GENDERED FAMILY PRACTICES AND CULTURAL DIFFUSION IN BINATIONAL COUPLES OF POLISH MIGRANT WOMEN

The article discusses family practices and gender relations in the interethnic couples of Polish women having foreign partners. While the theoretical framework engages with conceptualizations of family practice, binational coupledom, cultural diffusion and gender orders, the mix-methods methodological approach combines cases from three qualitative and thematically-linked research projects on Polish migration across three EU destination countries. We argue that spousal attitudes to gender orders shape the degree of cultural diffusion in interethnic couples formed by Polish women in Western Europe. In addition, we propose that gender orders of the spouses must not align with the ethnic belonging, but rather illuminate the pre-existing preferences for a traditional or egalitarian model. More broadly, we observe that women remain the key agents of sustaining or rejecting the Polish heritage and practices in the everyday life. In other words, the women determine the degree and shape of the intra-family cultural diffusion.