Polish shops, pubs and restaurants are increasing in number across the country. One notices that Polish signs are becoming commonplace in public areas around Dublin and many services, for example medical providers, have Polish-speaking personnel. According to Singleton et al. (2013), an increased interest in the Polish community in Ireland between 2004 and 2008 (following EU accession in 2004) resulted in increasing enrolments in Polish language courses, and the number of Polish newspapers and TV and radio programmes also increased. All this was visible evidence that Ireland had made significant efforts to accommodate the Polish population. This, however, slowed down significantly during the 2009–2015 recession.
Nevertheless, according to Debaene (2007), there was always a notable absence of support on the part of the Irish authorities for the home language and culture of children of Polish immigrants. Such support was mainly supplied by other agencies including the Polish government, the church and Polish cultural organizations.
Integration with Wider Society
The available data regarding integration within Irish society (mainly from Singleton et al. [2013]) suggest that there is ‘a feeling of relative contentment – or at least an absence of widespread discontentment – as well as a sense that a sizeable proportion of the participants in question are prepared to become part of Irish society on a long-term or even permanent basis’. Additionally, the study ‘Hopes of Immigrant Children in Ireland’ (Ní Laoire et al., 2009) reported that the majority of children from Central and Eastern Europe made new friends through school. Going to school was a vital part of their socialization experience in Ireland. Immigrant children attending Irish schools are entitled to a 2-year English support programme. Once schools decide that the child has attained B2 level, he or she is no longer provided with extra English classes. Children participating in the research described in this book were no longer availing of this programme. Irish schools do not provide formal support for children’s heritage language. For this reason, many children avail of some form of ‘heritage’ language education through the supplementary weekend schools. Blackledge and Creese (2010: 536) found that ‘there was a clear sense that the teaching of “language” was inexorably intertwined with the teaching of “heritage” among participants’. For example, the Integrate Ireland Language and Training (IILT) 2010 study conducted in Trinity College, Dublin, highlighted that making new friends in Ireland and maintaining contact with friends in the children’s home countries were highly important. They often made friends with children from their home countries or other immigrant children (IILT, 2009). The conviction that people and places ‘back home’ were changing while they were not was very common and the children sometimes found this difficult. The IILT (2009: 62) study pointed to the fact that migrating to Ireland had changed some aspects of these children’s personalities ‘such as having to be more outgoing and confident to make new friends’. However, relatively little is known about immigrant children and their own experience of migration and settling down in Ireland. For that reason, this book focuses on Polish children (constituting the largest ethnic minority in Ireland in 2019 according to Census 2016 [Central Statistics Office, 2016]), their families and school communities and attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of children’s own voices and experiences.
Adolescence is a difficult period to define. ‘It is a process rather than a time period, a process of achieving the attitudes and beliefs for effective participation in society’ (Rogers, 1981: 10). The difficulty is in defining not when the period starts but when the adolescent becomes an adult. It is also a time of great physiological and psychological change and development. During puberty, adolescents undergo physical and psychological changes, such as changes in body shape and height, sexual differentiation, as well as personality changes including self-concept construction, self-actualization, achieving a sense of identity and cognitive and emotional changes. Adolescence is also the stage of rapid cognitive development in a person’s life (and the thoughts, ideas and concepts developed during this period greatly influence the individual’s future, playing a major role in character and personality formation.
Additionally, adolescents may experience emotional difficulties during puberty. Psychological changes such as emotional turmoil and personality construction experienced by adolescents are sometimes attributed to the search for a unique social identity: ‘An adequate self-concept is vital to an adolescent’s well-being’ (Rogers, 1981: 30). Psychologists such as Hall (1904; cited in Cravens, 2006) have denoted this period as one of ‘Storm and Stress’ and, according to Hall, conflict at this developmental stage is normal. Conversely, Mead (1961) attributed the behavior of adolescents to their culture and upbringing. However, Piaget (2003) assigned this stage in development with greatly increased cognitive abilities; during adolescence an individual’s thoughts start to take on more of an abstract form and egocentric thoughts decrease, allowing the individual to think and reason over a wider perspective. There is, however, no consensus about what causes the emotional difficulties that are often experienced during this period.
According to Konopka (1973), the search for self begins in childhood; however, ‘intellectual and emotional awareness of self, which emerges from interaction with others, is especially characteristic of adolescence’. Young people may experience ‘feelings of isolation, unreality, absurdity, disconnectedness from their interpersonal, social and phenomenological world’ (Keniston, 1975: 11). As Rogers (1981) points out, self-concepts become less concrete and more abstract with advancing years. Adolescents start to perceive themselves in terms of intrinsic personality characteristics and qualities that contribute to producing a unique self. They do not add new abstract ideas to earlier concrete descriptions of themselves, rather they perceive themselves in a new and complex way. In psychology, identity differs from self-concept in that it is a feeling of distinctiveness from others, whereas ‘self-concept’ involves a person’s total picture of himself or herself (Rogers, 1981: 44–45). The person with a sense of identity feels ‘all of a piece’. Identity formation is considered to be one of the most engaging and important concepts for adolescent development. The adolescent who can form a set of beliefs about religion and politics and make decisions concerning his or her career is considered to have achieved ‘ego identity’ (Erikson, 1968: 167). Many factors and socializing agents, such as parents, peers and teachers, have an important impact on adolescents’ personality development.
It is a widely held belief that everything an individual experiences (e.g. school, social circle, society and familial relationships) contributes to the formation of identity and the concept of self. However, certain experiences, such as interpersonal contacts, play a more fundamental role than others. Through others’ attitudes and opinions, adolescents learn how they are perceived, are often influenced by those opinions and, in turn, start to perceive themselves in the same way. Especially significant are the opinions of persons playing a central role in adolescents’ lives, such as peers and parents and, to some extent, teachers, who, when viewed from a social perspective, play the role of socializing agents.
As parents have a central role in their children’s lives, they are often considered to be the most influential agents of socialization and play a significant role in the personality development of adolescents. During the early years, children are mainly socialized by their parents who enhance socialization by controlling access to other potential agents of influence. They often provide their children with patterns of accepted social norms and conventions including sex-stereotyped moral behavior. Parents decide which school their children attend, and through middle childhood, they also decide who their children spend time with outside school. This situation changes