Doświadczenia akulturacyjne Polaków mieszkających we Włoszech, w Wielkiej Brytanii oraz Stanach Zjednoczonych

The qualitative study presented here was carried out in 2008 as a graduate diploma thesis in Psychology. It was aimed at examining Poles’ experience of living in the United States of America and two European countries, viz. Italy and the United Kingdom. The data consisted of online interviews with ten Poles: 4 from the US, 3 from Italy, and 3 in the UK. The sample was made up of nine females and one male living in the countries in question between 4 months and 17 years (age range 23–36) who had moved from Poland for reasons other than purely economic and, unlike subjects of similar studies on Polish migrants, were also able to speak the host language fluently. The analysis was carried out by means of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2003) that allowed to examine the participants’ individual experience of adapting to new social and cultural environments. The results were further analysed and discussed with reference to the relevant literature on the subject of individualistic and collectivist societies (Hofstede, 2001), acculturation (Berry, 2003) and migrants’ identities, as well as earlier studies carried out in the States (Boski, 1992) or in European countries (e.g. Kosic, 2006). The findings were that, regardless of gender and age, the interviewed Poles tended to express respect for the host culture and people and a strong level of identification with Poles in Poland. Despite that strong national identity, however, their level of identification