making Sense of Disruptions: Strategies of re

Human Organization, Vol. 64, No. 4, 2005 Copyright © 2005 by the Society for Applied Anthropology 0018-7259/05/040350-10$1.50/1

Making Sense of Disruptions: Strategies of Re-grounding of Ailing Polish Immigrants in Melbourne, Australia 1

Lenore Manderson and Slawomir Rapala In addition to problems related to spatial relocation and integration into environments that are often foreign socially, culturally, and linguistically, with time migrants must also come to terms with changing bodily locations due to illness, ageing, and associated ailments. The immigrant body and the ailing body both experience life-changing disruptions. Using life histories and illness narratives, in this paper we explore how ailing Polish immigrants to Australia re-ground themselves in new locations. We identify two distinct frameworks within which re-grounding is attempted: knowledge-based, in which the individuals rely on professional knowledge brought from the country of origin; and faith-based, in which individuals rely on religious values and precepts in order to make sense of their transformed lives and bodies. These frameworks are not mutually exclusive, but rather, they function together to allow individuals to make foreign locations familiar. Which system comes to the foreground at a given time depends on the participants’ age: the younger participants tend to rely on professional experience, while older people turn towards faith. Our small sample size confounds this, however: the younger two participants are both men and have higher education levels than the older women. At the same time, among older women, severity and length of ailment was associated with greater dependency on a faith-based system. Key words: Australia, aging, chronic illness, narratives, immigration

Introduction

I

mmigrants face a particularly complex task upon resettlement. They must find a way to feel at home, literally and metaphorically, in an unfamiliar and often alien environment. Those whose backgrounds are culturally and linguistically distinctive from the host society, including refugees and humanitarian settlers, face particular challenges as they come to terms with their relocation. Re-grounding may be—but is not always—facilitated by community associations

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference, September 2004, at The University of Melbourne. The research was conducted as part of a research program on restricted mobility and disability supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowship: 0241243 (Manderson) and an ARC Discovery Project Grant: DP0449614 (Manderson, Disler and Bennett) to The University of Melbourne. Permission and ethical clearance to conduct this research was granted by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Melbourne (HREC No: 030447). The specific research that was undertaken for this paper was undertaken by the second author for a master’s degree with the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Arts, in association with The Key Centre for Women’s Health and Society, Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne. We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and to the editor for their thoughtful comments.

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established by earlier settlers, by religious institutions, and by their incorporation into work and/or educational institutions (McMichael and Manderson 2004). Individuals who are ill, or who experience infirmity and frailty consequent upon aging, must similarly find ways of re-grounding (Ahmed et al. 2003). Narratives—the retelling and ordering of life stories—provide a strategy by which individuals make sense of embodied changes and transformative movements. This is a double task for ill and ailing immigrants, and as Frank aptly notes, “(s)tories are a way of redrawing maps and finding new destinations” (1995:53). The ailing immigrant body seeks to re-ground in new spatial/social and bodily locations and recreate the familiar in otherwise unfamiliar territory. The frameworks within which ailing immigrants develop re-grounding strategies depend largely on individual pre-immigration and pre-ailment circumstances, on their cultural and social capital, on personal characteristics and traits, and on structural factors encountered in the new social environment.

Immigrant Health and Wellbeing in Australia The framework of multiculturalism that informs the health and welfare policies of settler countries such as Australia reflects a commitment to the entitlement of all residents to equal treatment, regardless of background, and the right to freedom of speech and religion, tolerance, and equality HumaN OrganizatioN

(Australia 2003). In Australia, it is expected that immigrants adopt English as the primary language of communication in public interactions; excepting for those admitted under refugee and other humanitarian programs, they must demonstrate English fluency as a precondition of acceptance as an immigrant (Australia 2004). At the same time, immigrants are able to enjoy diversity in a multicultural environment, including through ethnic print media and non-English radio and television services. Community languages taught in primary and high schools further acknowledge the importance of language and cultural heritage, but it is expected that in time, they will contribute to and enrich the dominant culture (Markovic and Manderson 2002:306). A common observation in the literature on immigrant health is that while upon arrival migrants tend to be in a good physical and mental condition, the health of foreign-born populations as a whole is often below that of host populations (Draper, Turrell, and Oldenburg 2005). This is just as true for Australia (Rice 1999; Schofield 1990) as for other settler nations (e.g. Canada 2001, see McDonald and Kennedy 2004; Newbold and Danforth 2003; Dunn and Dyck 2000). Immediately upon arrival migrants are faced with the structure and workings of a new country, about which they may know little. Country of origin, pre-immigration experiences of socio-political and economic systems, and reasons for migration all play a vital role in how their lives unfold in the new homeland (Manderson, Markovic, and Kelaher 2000:155). Although English-speaking immigrants are generally better off than their culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) counterparts (Reid and Trompf 1990; Warburton, Winocur, and Rosenman 1995), all migrants experience stress posed by migration itself. This is often amplified by poor command of language, the need to accept lower positions in the employment sector, isolation from the mainstream society, and a diminished social circle of friends and family. Following migration and resettlement, some individuals or groups become isolated, whether by lack of mobility (e.g. for disabled or aging migrants) by the prevailing traditional beliefs that place certain individuals in an inferior position (for instance, women from Sahel Africa and Middle East countries, as evidenced by Allotey and Manderson 2003), or because immigrant groups are not homogenous and tensions from birth place remain even after migration. A good example of the latter is the tensions between Serbian and Croatianborn Yugoslavs who migrated to Australia in several waves, the most recent one following the military conflict that saw the breakdown of the Yugoslav nation (Markovic 1999). Individuals isolated from mainstream society may be fearful of or discouraged from using government structures and institutions, or, where they exist, from social support organizations operating within the migrant populations themselves. Language proficiency is an important factor in successful resettlement, however defined. It enables individuals to better negotiate life in the host society, leading to employment possibilities, improved socioeconomic status and financial situation, and general way of life (e.g. Warburton, Winocur, VOL. 64, NO. 4, WINTER 2005

and Rosenman 1995). Linguistic dispossession, by contrast, may leave some migrants with limited options and virtually unreachable by government, social or ethnic organizations and groups. In extreme cases, immigrants are exploited; others are uninformed and often simply ignored. Low socioeconomic status, often occupied by immigrant groups, leads to an increase in health problems and comparatively high rates of chronic illness and disability (Germov 2002:68). At the same time, lack of language competence, low socio-economic status and poor familiarity of the operation of health, welfare and other services (e.g. housing assistance) inhibit access, particularly but not only for recent immigrants. Limited access to health and welfare services is then reflected in social disadvantage and a poorer standard of living. Research on the health status of immigrants in Australia and elsewhere has tended to focus on the largest, newest, and culturally most distinctive populations in migrant-recipient countries and on matters of health assumed to be most subject to different cultural interpretations. Discussions in this literature point to a continuing need for consideration to be given to immigrants at risk, such as women and the elderly (Leung 2002; Manderson et al. 1998; Miller and Chandler 2002; Vo-Thanh-Xuan and Liamputtong 2003; Warburton, Winocur, and Rosenman 1995). In this paper, we focus on aging Polish immigrants in Australia, and illustrate the strategies that they employ both as immigrants and as ailing and ageing persons. An estimated 3.5 million Poles were displaced during World War II (Kaluski 1985; Okolski 1999), many of whom either could not or did not want to return to their homeland following its annexation by the Soviet Union. Further immigration occurred from the mid 1950s as restrictions on movement eased in Poland, and again from the early 1980s when political activists, economic migrants and individuals seeking family reunion left the communist repression in what is today known as the Solidarity wave. Over 100,000 of these immigrants came from Poland to Australia (Rapala 2005); many others chose Western Europe, United States, and Canada as their final destinations. English-speaking countries were always the most popular choices, as demonstrated, for example, by a resettlement program coordinated by the International Refugee Organization, through which over a quarter of a million Polish refugees chose Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada as destinations between the years 1949 and 1951, whereas the remaining approximately 100,000-odd individuals registered in the program relocated to another 44 countries. Zubrzycki (1979) notes the significance of Polish-born immigrants in several countries of the British Commonwealth, today including as many as 12 million persons with sustained contact with Poland. This is an aging population. In 2000 (APCS 2000), over 50% of the Polish-born population in Australia were estimated to be aged 55 and over, of whom 35% reside in Victoria, mainly concentrated in Melbourne suburbs. According to the 2001 census, of the 20,400 Poles living in Victoria, 40% were over the age of 65 (APCS 2005), and the demographic 351

structure of these immigrants who arrived 1947-1955 is peaking in the period 2001-2006. While the Polish community is the first to experience this demographic change, within the next 30 years a number of other immigrant groups will reach age peaks: Italians (2006-2011), Spaniards, Chileans and Argentineans (2010-2015), then Greeks (2011-2016) (APCS 2000, ABS Housing Census 1996). The increased incidence of chronic disease and ailments associated with ageing has particular implications in terms of their health status and the delivery of appropriate health services. Each of these communities will be forced to re-examine its approach to providing aged care services as mainstream Australian services are likely to remain obstructed by migration-related barriers. Since the necessity of providing services to an increasingly growing ailing and aged population is shared by all of the ethnic groups, the specific focus in this paper on ailing and ageing Polish immigrants represents a case study of the experiences and strategies of immigrants coping with age-related frailty and illness.

Methods and Study Participants The research on which this paper is based was conducted as a component of and contributes to a larger study on Angloand immigrant Australians who are impaired as a consequence of an injury or who have chronic or degenerative diseases. Engaging in participant observation, the second author attended the Planned Activity Program (PAG), an ethno-specific service created and coordinated by the Australian Polish Community Services (APCS) to meet the social needs of elderly and disabled Poles in Melbourne, Australia. It is the only Polish-specific service offered to this group of immigrants of the Polish community in Melbourne, and a lengthy waiting list exists for individuals wishing to attend. The establishment of the PAG reflects recognition by the APCS of the needs of elderly and ailing Polish individuals residing in the Melbourne area, and is represented by its organizers as a Polish-specific service provided for and responsive to the needs of aged and ailing individuals. It is managed by bilingual professionals with knowledge of Polish culture, tradition, history, and community in Australia. One of the program’s values lies in its holistic approach, which ensures that the clients are also supported by other APCS schemes (such as the Social Support Program and the Community Aged Care Package). The PAG’s most valuable contribution to the lives of the clients, however, is seen by those who run it as its sensitivity towards the clients’ individual needs and by providing social activities in a safe, culturally, and linguistically familiar and appropriate environment. Informal social activities of individuals attending the PAG take place twice a week for two separate groups of clients. Men tend to gather in the back room, playing cards, while women take advantage of the occasion to talk and knit. Community volunteers occasionally come in to teach clients new skills, and clients are offered a wide range of activities that reflect their interests: painting, singing and performing, 352

writing, outings to cemeteries (e.g. on All Saints Day) and to restaurants and other social events. A centrally important activity is the lunchtime meal—for many clients, this is the one time they do not eat alone—and the regular Bingo sessions. Through its activities and services, PAG’s clients experience social support as well as battle solitude and depression by interacting with individuals similar to themselves and with new social networks fostered in an environment that acknowledges their cultural background. In the course of participant observation with PAG, qualitative interviews were conducted with eight Polish-Australians who had experienced some form of bodily transformation, whether due to injury, disability, illness, ageing, or another form of ailment. Seven were recruited from the PAG; an additional participant was recruited by personal referral. Their migrational history, health status and demographic data are presented in Table 1. Two sets of in-depth interviews were conducted in Polish with each participant on separate occasions, and each interview lasting from 1 to 1.5 hours. The first set of interviews was structured thematically, depending on the direction which the interviewee took and explored both immigration and ailment experiences. At the second interview, a list of open-ended questions was used to gain additional insight into the participants’ subjective experience of living in Australia as ailing migrants. The interviews were transcribed with particular attention to narrative structures, with the analysis informed by Riessman’s (1993) distinctions of the ideational, textual, and interpersonal aspects of narrative. In the process of narrative analysis, the frameworks within which participants attempted to re-ground their immigrant and ailing bodies and to transcend their liminal status emerged. Rather than summarize somewhat divergent views and experiences, we describe the particular experiences of three individuals whose narratives provide rich examples of the re-grounding strategies that all used. This includes marked differences in the discourses of re-grounding, particularly in relation to the choices participants made between what we distinguish as knowledge-based and faith-based strategies. They are discussed in the following sections.

Knowledge-Based Systems of Re-grounding: Leszek, the Electrician Leszek is a middle-aged man who left Poland in 1984, weary of its political and economic instability. He, his wife, and three children initially went to Germany, but were granted refugee status and emigrated to Australia in 1985. From 2002, Leszek experienced three strokes, resulting in paralysis of the right side of his body. In 2002 he underwent an operation, which he believes helped him to regain some mobility. At the time of the interviews, he walked with the help of a cane and was continuing physical therapy to gain more mobility. He believes it is possible that sometime in the future he will be fully mobile and looks towards that day with hope. His narratives revolve around his abilities and experiences as an electrician; within this framework, and the rich metaphors HumaN OrganizatioN

Table 1. Participant Characteristics Participant

Lilia

Sex F Age (years) 89 Marital Status Widowed Formal Education (yrs.) 6 Years as Immigrants /Refugees 43 Years in Australia 39 Time since onset of ailment (yrs.) 30 Type of ailment diabetes (self-reported)

Ewa

Jagoda

F 69 Widowed 5

F 80 Widowed 6

62 55

65 56

4 arthritis, diabetes

16 acute angina, arthritis

that this offers him, he attempts to re-ground his ailing immigrant body. Upon coming to Australia, Leszek was—like the majority of immigrants—unable to have his qualifications recognized, despite having his documents translated into English and despite, in Poland, having years of experience as an electrician and an owner of a small company. This lack of recognition is consistent with the literature on the experiences of people immigrating into and settling in multicultural countries such as Canada and Australia (Bauder 2003; Rice 1999; Thompson et al. 2002). Since they need income almost immediately upon arrival, migrants are therefore compelled to accept positions for which they are over-qualified, some of which are hazardous to their health (Bottomley and de Lepervanche 1990; Browne 1991; Iskander 1991). Leszek was forced to work in a variety of trades, including precision grinding, general machine operation, and carpet manufacturing. Leszek recounts: When I went to the exam…the electrical exam… and I passed the practical, 100%, but the electrical, the written, they didn’t give me an interpreter because they said that he’d give me the answers. I said, ‘Then one of the examiners should interpret for me. He won’t give me the answers, he’ll only say what I say.’ ‘No.’ Ok, if no, then no, I put the paper down, what am I going to write if I don’t understand? The mathematical equations, all that, I stood even before the examiner, I said, ‘This question, oh…’ boom, boom, boom, I told him, this will be the result. He says, ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because,’ I said, ‘I have it up here. And just because English…nicht schprechen…’ I told him, I told him in German…and I said, ‘Do you speak German? Because then I can write.’ And he goes, ‘Ah.’ And I said, ‘Don’t say “A”, say “B” (nie mów A, powiedz B) because you only know English, and I know this, this, this language. Maybe I know more…’ ‘Listen, I would give you the license but I’m afraid.’ ‘What are you afraid VOL. 64, NO. 4, WINTER 2005

Krystyna

Leszek

F M 84 55 Widowed Married (high school 13 interrupted) 9 9

20 19

8 5 bad back/ stroke spine (formerly breast cancer)

Albina

Dobrawa

Robert

F 80 Widowed 6

F 80 Widowed 7

M 51 Divorced 14

62 54

60 54

17 17

16 1 blood clots, neurosis asthma, ageing arthritis

9 spinal cord injury

of? Electricity?’ So I told him…because when it comes to electricity you can only make one mistake. I only make a mistake once. If I make a mistake with electricity, it will kill me. Like a miner. If he goes wrong about the mine, then he’s gone because it will kill him. So they didn’t recognize your qualifications? No. I showed them that I managed a firm, this and this many people, I had this many students that I allowed to work with high voltages. I had… a team with no limits on the voltage, and a team to work with lower voltages. Well, that says something. And I had my papers translated into English and I presented them… And for them it was like…The procedures here in Australia, they’re so narrowminded, oh, like this, the tunnel is this narrow.

In this lengthy narrative, Leszek attempts to reclaim his status as a professional electrician by emphasizing his ability and experience. It was important for him to have his qualifications recognized because it would enable him to do something familiar in a field in which he excelled. In addition, by integrating successfully into the Australian labor market, Leszek would also safeguard himself and his family financially against an uncertain future, and thereby fulfil the ultimate goal of relocation (see also Markovic and Manderson 2000). Leszek downplays his inability to speak English and ridicules the examiners for being fluent in only one language. By doing so, he constructs himself as superior to Australians, a fact which he later explains through his belief in the narrowness of Australian professional and procedural infrastructures. Moreover, he presents his case in a manner that implies that knowledge of English is unimportant when working with electricity, which may not necessarily be true. For Leszek, however, it is experience that matters and he makes an attempt to reclaim his status as an electrician by showing that his years of experience largely outweigh his lack of English skills. He views the fact that his qualifications 353

were not recognized as failure not on his part, but rather as a reflection of structural and attitudinal barriers. Despite not being able to work in his trade since migrating, even at the time of the interview he continues to believe in his superiority as an electrician over his Australian counterparts. He uses his professional experience as grounds for relocating himself in a new spatial/social context and as a way of reaffirming his professional status of which he was stripped by the examiners who refused him the licence. Leszek’s perceived professional superiority over Australians transcends the type of work in which he was involved over the years: I worked in a steel factory as a grinder, then later…there was this boss, he was Italian, he asked me where I’ve worked, on what machines, grinders, things like that. I said, ‘I don’t know English, but…I can calculate everything, the meters, everything, I can set up the machines and…without anyone’s help.’ Good. So he took me on a two week trial, and I worked better than this one lead-hand, he was my lead-hand, I worked better than him…so he took me on and I stayed on the machines and I worked, he even had some of our machines, a Polish milling-machine, a Polish borer. I worked on these back in the country, but here these machines were relics, because they stopped producing them.

Leszek explains how he used his professional experience from Poland to secure himself a better job in a steel factory. He emphasizes his technical superiority even to those who hold positions higher than his, and he concludes by recalling the Polish-made machines on which he worked. It makes sense to Leszek that his skill is superior to other workers because of his experience with the Polish-manufactured machines, and because of the perceived Australian narrow-mindedness to which he alluded in the previous narrative. This narrative also picks up on how Leszek overcompensates for his lack of English skills. He stresses that although he cannot speak English, he can work just as well as or even better than others because of his professional background. By doing so, he again makes an attempt to (re)claim the status that is lost to the immigrant body/self. In Leszek’s case, the term “re-grounding” takes on metaphoric value because of his professional experience. Just as he uses it as a strategy to re-ground his immigrant body, he explains his ailment in terms of electricity: …because, for example, pain in the heart, some pressure, you feel something. This…in my case, it’s like with electricity. You turn off a switch and it no longer works. That’s, that’s it. And it [body] doesn’t give a sign that it’s working. … It [stroke] comes, and that’s it. It doesn’t matter where, where you are, they’re not defined situations. If it was, like I was saying, you know, your heart aches or something, it burns, I’ll go and rest, this and that. In this [stroke], there is no, there is no, no…So it’s like I told you, during the last one, when it happened to my eyes, even I was surprised, that something like that, I’m looking at myself in the mirror, then suddenly…the situation changes radically, you can’t even define it, explain it. Even…in my 354

circumstances, with my wife somewhere in the kitchen or in the room, it’s impossible to tell right away what is happening with me, what has already happened to me, because that one split second, like I was saying, the turning off of the switch, you can’t take that back…

Leszek provided the above narrative during the second interview, when he also described his third stroke, which occurred during the period between the interviews. His storytelling is more erratic as a result of the distress related to this, and because he was still trying to make sense of what had happened to him. In the narrative, Leszek is actively involved in reconstructing and “restorying” (Riessman 2002) his most recent stroke experience. Through the act of storytelling, people not only make sense of their changing identities, but also “witness the experience of reconstructing one’s own map” (Frank 1995:17). While engaged in this process of reconstruction, people often return to what is most familiar to them and attempt to re-ground their experiences within recognizable frameworks. Leszek almost immediately turns to the metaphor of electricity and compares his stroke to the turning of the switch as a way of making sense of what happened to him. The experience becomes recognizable and allows for the development of an explanatory model (Kleinman 1980; 1988). The electric metaphor that Leszek draws from his professional knowledge not only allows for a familiar explanation of the experience, but also to reclaim a small but significant amount of control over his body. The experience of illness is centered on the loss of control of one’s body and its consequent contingency (Frank 1995). As we have seen in previous narratives, Leszek perceives himself to be an exceptionally good electrician. In addition to explaining the stroke, the metaphor also reinstates his confidence that the effects of stroke are within his control. At the very least, it allows him to partially reject the notion of his body as contingent. The electric metaphor, in the end, re-grounds Leszek’s understanding of the experience in a familiar territory and partly does away with the unpredictability of his new bodily location. The metaphor also serves as a strategy to conceive an end to his ordeal sometime in the future: Because I heard, I don’t know whether it’s true or not…I sometimes don’t, when some people say things, I don’t [believe them]…this one bloke had what was probably a stroke…[for] six years…his left side, because he had it on his left side, his leg, his hand, he couldn’t do anything. Then, before the sixth year, something started to…return to him a little bit, and then, he could stand on his leg and all, he could walk to his bed on a cane. Then suddenly…in the sixth year something happened to him, he could move his head, hand…he could stand on his leg normally, could move, it was unbelievable, and he walked away, everything simply…left me, him. Just like that…this stroke just left suddenly…

Leszek makes a personal connection with this story and at one point he even mistakes the pronouns and inserts himself in the place of the protagonist. The electric metaphor enables HumaN OrganizatioN

Leszek to believe in this story because, as electricity may be turned off with the help of a switch, it may be turned back on again and the previous condition restored. For Leszek, there is no need for a medical rationalization that would explain why this man recovered from a stroke; he simply understands it in terms of the flow of electricity being restored to the body. In fact, it seems that Leszek would rather remain oblivious to a medical explanation, because reducing the experience to a physiological diagnosis would break down the metaphor through which he makes sense of the stroke and the recovery, and which enables him to believe that a recovery is possible for him in the future also. Despite having some reservations as to its credibility, Leszek wants to believe this story because it allows him to project himself into a future where he is fully mobile and healthy. Important to note is also the length of time that Leszek recounts the protagonist spent immobilized in bed: Leszek is in his fifth year of living with his body paralysed. If he understands his future in the context of the above narrative, he still has one more year before beginning to question the possibility of a spontaneous recovery similar to that of the protagonist in the story. In the end, Leszek copes with his immigrant ailing body/self through a series of strategies centred on his understanding of electricity. It is this familiar territory in which he makes continuous attempts to re-ground his body/self. The electric framework is rooted in Leszek’s pre-immigration and pre-ailment experiences in Poland. So all encompassing and far reaching is this framework that although Leszek has not worked in the profession since migrating to Australia twenty years ago, it still enables him to make sense of his experiences as an immigrant and an ailing body.

Faith-Based Systems of (Re)grounding While some participants such as Leszek and Robert, another relatively young (age 51) participant who had spinal cord injury, draw on their prior professional status and skills to re-ground, others turn to faith, the ideologies of formal religion, and a pragmatism that derives from this and their relative age, in order to re-ground. We illustrate this with the case studies of two older women.

Albina: the Displaced Believer Albina is an 80 year-old woman whose immigration experiences date back to 1944 when she was forcibly taken from Poland and driven to Germany for labor. In 1950, after five years in refugee camps in Europe, she came to Australia with her husband and infant daughter. Her life has been marked by one personal tragedy after another, all resulting in emotional and financial hardships. Despite the bleak approach to understanding her life, she retains a firm belief in God and resolves to the fate that He had appointed her. In addition to the bodily transformations associated with aging, her body has been subject to various health-related problems: three blood clots were recently located in her VOL. 64, NO. 4, WINTER 2005

lungs, she has a stomach ulcer, her arteries are blocked, and she suffers from asthma and arthritis. The uncertainty of her life has taken a strong toll on her emotional well-being, and she is nervous, anxious, and worried, all of which intensify the health problems she experiences. One way to make sense of her doubly disrupted life is for Albina to turn to religion. Her unyielding belief in God, a consequence of a traditional Polish Roman Catholic upbringing and continued practice, allows her to understand the perceived tragedies as inevitable but not senseless experiences. It allows her to accept these tragedies humbly as a test from God: I was given so many gifts from God, I just don’t know. It’s a miracle that I live. A miracle. This…and…I say…if I don’t go to sleep and I don’t get up, then I don’t say…in my flat I speak out loud, in my flat, as if there was a person there. I speak to my Jesus, to Holy Mary, to St. Teresa, as if I saw them. And in the evening it’s the same. I know why I’m alive. Because, because…because the doctor said, ‘There won’t be any operation.’ Who made that possible? God…he ruled it then. …so who am I supposed to thank for being alive? Who? God. Everyone sees Him differently, everyone’s faith is different, everyone calls Him something else, but…I believe very much. Because I had proof in my life… very, very. Is it true what I say? I…I…(sobbing and laughing)…

Albina refers specifically to her ailing body and having been saved by God from an operation that she herself wanted, but one that she now believes would have resulted in her death. She believes God had the doctor make the correct assessment and decide against the operation. Faith is an allencompassing framework within which Albina’s life makes sense. As she sees it, the tragedies relevant to her immigration and ailments are not senseless, but rather are a part of a grand plan that God has designed for her. Re-grounding strategies are of great importance to Albina because her advanced age and the perceived severity of ailments remove her subjectively from her malfunctioning and transforming body. The contingency of her body forces her into a state of disorientation and uncertainty regarding her immediate future. As she explains it, religion provides her with an understanding of her body/life as part of something natural and normal. Furthermore, within the Roman Catholic paradigm, the idea of having a superior entity watching over the otherwise unpredictable and contingent body and life is reassuring, especially when this contingency is most profound and the future most uncertain. In addition, it mitigates her loneliness, the result of isolation from society and the diminishing circle of family and friends, by reminding Albina that she is a part of an enlarged Christian family. Finally, the idea of sacrifice and martyrdom, again part of the Roman Catholic paradigm, which Albina refers to throughout her interviews, enables her to relocate her paining body into a familiar location where the illness and pain make sense. In addition to the ailments that compel Albina into a state of liminality, where she remains suspended in uncertainty between health and illness, her experiences of immigration 355

place her in an in-between state by creating conflict within her doubly perceived self: as a Pole and as an Australian. She states: I disassociated myself completely from Poland (wynarodowilam sie). The first thing is, because I don’t have anyone there, absolutely…from 1952 or 1953. Everyone died, there is no one…there is no future in Poland for anyone…And I will be cremated in Australia. I already arranged my funeral, paid for it, arranged everything, I said what I wanted, and I told them to burn me.

Her strong feelings of being uprooted from her native land culminate with the decision to never return there and, subsequently, to be cremated in Australia following her death. Albina’s narratives reflect an identity that has been uprooted but continues to be conflicted fifty years after the initial relocation: in interviews, she explains that she never feels “at home” or re-grounded in Australia. In light of her lingering spatial/social and bodily liminal condition, Albina makes sense of her conflicted life and her contingent body by turning to the familiar and comforting Roman Catholic framework which allows her to understand her displaced body/self within a larger context and to make sense of her location in life.

Krystyna: the Believer Almost all participants migrated while young in an attempt to better their lives by relocating from a politically and economically unstable or war-torn country, and resettling in a country that allowed them to distance themselves geographically and socially from their troubled native land and to improve their own and their immediate family’s material circumstances and well-being. Krystyna is the exception. At the time of her migration, she had lived through all that the others sought to escape, and was 76 years old when she migrated, in 1995, following her husband’s and son’s death and at the beckoning of her daughter who had migrated much earlier. Although she has had several serious health problems and a number of operations over the years, Krystyna identified her biggest health problem now as pain in her back/spine (kreglosup mnie boli), a problem she has had for eight years since migrating to Australia. Like Albina, who reconstructs her narrative through the connecting of the most unfortunate events in her life, Krystyna too perceives her life to be traumatic. In contrast, however, she does not dwell on these tragedies and glosses over them in her narratives, focusing instead on her daughter who is today her principle source of social and emotional support. Krystyna has experienced various tragedies in her life, such as the untimely death of her son, her battle with breast cancer, and poverty in Poland; in coming to terms with these, she also looks to Roman Catholicism: “You know, I’m very religious, I pray to God, to God’s Will (do Opatrznosci Bozej), so that, that…Not religious because I’m old, but I have been all my life, since I was a child. They thought that I’d be a nun.” 356

Krystyna’s belief in God’s Will resembles that of Albina’s and it allows her to come to terms with those aspects of her life which are most troubling. She does not directly discuss her faith in her narratives, but instead, provides three stories that are meant to serve as irrefutable proof of God’s existence and His intervention in her life over the years, and to explain and justify her uncompromising belief in His Will. She believes that God protected her from death on a number of occasions. The first was a near drowning from which she was saved by her small daughter’s cries, which alerted a man on the beach who then pulled her out of the water. The second was when she received an electrical shock from a faulty iron. The third, which she insists really made her believe in God’s infallible Will, was a near escape from beneath a balcony that collapsed. The heavy concrete pieces fell to the spot where Krystyna stood moments before, and had she not entered a building just prior to the collapse, she would have been crushed. Because of these near escapes, Krystyna believes deeply in God and that He protects her. She prays for the health of her daughter and grandsons, and was hurt when one of them recently turned away from religion. Her narratives are filled with appeals to God or other religious entities, especially when she is most emotional. Like Albina, Krystyna was reared in a traditional Roman Catholic Polish family that instilled strong religious values in its children, and her religiosity dates from childhood. In the present difficult time, Krystyna’s faith enables her to find peace within her conflicted identity and partly helps her make sense of her new location in life. Although she did not elaborate, Krystyna mentioned a battle with breast cancer which left her body transformed, and her faith appears to have helped her through this as well. Roman Catholic ideology places great emphasis on sacrifice and on the delaying of personal gratification, and our data suggest that it offers a useful re-grounding strategy in a situation of disorientation, such as may arise with immigration and ailment (on the similar role of Islam, see McMichael and Manderson 2004). The uncertainty of the future is ameliorated too by her strong belief in a reward that awaits her after death. Within this framework, the more one suffers, the greater the reward will be. It is therefore not surprising that many elder Polish-Australians, who were reared to accept such values, find comfort in God and have faith in His Will. Krystyna’s belief is further amplified by her narrow escapes from death, which allow her to accept as true the fact that God watches over her and that He protects her. Under this protection she has little to fear and consequently, she is able to make sense of her uncertain liminal location, resulting both from a body transformed by ailment, and from a self torn between two different spatial/social locations.

Discussion and Conclusion The strategies on which we have focused are the dominant but not the only ones. Both family reunion and economic success were major means by which people seek to establish HumaN OrganizatioN

and sustain a sense of being “at home” following migration and this also featured in the narratives of individuals. Our use of narrative analysis highlights the importance of the role of narrative in participants’ construction of their lives and accommodation to its exigencies. The choice of knowledge (and experience) or faith as a dominant framework for re-grounding, developed by each participant, depended largely on their age, education, and the severity or persistence of their ailment, although the significance of these different factors cannot be determined with our small sample. Leszek’s re-grounding strategies—and those of the other man, Robert—differ from that of the women participants in the study for several reasons, including possibly a combination of gender, age, and education. Yet all three are Polish migrants and have in common a linguistic, cultural/social heritage, the experience of migrating to Australia, and the experience of ailments that impair their mobility and social engagement. The differences between them play the dominant role in dictating what re-grounding strategies they develop to make sense of their new spatial/social and bodily locations. Leszek draws on acquired abilities, which we refer to as a knowledge-based system. Albina and Krystyna, on the other hand, finding their educational level and professional experience lacking in Australia, draw on an intrinsic source to make sense of their transformed body/self through a faith-based system of re-grounding. Much of this difference is a consequence of the pre-immigration experiences of the participants. Albina’s education, like that of most of the women, was disrupted by World War II. Those like Leszek, who were able to complete their education and acquire vocational skills, possessed the formal knowledge and cultural capital to develop re-grounding strategies, but others such as Albina, with few skills to employ after immigration, must rely on a more intrinsic source of re-grounding. Limited English language facility and confidence, too, prevented older women, particularly Krystyna, from gaining work in Australia anyway. Had Leszek lacked education and professional experience, he too may have turned to a faithbased system of re-grounding. To an extent Leszek employed a faith-based strategy of re-grounding as well, but his religiosity and the support he gained from this appeared in interviews and informal discussions to be secondary to the more immediate, knowledge-based strategies, which enabled him to have a more pragmatic outlook on his life, grounded in immediate reality. His professional ability allows him to reclaim some of the status to the immigrant body and some control to the ailing body. Robert’s efforts to establish new sporting prowess similarly reflects his keenness to reclaim his status. In contrast, as a result of her advanced age, incomplete education and different migrational priorities, Albina’s narratives reflect a need to re-ground her immigrant and ailing body/self through a socially internalized and familiar faith-based system, especially since in her early stages of migration, material-based re-grounding strategies failed to succeed when she found herself in heavy debt following her husband’s death. Krystyna also turns to faith as a re-grounding strategy, following the traumatic experiences with ailment VOL. 64, NO. 4, WINTER 2005

(i.e. breast cancer) and the events leading to her decision to migrate (husband’s and son’s death, poverty, loneliness); this strategy is further supplemented by material well-being, her children, and her aspiration to be a good Australian citizen. Her near death experiences, interpreted in the context of her own religiosity and faith, allow her to accept God’s Will as real and unquestionable. It is obvious to her that God protects her when she faces difficult times, such as migration. The two systems are not exclusive, and ailing Polish migrants who choose to re-ground their liminal body/selves through a knowledge-based system may also use faith-based systems if the first strategy proves inadequate. By focusing on re-grounding strategies for immigrants with impaired health, we have taken a rather different approach to that adopted in studies of coping with what others have termed “biographical disruption” (Bury 1997; Ellis-Hill, Payne, and Ward 2000) or “biographical flow” (Faircloth et al. 2004). Immigration results in particular disruptions and disjunctions, unlike those that occur in the course of lives lived in relatively stable cultural and geographic settings, hence the particular importance of ethno-specific services such as the Australian Polish Community Services. As we suggest, aging and ill health add new dimensions to the experience of migration. In this article, we have drawn on the experiences of only a small number of immigrants involved in Planned Activity Program. Given this, we raise as many questions as we answer in exploring the strategies that individuals employ following migration as they accommodate changes to their health status. We have suggested that individuals chose between pragmatic responses, in which they draw on personal skills and cultural capital, and faith-based strategies. The two are not mutually exclusive, however. Our younger (male) participants also drew on faith in reflecting on and making sense of their life trajectory, and in gaining strength to work around their acquired physical impairments, pointing to the importance of religion—a relatively unstudied field within applied anthropology – in individual accommodation of disruption and change. Age, gender, education level, health status, socioeconomic position, and family relationships and living arrangements, all complicate individual adaptation. A larger study, designed to test such variability, is perhaps the next step to tease out the mechanisms of coping and re-grounding. References APCS (Australian Polish Community Services) 2005 The Polish Way: Migration Trend. Melbourne: Australian Polish Community Services. http://www.apcs.org.au/, accessed 31 March 2005. 2000 Planned Activity Groups: Best Practice Models in Servicing Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities: Proceedings of a Conference held on 13 November 2000. Melbourne: Australian Polish Community Services. Ahmed, Sara, Claudia Castaneda, Anne-Marie Fortier, and Mimi Sheller 2003 Uprootings/Re-grounding: Questions of Home and Migration. New York: Berg.

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