Academic literature on the topic 'Polish'

This thesis examines the impact of Poland&rsquo<br>s NATO and EU memberships on Polish foreign policy towards Russia by taking the historical background of Poland&rsquo<br>s relations with Russia into account. The main objective of the thesis is to examine the change in Polish foreign policy towards Russia in the aftermath of its memberships in NATO and the EU in 1999 and 2004 respectively. The thesis argues that Poland has changed its accommodative approach towards Russia and started to pursue a more assertive foreign policy after its NATO and the EU memberships due to its decreasing dependency on this country. In this thesis, the concept of interdependence is employed to explain Polish foreign policy on Russia. The thesis has six chapters, including Introduction and Conclusion chapters. The second chapter explores the historical background of Polish-Russian relations. The third chapter analyzes the main characteristics of Polish foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. The fourth chapter examines the impact of Poland&rsquo<br>s NATO membership on Polish foreign policy towards Russia. The fifth chapter discusses the impact of Poland&rsquo<br>s EU membership on its foreign policy towards Russia.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2006.<br>Typescript. DVD contains the interactive multimedia presentation, Remembering Polish Town. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-80).

After Poland assumed a pro-Western orientation following the end of the communist regime in 1989, its immediate foreign policy goals became to join NATO and the EU, the importance of Poland's relations with the newly emerging states in the ex-Soviet region lagged behind in the foreign policy agenda. While there was political consensus among the policy making elite and the populace about Poland's integration into Western structures and necessary resources and efforts were channelled to this end, challenges posed by the transformation in Poland's East was dealt with in a piecemeal fashion, devoid of a coherent conceptual Eastern policy framework and a strong institutional backing. However, as Poland's prospects of joining NATO and the EU became more secure. Eastern policy was increasingly debated in intellectual and academic circles and foreign policy makers searched for a more structured and robust response to the challenges brought about by relations with Poland's Eastern neighbours. Poland's Eastern policy has progressed since the early 1990s when its existence was doubted and became an important dimension of Poland's foreign policy and after joining the EU in 2004, Polish policy makers even contemplated how Poland's Eastern policy could influence and even shape the EU's relations with its Eastern neighbours. This study investigates the factors that contributed to the formation of an Eastern policy concept and domestic and international determinants that shaped Poland's relations with its Eastern neighbours. It presents how Polish foreign policy responded to a changing regional and international environment and gives an account of Poland's accession process to NATO and the EU and concurrent development of relations with the Eastern neighbours. It explores the legal framework and institutions that take part in foreign policy making and execution and offers an analysis of 20th century historical currents and intellectual and academic debates on EP. Poland's bilateral relations with Russia, Ukraine and Belarus constitute the main case studies where the impact on relations of domestic political discourses in Poland, the EU and NATO enlargement, economic and investment links, regional energy politics and the role of minorities and historical heritage are examined. As well as extensive primary and secondary sources, the study utilises in-depth interviews with high level Polish policy makers, academics and businessmen undertaken during fieldwork in Poland.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the patterns of language alternation in the Polish community in Lithuania, which can be described as an indigenous ethnic group that has been living on the territory of modern-day Lithuania since the fourteenth century (Potašenko 2007). Following two language ideologies, Russification during Soviet times and Lithuanisation post-independence, the Lithuanian Poles developed complex linguistic repertoires, consisting of the regional and standard variety of Polish, Russian and Lithuanian. One of the most significant consequences of the prolonged language contact has been the emergence of frequent and regular language alternation between the regional variety of Polish and Russian, which constitutes the focal point of the present study. As the existing research suggests, the linguistic phenomena arising as a result of language contact can be situated along a continuum, which starts with code-switching, then gradually moves towards code-mixing and finally evolves into a conventionalised fused lect (Auer 1999). 'Classic' code-switching is characterised by the locally meaningful juxtaposition of the two languages, code-mixing can be described as a type of interaction where the switched mode of speaking becomes the norm while a fused lect is an even further development of bilingual speech, which presupposes loss of variation and an increase of linguistic structure. The data for the present study come from a corpus of spontaneous conversations involving members of the Polish community. The recordings were collected in the city of Vilnius and feature 25 respondents in their twenties. The data analysis reveals that all three types of language alternation feature in the present corpus; however, code-mixing is clearly the preferred type. It immediately manifests itself in the frequent insertion of Russian single switches and larger constituents into the Polish base. As a result of its wide spread and frequency, language alternation has lost its immediate local meaning and the pattern of frequent Polish-Russian mixing has become the accepted mode of speaking within the Polish speech community.

Following the agenda of current debates in sociology of immigration and ethnicity I analyse the evolution of ethnic and national identifications of a group of Polish war refugees who settled after the Second World War in East Anglia. My analysis is based on four theoretical concepts : ethnicity, national identity, assimilation and transnationalism and begins before the war back in Poland, where I establish my respondents' base Identification. I then follow them through their war experiences, stop briefly at the moment when they decided not to return home and finish with a step-by-step accounting of their life in exile . To gain a broader picture and a more comprehensive answer to my question I compare my sample with two other groups of Poles: one which arrived in the United Kingdom at the same time as my respondents but settled in and around London while the other arrived after 2004 in the post-EU accession wave of migration-. This enables me to answer my research question : after more than 60 years of exile , which set of identifications is dominant? Are they more British or maybe more Polish or they are somewhere between those two? I come to a conclusion that even after such a long period it is difficult to say which set of identifications is dominant. What I have found out is that my respondent s have a dual or hyphened identity, where, depending on situation and circumstances, they emphasize one or the other side of their lives .

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2006.<br>Thesis Advisor(s): Donald Abenheim. "June 2006." Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-75). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2007.<br>Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 28, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4832. Adviser: Maria Bucur.

The thesis has a focus on Polish emigration in the 90s, providing further evidence of the effects of emigration on the labour markets in the sending countries and on the selection of emigrants both from the sending and destination country's perspective. The second chapter analyses emigration from Poland over a period of 10 years, showing empirically that emigration had a positive impact on the labour market by increasing average wages, but also by increasing wages of the skill groups that experienced the highest emigration outflow. The empirical evidence is supported by a simple economic model, according to which wages are determined by the country's production technology that distinguishes between different skill groups, and change as a consequence of the relative change of the supply of labour of a skill group. The third chapter studies the selection of Polish emigrants from the sending country towards two of the main destination countries: the United Kingdom and Germany. Selection of emigrants is explained through the difference in wage inequality in the destination versus the source country. The predictions of the theoretical model are supported in the data and emigrants to the UK are negatively selected with respect to non-emigrants in terms of unobservable characteristics. When considering education, emigrants are more positively selected (against the model's predictions). For Germany, the empirical results do not confirm the prediction of the model and selection is likely to be the product of the immigration policies in place at the time The fourth chapter provides empirical evidence on the performance of Polish emigrants in the labour market in the destination countries studied in the third chapter. Interestingly, after 2004, despite the high level of education, Polish immigrants performed very poorly in the British labour market, while the average conditions of Polish immigrants in Germany improved.