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Maja N themes, moved when was 9 (west and rest/postsocialism (when talking…

- - - - 'Obviously, after the Brexit vote there was a lot of incidences of xenophobic attacks on Polish families. There was really horrible slurs and messages being posted through doors and people being beat up - just really awful. It’s really bad so I think… but the thing is whatever country there are people that are intolerant and they’re just looking to start some kind of escalation in that way. I: How did that all make you feel? N: Almost guilty I’d say. In a way I started off in almost the exact situation as those people. We moved here without many contact or any contacts. We lived in a small house with my grandmother and stuff like that… it was typically very… and we didn’t have any acquaintances outside the Polish circles and the Polish community ... We started off exactly in the same spot as those people. It’s just because my family has always stressed the idea of education and always pushed me to improve myself, take interests in things and all that and so I ended up in a very different spot. I’m not saying this in a bad way, as in I’m better off… maybe career prospect wise I am but what does that even mean?'
- - - - 'I was in a new environment and I felt like I could almost pretend that I didn’t have this Polish thing about me… that I didn’t come home at 3 to eat dinner of mashed potatoes and gherkins (laughter) and that my entire family wasn’t super fucking weird by English standards. I thought ‘I can pretend I’m normal now, I know the language - I can get on with this. I: You said ‘normal’ what do you mean by this? N: I was thinking about ‘Britishness. didn’t want to feel any different… much different. But at the same time I would still go home and indulge in the things that made me Polish. I: It’s understandable, at secondary school, to just want to be like everyone else and not be an outsider. N: Yeah, because I felt that I had the two years in year 5 and 6 to prepare me for it and learn the language and learn the ins and outs… and i was like ‘yeah I’m ready.'
      - links to normalcy and adaptation to new environment in above quote
      - 'I didn’t have the tools to communicate. I could see people and was like ‘those are the people I want to be friends with, they’re smart, they’re clever, they’re intelligent, they talk about all these interesting things and I want to hang out with them’ but I couldn’t make that step because of the language barrier.'
  - - - I: The Polish society, are you a part of that?
        N: I think I was in first year, the second half of first year and the first half of second year and after that I didn’t have time to make all the socials. I: What made you want to join? Was it to keep up the language as you said earlier...N: Yeah definitely, I could hear myself… Obviously when I lived at home with my mum, we’d speak Polish everyday whereas when I moved away I didn’t have that anymore so I could hear myself when I went on Skype with people that I was forgetting all the words so I needed to do something about that… make more of an effort to meet and speak to Polish people to practise.'