Paper short abstract:

In my paper, I study the process of the switch of the national identity of return migrants from France to Poland taking in consideration the environmental and political context of this switch of identity.

Paper long abstract:

After the second World War a large group of Polish economic migrants who worked in the French coal mines came back to Poland and settled in the region which before the war was a part of Germany. They came back to their homeland which was a unfamiliar environment for them. The felt different from other groups in their neighborhood. Their ethnic origins ware Polish but yet in Poland they had a feeling of belonging to the French nation, specially the children who ware born in France. 60 years after their migration they form a distinct community which claims to be a French community.

In my paper, I study the process of the switch of the national identity of members of that group taking in consideration the environmental and political context of this switch of identity.