CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 3Migration, Refugees, and IntegrationDiaspora, migration, transnational identityUrban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 52 of the 52 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Discursive integration through spatial segregation: how Polish migrants racialise British cartography to claim belonging

Open access
Polak, Marcin D.·2026·Ethnic and Racial Studies
DOI 10.1080/01419870.2026.2642953
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This article examines how Polish migrants in the UK negotiate belonging by constructing a racialised spatial imaginary centred on a mythologised English past. Based on qualitative data, it argues that migrants engage in race-making through racial cartography: reconstructing a symbolic socio-cultural order and mapping it onto geography. They deploy this cartography as discursive integration – a vernacular practice in which migrants claim belonging by mobilising racialised categories to align with a white Christian majority, often at the cost of distancing themselves from other minorities. “Posh” districts, villages, and suburbs are constructed as positive, clean, safe, and authentically English – implicitly coded as white. Conversely, multi-racial urban areas are framed as negative, dirty, and un-English. Through alignment with a mythologised white English past, Polish migrants claim symbolic whiteness and a place alongside the white majority. The article contributes to debates on integration, the spatial dimensions of racialisation, and ways migrants reproduce racial hierarchies.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/01419870.2026.2642953

Cites

52 of 52 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 17

  1. Bennett, S. 2018. Constructions of Migrant Integration in British Public Discourse: Becoming British. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
  2. Cooley, C. H. 1902. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
  3. Gawlewicz, A. 2015a. “Production and Transnational Transfer of the Language of Difference: The Effects of Polish Migrants’ Encounters with Superdiversity.” Central and Eastern European Migration Review 4 (2): 25–42.
  4. Hirokawa, K. H. 2023. “Race, Space, and Place: Interrogating Whiteness through a Critical Approach to Place.” William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice 29 (2): 279–353.
  5. Ignatiev, N. 1995. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge.
  6. Łaziński, M. 2014. “Jeszcze o słowie Murzyn i o stereotypach. Po lekturze artykułu Margaret Ohii Mechanizmy dyskryminacji rasowej w systemie języka polskiego.” Przegląd Humanistyczny 446 (05): 127–141.
  7. Merton, R. K. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press.
  8. Modood, T. 2005. Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366j.ctvxcrfcz.
  9. Nowicka, M., and L. Ryan. 2015. “Beyond Insiders and Outsiders in Migration Research: Rejecting a Priori Commonalities.” Introduction to the FQS Thematic Section on ‘Researcher, Migrant, Woman: Methodological Implications of Multiple Positionalities in Migration Studies’. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 16 (2): 1–15.
  10. Rzepnikowska, A. 2016. “Imagining and Encountering the Other in Manchester and Barcelona: The Narratives of Polish Migrant Women.” Journal of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Special Issue: Postsocialist Mobilities) 15: 55–108.
  11. Sales, R. 2012. “Britain and Britishness: Place, Belonging and Exclusion.” In Muslims in Britain: Making Social and Political Space, edited by W. Ahmad and Z. Sardar, 33–52. London, UK: Taylor & Francis Group.
  12. Taylor, C. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  13. Temple, B. 2011. “Influences on Integration: Exploring Polish People’s Views of Other Ethnic Communities.” Studia Migracyjne – Przegląd Polonijny 37 (139): 97–110.
  14. Twine, F. W. 2000. “Racial Ideologies and Racial Methodologies.” In Racing Research, Researching Race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies, edited by F. W. Twine and J. Warren. New York: NYU Press.
  15. van Dijk, T. A. 2004. “Racist Discourse.” In Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, edited by Ellis Cashmore, 351–355. London: Routledge.
  16. Wetherell, M., and J. Potter. 1992. Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
  17. Wodak, R. 2009. “Critical discourse analysis: history, agenda, theory, and methodology.” In Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis. 2nd revised edition, edited by R. Wodak and M. Meyer, 1–33. London: Sage.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 3

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Polak, M. D.
Affiliations
University of Bristol (GB)
Corresponding author
Polak, Marcin D.
ORCID
Polak, Marcin D.
Venue
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2026-03-27
Pages
1-18
ISSN
  • 0141-9870 (ISSN-L)
  • 1466-4356
DOI
10.1080/01419870.2026.2642953
OpenAlex
W7141466379
Cited by
3
References
52
Citations by year
2026: 3
FWCI
34.74
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Ethnic and Racial Studies (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Bristol Research (University of Bristol) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Explore Bristol Research (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Migration, Refugees, and Integration
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Diaspora, migration, transnational identity
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
Keywords
Polish immigrants, racialization, spatial segregation, sense of belonging, whiteness, race-making, vernacular knowledge, racial hierarchy, integration

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review