews. Of course building up trust is always hard, but here, in Belgium, it is easier than in Warsaw. I speak the language and they consider me as a kind of insider. I just go on the streets and come up to people who speak Polish. Next to that, I work with, ‘key informants’; people who are homeless themselves but who take the role of guiding and introducing me to others. That’s very valuable.

VOICE – How do the homeless Poles perceive their situation themselves?

MOSTOWSKA: Every story is different and I do not want to jump into generalizations here, especially because my field work is not completed yet. What is important is that many Polish migrants see their stay in Belgium as temporary, even if it lasts for years. They are reluctant to pay even for modest accommodation and are willing to put up with very bad conditions. If they sleep in the construction sites where they are working, for example, they don’t consider themselves ‘homeless’. Even the street life in Brussels does not seem to be so bad for some Poles I talked to. In Brussels there is food given away and free medical care. They had to deal with harder circumstances in the past and are afraid that going back to Poland will only worsen their situation . In their home country – they say – they would have no means whatsoever to survive.

VOICE – Television programs such as ‘Homeless World Cup’ draw attention to the problem. How do you look at initiatives like that?

MOSTOWSKA: Every initiative that somehow makes the problem more widely known is welcome. I have not seen the program, but from what you are saying I think it might be a initiative that is constructing a homeless person as an individual that has some sort of stigma. Homelessness is more like a kind of state in which some people are at some moment of their lives. We have to be very careful not to perceive them as not belonging to the mainstream society. I am skeptical towards journalists because they are always in a hurry, accessing those people that are most willing to talk for a couple of euros. Often their information is sensational and very superficial.

VOICE – Positive about the attention in the media is that it creates awareness for the problem on the public forum. Does public attention has any visible effects on policy making?

MOSTOWSKA: What I can conclude from my interviews with staff members of support institutions in Brussels, is that they acknowledge the scope of the problem but that dealing with it is yet another thing. The Poles in Brussels are most vulnerable and their limited language and social skills only worsen their situation. I never met a street worker who can speak Polish but that is necessary if you want to get to them. The problem with policy making is the question of objectives. Outlining policy is political and practical but has to do with philosophical questions as well. If we just want to feed people, for instance, we don’t really have to change much. But that cannot be the objective if we think about the ‘human nature’. The problem with homelessness is that constructing a ‘right’ aim for everyone is impossible. For some of the homeless, it might have sense to offer them housing, for others it’s just a bad idea. Those people face a bundle of problems rather than just a lack of housing.

VOICE – How long will you continue working on this project and what are your further plans in the academic field?

MOSTOWSKA: In the end of September my field work in Brussels will be done. However, I will continue combining the fields of migration and homelessness in my further studies. Actually I have received a grant to study the same problem in Norway. Norway is, of course, a very different environment, you will not see people that many people literally on the street. What I want to do is to look at the housing market and examine where the Polish migrants fit into the system and how easily they can fall out of it and why.

VOICE – Research across borders really seems to attract you. Do you take time to visit the places you’re working at from a tourist point of view?

MOSTOWSKA: As for Belgium, I have seen the things that everybody has to see. Actually I do not really like to be a tourist, tourism is a part of mass culture and it can be rather annoying. I prefer to stay in one place, even if it’s just a tiny place and to get to know it very well instead of going everywhere. I live in Groot Begijnhof here in Leuven and I still don’t know everything there. It’s fascinating to walk around and discover new things every time. |