Interesting project about subcultures in Eastern Europe, of which legal culture could be considered an example,
or one of the analytical ways of thinking subculture of thinking subcultures hence.
I'm super grateful for your presence. So people's experiences before migrating influence what they do in countries where they settled.
And in a similar vein, I could say that migrants experiences of legality in their home country, which the socio legal scholars came to term,
the legal culture or the legal consciousness significantly influenced the relationship with the legal system in the host country.
The empirical research demonstrates that the legal cultural baggage formulates some sort of a lens
or an algorithm with which to interpret the unfamiliar and make sense of the new experiences.
It is true that migrants do not necessarily reproduce the cultural values and attitudes to law which they brought with them from home.
Nevertheless, they provide some sort of a compass of the choices of lines, of action, continue to be influenced by values, norms,
as well as the actual practices of legality that they internalised prior to the migration process,
after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004.
Around a million Eastern Europeans arrived in the UK, with the Polish migrants constituting the largest and the most visible group.
In this presentation and in the book, I look at the raw role of the legal culture that the Polish migrants brought with
them from home and employed in the process of social legal integration in the UK.
That is, the strategies and tactics they devised in order to follow, comply with, but also manoeuvre and perhaps keep clear of the law.
In researching the relationship with the legal system, I focussed primarily on migrants in the low wage, low skilled excellence of the labour market.
Which invariably constituted the largest group of the Polish migrants.
However, seeing Polish migration to the UK only through the prism of the low skilled migration would be an oversimplification.
But the reservation I need to meet at the beginning of my presentation.
So what kind of law am I talking about?
There was a particular legal puzzle that somewhat started my interest in this research.
So in the so-called transition period after the enlargement of the European Union between 2004 and 2011,
the first enlargement of the European Union to the East, the access to the labour markets of the old EU Member States.
For the migrant workers from the newly accessed Member States on the basis of EU citizens and free movement were somewhat suspended.
This happened in a similar vein in the 27 EU enlargement.
So it meant basically that the old EU member states were allowed to derogate from
the EU law that regulates the free movement of people and their rights to residence.
They were allowed to regulate from the residence directive, the Article 39 of the Treaty establishing European Union when on the basis of EU citizens.
EU citizens are allowed to move between different countries in order to take up employment,
as well as how this is regulated in the EU secondary legislation.
So articles 1 to 6 of the Regulation 1612 in the void that the suspension of this European law created national laws.
So laws of Austria, Germany, France, the UK were put in place to regulate the access to the labour market and legal residence.
So this national rules could have meant between anything between a no and full rights to free movement and residence.
And many of the old EU member states like Germany, France and Austria, relied on the status quo from pre enlargement period.
The labour markets remained closed. One had to apply for a work permit.
As a result, some of the citizens of the new EU member states who migrated to one of the old countries and took up a job there,
they found themselves in a somewhat in a legal muddle as EU citizens there were right
to move freely reside as tourists or as students or people of independent means.
However, once they started working and did not apply for a work permit, for instance,
they were accessing the labour market outside the legal provisions currently in place.
So but in the UK, the access to the labour market was not limited in the sense that migrants did not have to apply for a work
permit in the UK on the 1st of May 2000 for in compliance with the derogation stipulated indexation treaty,
free movement rights were generally extended to the migrants and their family members.
However, this was done under the conditions specified in the British legislation.
So they accession immigration workers registration regulations 2000 for the
Social Security Habitual Residence Amendment Regulation and the Immigration,
European Economic Area and Accession Amend Regulation does and for for the name heuristic,
I will call them accession regulations 2004 and they bound together the access to the labour market need, the registration of funds,
employment, the first regulation, as well as the conditions of legal residence and the access to Social Security.
What these regulations meant in practice.
Within the first month of taking up a job in the UK, a Polish migrant would need to register day employment in the Home Office.
Under this workers registration scheme, there was a fee for joining the scheme of £90 initially, but later on into a step.
And I also had to send the passport or identity in order to register together with the application form.
Migrants had to stay within the scheme for 12 months,
registered upon which they were exempt from further registration and they gained equal access to the labour market and social security.
I was in the UK during the transition period and I was working outside of doing my default, so I also had to register.
As you can see in the certificate, in the background, the registration was connected with the particular employer.
In other words, I or any other worker was registered as an employee of a company X, Y and Z.
Therefore, during the first 12 months of employment, if the worker changed to employer or found a different job,
he or she had to inform the Home Office about this using a special form another four.
So all in all, it was quite a bureaucratic process.
If a migrant worker found a different job during the first 12 months but did not inform the Home Office about it,
all the months he or she accumulated on the registration so required towards the final
exemptions were lost and one had to start the registration process from the very beginning.
What is interesting is that the law did not necessarily punish late registrations or a lack of registration.
There was no sign of financial responsibility for lack of registration on the side of the migrant.
The regulations themselves were quite ambiguous and they said without registration one may need to stop working.
There was no scheme in place for enforcing the law either.
So the analysis of this legal regime and its application in due course somewhat to demonstrate that
the accession regulations were put in place as a compromise to monitor the scale of migration,
primarily to limit migrants access to the welfare support,
but not to reduce the number of migrants with no real coercive power and no power of punishment.
All the law was left with was its power of exclusion.
The exclusionary character of the law was particularly visible in the part of the accession regulations, directly concerned with the Social Security.
When migrants from the new EU member states failed to register date employment,
they would become indefinitely excluded from the full participation in the welfare system.
In this way, the law acted as a barrier to benefits and social support,
and in such a way it was rather to exclude those who did not wish to comply with it, rather than to impose the rules in general.
Perhaps therefore, unsurprisingly, and according to conservative estimates in 2007, in the UK,
around 30% of the migrant workers worked without this registration for a lack of a better term.
Legal scholars using the classic binary legal illegal so this migrants as legal residents but illegal workers.
Suffice to say, many of those illegal workers received contracts, paid taxes and duly cleared the National Insurance contributions.
In the book, I tried to demonstrate the social legal position is more complex.
The concept of semi legality much better reflects the dynamics between the formal legal categories and the agency of migrants.
The analytical usefulness of semi legality stems from the fact that it successfully challenges the
black and white binary division in the migration and law debate between legality and illegality.
It denotes a range of migrant statuses, demonstrating that the line between legal and illegal indeed is not a strict dichotomy,
but rather a tiered and multifaceted relationship.
The term therefore captures the various shades of grey that leave migrants in different types of legal ambiguity.
It could be viewed as a multidimensional space where migrants form a relationship with the state, interact with the various forms of agency.
That's an analytical construct. Some illegality is fuzzy at the edges and so at the borders between legality and illegality.
Paraphrasing Dentine, these borders are difficult, if not impossible to locate,
and it is clear that not only migrants but citizens themselves operate at times as if the borders did not exist.
So some illegality, therefore,
comes to you as a useful heuristic device to differentiate between the various forms of statuses on the continuum, illegal and legal.
However, when trying to address the broader question, why did the migrants not comply with the law or complied only partially.
Looking only at the structural legal conditions that migrants arrived into, so the complex and complicated rules and regulations,
the bureaucratic applications and even law enforcement, this seems to deliver only part of the story or solves only part of the puzzle.
In my research. I turned, therefore, to the migrants themselves in order to locate the missing puzzle.
My empirical research encompassed 60 in-depth interviews with migrants who arrived in the United Kingdom after 2004,
as well as a 12 month participant observation in one of the legal NGOs that help people to solve these legal problems.
And this empirical evidence somewhat reveals that many migrants drawing on their accustomed
ways of dealing with the law when faced with this bureaucratic accession regulations in the UK,
displayed rather ambivalent attitude towards the law, prioritising any job over legal job,
keeping clear of the law over engagement and compliance with state legal frameworks.
They aimed at securing their existence and normality as they knew it over meeting the requirements of legal residents.
And this is the story of Marion for the purpose of identity protection.
He's a composite character, so his experiences are therefore representative of many of those nameless migrants who,
not without difficulties, were trying to find a job and adapt the legal system in the UK.
Marianne came to the UK in March 2005 with the aim of finding a job England and me.
It was like a blind date. One thing I had was a room, a place to stay, which I arranged through a letting agency back in Poland.
It was a room in London. I did not speak English. I had a few pounds in my pocket.
There was one thing I knew, though. If you wanted to work in the UK, you would find work that it was common sense.
Since the labour market was opened to poles after 2004. There must have been lots of vacancies over then.
So this could also, I think, demonstrates the broader predicament which many of those Polish migrants arrived in the UK.
They would arrived without networks, without contacts, and the main motivation would be to find a job.
So Marianne initially worked by an employment agency as a vegetable packer for a company that supplied one of the main UK supermarkets.
In terms of the legal situation, he worked without a home office registration, with weekly wages paid cash in hand.
He was aware of this in trying to make sense of his behaviour in relation to the immigration status.
He would say. To be honest, I work there rather illegally.
I realise that on the after some time though. But one had to do something.
One had to have money. I also wasn't asked by anybody about the insurance number or the Home Office registration.
After three months, my had to leave this job as all the workers working on that particular ship were made redundant.
And this is also, I think,
demonstrative of the more broader precariousness that is connected with the flexible and the low skilled labour of migrant labour.
In that sense, in the UK at that time he could speak a little English and he looked for jobs via the job centre.
So it was only now where he would formally engage with representatives of the state like the job centre.
So in November 2005 he found a job on the farm.
There was no written contract proposed, but the farmer offered to pay him monthly.
The farmer was also told, Marion that he would sort out the papers after four weeks.
However, when the payment was due, the farmer did not want to speak to any of his workers.
I realised that there would be no contract, there would be no papers.
And what is worse, there will be no payment. Marianne reported this incident to the local police.
He received an interpreter. His testimony was taken down and he was given a case number.
However, as he revealed nothing was done and the case went to court in a Polish newspaper.
Marianne found an advertisement for a Polish lawyer who was operating on non win non fee basis.
The lawyer took on Marion's case.
He wrote several letters to the farmer on Marianne's behalf, requesting payment in accordance with the modified grievance procedure.
As the farmer did not respond, the case went all the way to the Employment Tribunal, which awarded Marianne the wages and the compensation.
After the judgement of the Employment Tribunal, the farmer did pay the money quite promptly, to be honest.
So the conclusion is that you can stand and fight for your rights and be protected even if you work not entirely legally here.
It takes time, but you can do it. Soon afterwards, Marianne found a job via an employment agency which helped him to formalise his working situation.
But supporting his registration with this worker's registration scheme.
My life is now much less on the margins than it used to be when I spoke to him last.
He had his own construction company and he was doing quite well, at least until the crisis.
Nevertheless, it took him three,
three jobs and the case in front of the employment tribunal to finally legalise his employment and immigration status in the UK.
His story relates a rather dramatic way of coming to terms with the loss instrumental capacities,
realising the lost potential to solve problem worse for many of the polish initially semi illegal migrants.
The first incentive that triggered thoughts and consideration of their own immigration status in the UK as summarised by one of my interviewees.
From my experience, the law becomes important when we actually get into some sort of trouble and need help, need legal advice.
When something is taken away from us. Then we say all law is decent laws and fair.
But to comply with it like that, to think of law and everyday basis.
No, I think we first try to avoid the law. Legitimate question is why does it happen?
Why did migrants themselves just retain to semi legal status,
keep a low profile and avoid the interaction with the immigration law, arguably against their own interest?
The lack of the registration delayed the process of inclusion into the welfare system and
benefits support indefinitely while working in breach of the employment regulations,
undermined the otherwise protection they would be given as workers.
Protection from harassment. Protection from discrimination. The analysis of the British environment.
So the nature of these regulations and the enforcement which I discussed at the beginning of the presentation and talk a bit more detail in the book.
Yes contributes to address arriving in answer a question so unclear rules inconsistent
enforcement employees turning a blind eye to workers of unknown legality.
This all does not inspire much confidence in conforming with the law in the first place, especially in the low wage, low skilled labour market.
When jobs come and go, sometimes at the whim of the employer, not the legal environment, of course, matters.
But migrants are not just passive recipients of the opportunity structures provided the state.
As the story of Martin suggested, they are. Migrants could be considered as agents and as agents.
They do not operate in a vacuum either. Something else must be at work too.
In other words, migrants arrived in the UK with certain values and attitudes to law, understandings of how the law operates and how it is enforced.
And these experiences are not uniform but constitute a language, a set of behaviours and toolkits that people can draw upon.
I would therefore like to now turn to this soft legal cultural factors influencing Polish migrants relationship with law in the UK.
I present a selection of social expectations towards the law and its enforcement based on Polish migrants,
daily experiences of law and legal institutions prior to their arrival in the United Kingdom.
And these results are based on an analysis of eight focus groups conducted in Poland in 2008,
as well as a representative survey of a thousand participants conducted under the auspices of Legal Cultures in Transition Project as well as my own.
My own data before presenting are moving to the second part of the presentation.
Concerning the culture, Bill said,
I would like to make two methodological remarks regarding taking culture as a unit of analysis and of the dangers of
cultural determinism when investigating the explanatory value behind cultural arguments in this presentation in the book,
I argue that there is a need to consider culture, but of course in relation to other factors,
although it is the Polish legal culture that constitutes the main unit of analysis,
I am far from assuming that all Polish migrants in the UK shared the same legal culture,
while modern nation states being relatively stable,
defined and powerful are the most obvious mechanisms capable of sustaining the conditions necessary for normative
orientations to emerge and be maintained through socialisation within such institutions as the family,
the education system, the legal institutions,
other formal and informal organisations with such capacities can be noted like ethnic or national groups,
local communities, social occupations and classes, religious groups.
The methodological approach to culture adopted here acknowledges not only the diversity within the group itself,
but also the plurality of culture, a repertoire of values, habits, attitudes, values and behaviours rather than a deterministic force.
I define legal culture as part of the wider culture, as a specific configuration of values,
attitudes and behaviour with respect to law and how they are intertwined, what they produce and the complex interplay between them.
The research is nevertheless underpinned by a general assumption that while acknowledging the existence of subgroups,
there are some common tendencies,
patterns of behaviour and attitudes at the national level pertaining to the legal sphere that could be distinguished.
The stress on configuration refers to how these values, attitudes and practices transcend individuals and create a distinguishable pattern.
Certain repair tools are chosen more often than others, and certain cultural tools are more, frankly, frequently invoked and relied upon.
So what does the law mean? I pose this question to see how laws embedded within the larger frameworks of social
structure with the aim of providing a thick description of law as the local knowledge.
Polish respondents agreed that the laws important, they say. Without the law, there would be a mayhem.
The adage Attribution of importance embedded in people's interpretations seems to
take into account multiple arguments to the majority of my Polish respondents.
Law is seen as a collection of texts, paragraphs and written rules.
This is because the law is synonymous with the black letter law.
The law in the books, as can be seen from the table for just over 43% of the respondents.
The law corresponds to written laws, rules and regulations forwards by the forward,
followed by the concepts of order and discipline in addition to its written and regulative qualities.
The law as a text creates us an image of a special knowledge that can only be learned, understood and legislated by professionally trained people.
Therefore, the law for the Polish respondents is the sphere reserved for qualified professionals, as expressed by the focus group participants.
To me, law make me think of paragraphs ordinances.
I'm not going to use that professional language because I have nothing to do with it.
Luckily, or I think the law should be made by professionals.
Not. People. That's why we have universities and some kind of schools that should educate good lawyers who make good laws.
What would be appropriate to ask? A Sorry. It would be appropriate to ask What is good law?
It's professional law or I am not a lawyer.
The law is created by educated people who mix things up so that I will never know.
What is it all about? The image of law as professional activity is another aspect of this law in the books characteristic,
making it a discipline within the specialisation of lawyers and experts.
The highly professional character of the law suggests a particular, almost exclusive place for it in society due to its expert origins.
It figures as if on a pedestal it may command respect, it may command dignity.
It may command admiration. However, when asked about the use and purpose of law in everyday life.
To be able to function in a social group, one has to observe certain rules,
the rules accepted by society, not the ones we set for ourselves when we follow our own sets of rules.
It may not go along with the rules of the group.
What emerges from this discussion is a dual image of law based on at least two different sets of interpretations.
There is an expectation of a socially desired and highly regarded law.
Certain rules, written codes and regulations which are expected to regulate relationships and the organisation of individuals.
Yet, perhaps due to their professional origins and character,
the image of law appears to be in opposition, or at least external to the rules we set for ourselves.
This inevitably creates a tension when the rigid, written and complex rules are expected to be applied to flexible,
ever changing an interpretative area such as everyday life.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, such an exercise leads to confusion, a perceived ineffectiveness or flaw,
and stipulates behaviour of practices of we should move around in our daily life so as to keep clear of the law.
It is important not to expose oneself to it. To me, law is important.
But I wanted to say it's best not to have any dealings with it in everyday life.
When I posed the question What does the law mean? I did not receive responses that would link the concept of law with protection and refuge,
with rights and freedoms, with general structure that could be flexibly interpreted.
This view of law as strict rules and regulations as an area reserved for professional
specialists reinforces the image of law as detached from everyday life,
not only due to its restrictive nature and complexity of written codes, but also due to the values and attitudes towards the legislators themselves.
The image of unprofessional and potentially corrupt legislators who pass and apply the law depending
on who is in power in terms of results in a general notion as law not commanding authority.
The analysis of the relationship between the citizens and officials brings to the forefront the issues of trust,
lack of trust, distrust in the reciprocal of relations, questions relating to legal competence of the legislators,
whether the product of their work translates the interests of different social groups into legal categories,
or on the contrary, conceals the privatisation of public interest.
The importance of trust has long been emphasised by social and political theorists from long de Tocqueville to partner and civil society theorist.
In Gilligan's opinion, the relationship of trust between the people and officials is one of the defining qualities of the modern legal order is
necessary for the law to function in modern society and therefore has consequences for my analysis of the legal culture.
The relationship between Polish people and the governors is best therefore described as a sceptical one.
What could explain? Disambiguate the sense of inequality before the law?
Polish respondents often doubt whether in Poland people were treated fairly and considered equal before the law.
The law is not just equal for everyone, so to say, or as a little chap,
I get frustrated because we are daily inundated with messages that ordinary people have to comply with the law,
whereas that people who are above the law.
The feelings and impressions of inequality before the law were mainly recalled when describing relations between citizens and state officials.
In a situation of unequal power bargaining. The state representatives were often perceived as people with higher economic status,
affluence and position in society who would not hesitate to use it for their own benefit.
I share two groups of opinion because the law protects people who hold important positions,
who have money, and the ordinary citizens get kick gets kicked onto to certain part of the body.
Excuse me. It ruins people. We cannot afford to hire some super great lawyers who will protect us against sanctions.
And a member of Parliament or a businessman is well-connected and will wriggle out of it.
We see new examples of it everyday life on television.
Sadly, this is our reality. I would say not necessarily only polished reality,
but therefore what concerns people in everyday life dealings with the law is not necessarily the written rules,
codes and regulations that are problematic, but the lack of authority and therefore the enforcement by the public officers,
state officials and the Polish people themselves. The functioning of the local bureaucracy,
the excessive red tape and formal requirements do not inspire much confidence in the quality of law and encourage dealings with local officers.
Drawing upon the personal experiences with the Social Security officers in Poland and owner of a small business.
When I interviewed him in the UK, considered the state law in Poland to be too harsh, complicated, overloaded and inconsistently applied.
He told me I run my own business and I have problems with suits, which is the National Insurance Office.
So silly. Sometimes they change the law all the time. I would have to be on the phone all the time.
Did not inform the public about this and later on he told me the story.
Once I got ill and took a sick leave and then I learned that I had to do it for two years
before I had a contribution and payment of 12 zlotys or so equivalent to two and a half pounds.
They didn't pay me for my life. I had to go to court and appeal.
So silly, isn't it? But nobody informed me that I had to pay this 12 zlotys.
The interest was growing. So I ask who the law is for.
I would be satisfied if I got a simple letter earlier. Yours, this and this amount.
Please pay. And is it? Such small, tiny things.
In the light of the above experiences and attitudes towards the law, what are the consequences for the general law enforcement?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, for the Polish respondents, when they talked about the relationship with law,
their responses would often be intertwined with anecdotes, playful examples or reasoning for manoeuvring around the law.
You know, there is this old saying that exists only to be tested or I bet none of us have always lived by the book.
Everybody breaks the law to some extent, even if you jaywalk.
But the thing is, you cannot strictly lift by the law. In many cases, you can get more things done if you break the law.
These open sometimes are their bold statements regarding the act of breaking the law for whatever purpose
observable in the Polish focus groups point to a rather ambivalent relationship between Polish people and the law.
They suggest that in Poland, although the image of law as the ideal regulator of relationships between people is highly regarded,
but it is nevertheless quite disentangled from everyday life.
This results in the gap of cognitive dissonance between what people expect of the law and the normative level and their daily experiences.
Although divergence between what people think and what people do is a well documented paradox in social science,
this gap between the normative expectations and experiences holds its purpose
for the analysis of the law of the importance of law in the Polish society.
First,
the normative gap between legal expectations and practical experiences has consequences for the binding force of law and legal norms in society.
Bringing the discussions back to the UK,
the phenomenon of the semi legality and semi compliance as revealed among the Polish posture doesn't for EU enlargement
migrants suggests that in spite of the law being perceived as the paramount and the source of certain goods,
it is not necessarily well integrated within the social fabric as in everyday life duty.
Second, as the normative standards are not necessarily met by people's daily experiences of the law, this results in a contrasting attitudes.
I don't think about whether the law is necessary or not.
In everyday life we quite often go by quite different rules, not legal groups said when asked about the popular associations with law.
Among the Polish migrants in the UK, it was the image of the red colour.
Read that offer symbolises risks associated with law.
Be careful. It can be dangerous. That prevailed among the interviewees.
Engaging with the law for many of the Poles meant embarking on some rather murky waters.
Unforeseen, due to complex rules and regulations which often contradicted each other,
has well before the lost instrumental capacities were discovered to seek protection and access to justice in the given context and situations.
All these attitudes. Low expectations of the law.
Low expectations of the equal treatment. Anime makes experiences of how the state law officials operate.
This produced strategies of law avoidance and keeping a low profile among the
Polish people as a way of managing risks associated with the official law.
However, this attitudes and practices have not remained unchanged.
Migrants capacity to appropriate adapt and potentially to innovate upon received cultural schemas,
values and attitudes to law and conditions of actions in accordance with personal.
With a personal and collective ideas,
interests and commitments allowed for alterations in the legal culture and adaptation of the culture to the new social legal environment.
As a result, alongside the behavioural changes of changing status legalising one state policy,
migrants gradually assigned more important role to law, even modern.
Reflecting on his experiences with the Employment Tribunal admitted You can stand
and fight for your rights and feel protected even if you work without documents.
It takes time, but you can do it.
The lot might still be perceived quite a distance, but more often than not it was associated with the sense of comfort, security and order.
The legal culture is changing. It's change could best be characterised by this attribute of inertia.
My analysis demonstrates that the nature of legal culture change constituted by greater
popularity of some cultural codes over others still nevertheless employed in a policing way,
is characterised by initial resistance, moderation and interchangeability.
Although formal rules may change overnight as a result of political or judicial decisions,
informal constraints that are embodied in custom tradition and codes of conduct are much more impervious to a deliberate policy.
As the example of the Polish post 2000 for EU enlargement,
migrants in the UK demonstrates in fashioning their responses to new laws or newly introduced institutions.
Compliance competes with pre-existing katchi mediated experiences of complicated and troublesome laws,
strategies of passing the law or indifference towards it, and choices of free rights on the state.
Due to the deeply entrenched distrust towards it. These cultural constraints not only connect the past with the present and the future,
but also provide researchers with the key to explain the nature and character of the change in legal culture.
Legal culture, being the product of accumulative historical experience,
reflects the development of state institutions and popular attitudes towards law,
but also enables certain predictability regarding the future development of a society,
its response to socio economic change, its compliance non-compliance or semi compliance with newly introduced institutions and the ability
to proactively use it can also influence other aspects of the legal cultural epistemology.
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Francesco.
I should say at the beginning, as we come out with you pointed out I'm, of course, not an expert in social media matters.
And I think people are hoping for a more expert discussant tonight who then could make it, which is why I'm here.
But I'm, of course,
glad to be here in particular because it's the beginning of the first sort of public visibility of the new of the programme on modern Poland,
which is great to have and it's great to be involved with it.
So since I'm not a sociologist, an expert in social studies,
I keep my comments and questions very short because I'm pretty sure there are some among
you who are much better placed to ask questions or comment on this on Anushka's paper,
which, for the layman with great interest in Poland, like myself, was, is of course a fascinating type of research.
And I came myself to this country in 1999 as a and if you like and as a as a as an EU migrant and
observing my fellow Polish EU immigrants ever since they've been coming to this country in 2004.
And so it's interesting to learn about that. And this perhaps perhaps if I could restrict myself to just two or three comments or questions.
One is of the wider methodological and as so, the term culture is, of course,
one which we in the humanities also deal with, and we by and large deal with it as a comparative notion.
So in order to learn about Culture eight, that really only comes in to profile if you compared to something.
So is there is, is there any danger in just looking at those migrants rather than comparing it to see what the British
population of the same social services of social background would say about things metaphysical?
And that's a sort of very general methodological question which which, which?
Interesting. And then just two or three smaller questions about the particular case study,
which you introduced, sort of this compound character of marijuana became 25.
And there's two or three things which really struck me as as interesting and quite
contrary to what I tend to believe is common wisdom about about migration generally,
and more specifically about post 24 accession, state migration.
One is you mentioned that marijuana as a compound figure came to the UK without an existing social network and it appears to me I may be wrong,
so please correct me, but my patients that it's always assumed that migration flows go with existing networks.
And the other second sort of question concerning this case study, which struck me as interesting,
is and is the kind of components of existing culture which you met or sort of introduced in the second context scepticism law,
something that is sort of out there, something intimidating, possibly dangerous.
It is then interesting that Marianne, after not being paid, did you go to the police?
How does that square as a moment with the police officer, with what came out of interviews,
as it were, and the last sort of more factual questions, perhaps.
And I'm fascinated that I'm fascinated that the employment tribunal would have taken
on this case without Marianne having registered as an accession state worker.
Thank you to both of you, Sam, taking over us tonight?
Well, I mean, I think this is a fascinating topic and indeed one that is ongoing.
And one wonders whether, you know,
new phases of semi legality will happen now that different statuses of other migrants in this comparative perspective that that is speaking about.
How do Poles see their their own legality in the face of the Romanians and others?
So, I mean, I would have a number of questions to kind of update this and what.
There are quite a few many issues arise.
But before I do that, I just want to invite everyone to have comments and questions and.
Will you please just introduce yourself?
I call that a teacher at the centre of the state. I like the biographical element in both of your books.
Your comments about the facts is in there,
and I like the fact you presented as a kind of that already disillusioned liberals before they actually find your way to the U.K.,
that there's already a sense there. But I guess I guess my question is really about generations is going to since you're looking at a very.
This is a young group of migrants. But what about you? There must be a few people.
Thank you, madam. Since the heritage of communism, it turns out, is a particular engagement with ball.
I say that because I work on East Germany for quite a bit.
There a range of studies about how this as former socialist try to adjust to a kind of Western takeover.
Liberal like me often described in terms of temperature of what they thought would be a very warm
legal world in which they may know to whom they were complaining in terms of getting things done,
in terms of local officers, housing officers, the whole region talking about it,
and then moving to a liberal world in which they felt very cold, very bureaucratic, very distant.
And that was a very difficult transition for them.
And when you have a sense in which there are generational differences, the people that come from Poland,
that experience, that that communist legal culture, they have different attitudes.
They come to UK and they're expecting different things from the British legal culture than
younger people who are only grown up in a different world in which those differences are not as.
It's a broad questions about. Can I just take one topic?
So with the answer with the answer comments and the first did the the methodological methodological questions.
I very much appreciate this and I very much see the value of comparative research in the in the in the book.
Actually, the chapter where I present to polish legal culture,
I do it in comparison to the British because the project allowed for of the project was designed as comparative in nature.
So we looked at the values and attitudes to law through the focus groups and surveys in Poland, in Bulgaria, in Norway and in the UK.
So that sort of enabled to see the nuances and subtle differences in how these different groups relate themselves to the law.
And just for the purpose of the presentation, I kept it out of the picture.
But it is there. It is there in the book. And yes,
looking just at one group can lead to a centralisation of culture and not being able to translate
certain phenomena that maybe with the differentiate they actually appear elsewhere as well.
And that sort of brings me to the second question.
So about the composite characters, why I decided to use this quote of arrival without networks,
because it was indeed something specific to this post 2004 EU, EU migration, I think.
And this was this, I would say the double edged sword of the law, because the immigration control no longer happened at the border.
You would just show your identity cards on the 2nd of May and you would be allowed straight in.
And therefore, this first crucial phase of actually coming in and, you know,
going through the problems of of of of crossing the border and the initial applications for many of the people,
they thought, well, it doesn't concern me anymore, so why don't I try on my own?
And there were numerous, numerous stories of people finding out, okay, my friends are coming to the UK.
We have a place in car. Would you like to join? And people making their decision in a split second?
No, split second would be too much.
But the in the half a day packing, they're packing their bags and going because they know they could always come back.
There would there would be no problems with further admittance or with subsequent admittance in case they would not succeed.
So they investment in building the network at the beginning was not I mean, did not have to be there because they could always fall back and come.
I mean, default and come back. Come back home. And why did he go to the police?
I asked him about this as well. I said, this is like you didn't didn't you?
Weren't you scared of something can happen? Like, you know, you were working without the registration.
They said no. But at this point I felt already.
So I felt like there was this grave injustice done to me.
I lost my first job, which I know was not necessarily legal.
And in the second one, he really promised to look at it, to sort out the papers and everything, and then he didn't do it.
I think it was just a tipping point that he reached, that they needed to seek help.
And the employment tribunal said the decision in his favour because he was working less than one month and there are just you had one month.
So it was sort of this legal technicality that sort of saved him at the end because one would have 30 days,
the grace, grace period, so to say, for registration.
And because his job on the farm took less than one month or just one month,
the employment tribunal did not see it as working in breach of the employment
regulation or the accession regulations and did award him the compensation.
So Calypso questions about again broadening the comparative perspective to Romania and Bulgaria.
I think it is a fascinating it is a fascinating area to venture into.
And I currently have a student who will be looking at the impact of the restriction on the free movement of labour,
which one must take into consideration with regard to Romanians.
And Bulgarians were much more severe then with regards to the ten EU member states that joined in 2004,
there was basically no cap on immigration, there was no that say decision whether people can work or not to be made.
But it was this bureaucratic process of registration, the register registration,
now slipping from the registration that created all this legal muddle in case of the Romanian and blue guys.
I think that. The restrictions on the access to the labour market were much more severe and actually included probably labour market tests,
whether there was enough shortage and or they were allowed to work only in certain schemes like agricultural, etc., etc.
I mean, for a minute, maybe you could say a bit more about this because I'm not necessarily updated,
but now there's interesting just interesting point.
What next for the for the Poles and the Eastern Europeans are the accession regulations
ceased in 2011 the Romanians and Bulgarians they days on the 1st of January 2014.
But many more politicians and journalists at the airports then they actually migrants who arrive on the 1st of January.
But what are what are the impacts or what are what what is the symbolic force of law when the
registrations have been lifted or when when the restrictions have been lifted for many of the poles,
if they wanted to seek access to, for instance, jobseeker allowance because they lost their job after the restrictions have been lifted,
the officers who would make a decision whether to allow them access to this benefit or not would look at the time during the transition.
I would say where you registered then.
So the law would still have sort of a mingling for the background and still have repercussions even though formally it is lifted.
So and also I think especially with regard know it with regard to the Poles as well.
You joined the EU, but you joined the EU as sort of a second class of citizen because you don't have the equal access to the labour market,
you don't have equal access to welfare, you don't have the same mobility rights.
And in this day and age, especially with the tabloid propaganda in the in the UK, this really can have symbolic impacts,
even though the law no longer operates and the law no longer creates this difference between the different categories of the EU citizens.
I mean, just this weekend, I think I've read in the papers about a Bulgarian doctor being told by her patient,
Are you sure your Bulgarian Bulgarians should work only on the farms?
And this is this is from the lay public, you could say everyday life,
people who somewhat aren't the recipients of what, you know, Daily Mail and all this papers are saying.
And that sort of creates a certain type of division which which I think takes much more to to change than,
you know, just that just a change in the law or the fact that the law no longer operates.
And then the question about the generations, of course, it's a it's a very it's a very good question and a very vital one,
especially when one discusses such a broad topic as culture.
And that's why I wanted to make this really specific reservations that my case study looks at this
type of migrants and also who and does not at all exhaust the topic of the legal culture in Poland,
because there will be generational change. There might also be gender that influences how differently men and women the law impacts on men and women,
how differently they build a relationship with it. But also, yes,
this heritage of socialism and the heritage of socialism is also my main
something that really triggered my interest in looking at the Polish migrants,
I mean, being educated in a Polish academia and sociology department.
The idea of homeless Leviticus as this sort of Nanjing mentality behind many people from the other generations
everyday actions was something that was constantly being being investigated in works like Stump Kubiak and others.
And then the one arrives in the UK and speaks to mainly just single people in their thirties, sometimes early forties.
And I would not say that these are reproduced, not at all,
but I would say that to a certain residual form they would still be that these values and attitudes would still be present.
The fact that they were socialised within socialised within their families before they arrived here and maybe being told,
you know, okay, you're in your first job, you don't necessarily need to contract in your first job.
You will get paid cash in the. And you cross the border and you think it's normal.
If your employer does not necessarily offer you this.
I'm sorry if. Jonathan.
Yeah.
I my my original question was going to be very much has already been answered by an issue on this sort of comparative side of Romania and Bulgaria,
because it's precisely and I have to say, I was extremely impressed having spent time working on EU enlargement,
I have not appreciated the post accession complexity even in the so-called free access countries like like the UK.
But I do think it would be very it would be particularly interesting to look,
you've pointed to some of the sort of residual impact of the of the legislation, even though it's no longer applicable.
But I think it would be very interesting to do this.
Why this study on looking at the comparative experiences of Birmingham, Bulgaria, as opposed to Poland just for Romanians?
I don't think much of this really during the seven year and often the seven year model,
if you like, 1st of January 2014, in the case of Romania, 2012,
in the case of Poland, because what the media has got, it grown, as you pointed out,
on the on the impact the first can be definitely has very, very limited impact.
So I don't really have a question, but I think it's a it's an issue which is well worth pursuing further.
No, I totally, totally agree with your comment.
I think it's a it's it is a very valuable point of comparison and really one that just waits to be to be explored.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's a you know by the TSA but visiting research from Germany and I'm looking at the business school so I'm either a lawyer,
so it's never the best interest of this topic.
Yeah. And you said that the migrants from Poland, Britain,
that they changed their attitudes with time towards the British law and they changed the legal culture.
What is interesting for me a lot. The interesting is you think, first of all, if there is any chance that those people will go back to Poland.
And secondly, if they go back,
would they then again changed attitudes and they would switch to this to this Polish model according to this and to this idea at this state.
Otherwise it to you. Or will they bring this new attitude towards institutions from Britain to Poland?
And maybe they take our chances for Poland to change the mentality of the people.
So how would you know? Okay, well, we can take two questions.
I was just wanting to take a step on straight post migrant businesses university since 2000.
So data management. I was wondering if have any data or have done any research on, say, what the attitudes are today.
So it's always momentum come to 2014,
but it goes out to so many different it's the culture that they bring with them to Britain are the difference from that in 2014.
What is that a function of I mean, everything with Britain,
is it a different legal culture in Poland has been established by the three organisation or.
Attorney for other factors.
And the second question just briefly, how do you control for this idea of if people come with this idea of being an equal in front of more law?
To what extent is that so influenced by the idea that when working with coalition,
competing with with the Brits when it comes to stem from the court bring the claims.
How much is that influenced by the idea that you that people because you are for the betterment of the other point of view.
Can you come for that in a moment? Thank you very much.
I think to your question, in your first question, like really nice to speak to each other.
Mainly due to the fact that I think I would respond to you saying that it's it's a
thinking about migrants going staying in a in a host country and then returning back.
And then what happens to them is this very familiar notion within the migration and development literature.
So migrants as agents of social change in the origin countries, those who send remittances,
not only the financial remittances that help the families to support themselves,
but also as those who send certain values and attitudes of how differently a world could be conceived, etc.
But at the same time, I must,
I must admit it must be aware of the limitations of my own research that I presented was a somewhat a snapshot of a legal culture.
So how how people were thinking about the law when the data was collected,
and it not necessarily said that those migrants who will be returning to Poland,
they will be returning to the same country that they left that they migrated from in 2004.
Because under the European influences, I mean, and other factors such as the economic crisis, etc., people do change and the culture does change.
I mean, somebody once said Important scholar on culture that, well, basically what could be said about cultures, that is changing.
That's the only perhaps certain thing that could be said about this.
So in doing such a qualitative and nuanced research,
it's sort of difficult to say what has stayed the same and what has changed following my migrants.
So talking about my sample of those migrants who were in the UK,
when I sort of talk to them at the beginning and then a little bit later and later once they registered
and as I said in the press and once they sort of discovered the instrumental capacities behind the law.
So the fact that the law is not only something that, you know, you should keep a low profile from or you should avoid,
but something that you can employ in order to realise your particular interests,
something that can protect you, something that can, something that can help you.
And you, for instance, lose the job of or have a dispute with the employer that with step by step or coming to terms with loss,
instrumental capacities sort of influenced different attitudes because once people behave in a certain fashion,
that becomes a sort of an experience which they can draw on in order to think differently about things.
So how people behave, influence, what date,
what are the attitudes and the other way around the attitudes then influence what they behave, what is first and what the second is.
A bit of this, the chicken and egg discussion,
but nevertheless there is a clear relationship between behaviour and attitudes and they remain in reference and in relation to each other.
So just to bring this a bit.
Yeah, muddled response probably to to a conclusion,
I wanted to say that for me it's difficult to say whether the people who return to Poland will be the agents of change,
because many of them do either do not return to Poland or go elsewhere or do not
cannot find themselves again back in Poland because it did change since they left.
But at the same time, following this group of my respondents here,
I could say that their initial distrust towards the law and idea of keeping clear of the law with time were sort of like,
okay, well, the law is still quite distant, but at the same time it can help me.
If I'm in a trouble, it can solve my problem.
And with maybe with time by strategies of actually going to law in case of legal problems and about.
Well, the control offered it for a nickel, a nickel relationship, not unequal.
The feeling of being an equal before the law. Also the brother.
The fear. Maybe that's hard to say. I mean, because I think it's also a predicament characteristic for other immigrant groups.
I mean, after I finished the book, I moved to a project that looked at third country nationals in the EU.
We looked at Brazilians, Moroccans and Ukrainians in comparative perspective in four European countries Norway, Netherlands, Portugal and the U.K.
And that sort of demonstrated that this conditions of inequality with regards to the law of where a shared predicament across various ethnic groups.
And there may be, you know, the culture is not such a good explanatory or does not have such a good explanatory value anymore,
but more the same sociological predicament in which you find yourself in the in the host country.
So in that case, yes, I would completely agree. And can I just follow up a bit with some more questions and maybe I have some clarity.
So maybe you will take the prerogative of the chairs, as it were, and follow up a bit,
because I thought these were all we've been pushing you on the empirical questions and what you found with time and attitudes, etc.
But I'm sort of coming back to your title, social legal into integration.
And from what I understand and you just stated as again,
you are really a direct interaction of migration studies or even diaspora studies and social legal studies.
But of course another overlapping circle in this story is single market European law.
And in fact, if you say if you said, you know, legal integration or, you know,
in the EU, that that is a whole other set of ideas and things we've studied.
And indeed, you talk about the home culture and the and the and the host culture and the whole point of the single
market of free movement of people is that they carry with them alongside an attitude to the law,
their own rules.
What that's what happens when you have mutual recognition of law in the EU is that host home country laws and rules are carried in your shoulder,
like with territories, you know, carrying their house. People go around Europe and carry their own worlds on their shoulders.
Now you add that these rules themselves are embedded into a culture where and that's true if you're a consumer worker, a firm, etc.
And and so part of so I'm kind of thinking, well, you know, are some of the same paradigms applicable.
So the big one is extra territoriality of, of law, generally speaking, and of attitude to law and what it what it does.
And there are a number of questions that follow when you think in terms of extraterritorial.
So one is, are there compatibility thresholds?
So you have one binary in this book that Britain, Poland.
But you know could you build a generic theory with there is it's always about binaries but they end up interacting.
But there are there are different kind of compatibility or a lack of compatibility between attitudes to law,
between in different biomes in, say, Europe, staying in Europe.
But secondly, you know, the this whole and following on this this whole question of agents of change and coming back home.
So, of course, in legal integration, we always speak of a regulatory, regulatory or legal competition.
And whether it leads to race to the bottom of a race to the top when laws interact, as it were, and compete with one another.
So one more general way of asking you the question is whether, you know, whether there is a kind of race to the top,
whether the good attitude to law since you and that's not now normatively bias but
I think it underpins although not always explicitly a lot of what you say is that,
you know, in the Anglo tradition, we have a sense of law, as you write in the book, laws,
freedom laws warrant against arbitrary power of the state as opposed to law constraining the individual, serving powerful interests.
So the question becomes, you know, what are the mechanisms by which this kind of rather benevolent and positive competition between
legal cultures occur both in the in the host country first and then back in the home country?
Are there, you know, dynamics there? Now, that's interesting also.
And that has to do with this whole question of learning with Stefan was putting,
you know, the kind of Bayesian updating that you have when laws interact like this.
So what is that true for Culture two? And ultimately, what does this mean for the now totally prescriptive lead?
I would ask, you know, and this is just some questions that occurred to me,
but now what does it mean for a very difficult question, which is the Copenhagen criteria in the context of.
Enlargement. The fact that the rule of law and respect for the rule of law is becoming has
been formerly but is becoming much more deeply a criterion for enlargement.
And of course, the idea that many of us have been thinking about, which is that, of course, the rule of law is not the law on the books.
It's not just the checklist, but it is an attitude.
And, you know, how can the EU have as a criterion for entry and attitude?
You know, is it going to pull people in, you know, former Yugoslavia and Serbia or elsewhere?
And what what can we learn from your story in the way in which we're going to manage this really sensitive question of assessing,
you know, candidate countries attitude to the rule of law?
Or should we just trust that once they're in, they'll go through, you know, the learning processes that you describe?
And in any case, you know, isn't it very imperialist at the end of the day and very much a reflection of asymmetric,
normative power that we kind of expect that there's a story there that,
you know, these countries that are backward in their attitude to law, you know, will learn the right way and then go back and do the right thing.
Sorry, I'm throwing a lot of questions at you, but it's a it's it's fascinating.
It's like no, it's really it's like to be pushed a little bit further on this.
More theoretical questions, I would say, and the way I think of integration in my book is in a, in a non non-normative way.
So I'm not saying that the Polish migrants arriving in the UK have to do this and this and that in order to be integrated.
I did more as building a relationship,
which I think the description of what this relationship is about is the first step towards towards saying, Yeah, what are we doing?
What are we doing dealing with? And at the same time, the questions about the Race to the Top and the race to the bottom,
like many of those migrants who could arrive here and who would come across an employer, who would tell them,
well, I think there was there was even a BBC panorama or a feature on it on Monday that somebody will come to those migrants who would gather,
for instance, around the DIY shop waiting for jobs.
And a guy would come and say, okay, I need five workers,
but I cannot pay you according to the national minimum wage because you know I can pay you less.
Will you still come and do the job? And yes, they will go.
And it's I don't think so. It's that much then becomes a matter of culture, but more of the type of, I don't know,
a broader way of finding yourself in this, you know, flexible labour market and how do you respond to it?
I think a part of it could it be explained by culture.
But as I said, it's only a puzzle.
And I think there are also other other other perspectives that we could shed light on why
the situation is happening or why is that happening in this way and not and not in others.
About the. Yes. So. So what I wanted to say is that not that the Brits have a civilised idea of what the law is because many of them do not.
Absolutely. And that the Poles have to learn from them.
Not at all. And I would not approach integration in such a and I'm not saying that implying that you had that attitude, but there is that attitude.
The idea of. Yes, of certain, I don't know, you even mentioned backwardness, etc.,
which I was trying to challenge in the book by approaching integration in a non-normative way and seeing,
you know, what is out there, what's the empirical reality that is telling me?
And then how do these people interact in the conditions that they that they found themselves in?
And that requires the, I think, changes and adaptations on both sides or all the players.
Now, about this rule of law, that's actually that's actually a a very, very thought provoking, fact frolicking idea because, yes,
indeed, on a monday I was on the lecture that sort of looked at global indicators as a way of enforcing human rights, human rights.
So the idea is that the law, the human rights are no longer about ideas of justice and fairness,
but about countries, the ranking or ranking countries, according to.
Well, the score in the corruption index. How well they score in the rule of law index, etc.
And that this is sort of this is a this sort of shades of away from the idea of of of of what the law is and then becomes a type of,
I don't know, a list of countries ranked as, yes, we do have the human rights.
No, you don't have the human rights. You may be. Have you maybe had the human rights?
Rather than giving power to local communities in order to to mobilise around the idea of human rights
and go to the court and appeal against certain situations or certain grievances that they might have.
And I think a similar similar trend is observable in the human rule of law indicators that the scholars who are creating a robot and creating it,
they remember having this discussion with Martin Krieger about why do we why do we have this these indicators that
they do not tell us really much and they are about really taking boxes or using proxies in order to fit in it,
fit into the data that are missing, etc., etc.
And maybe indeed and that maybe indeed it's a matter of attitudes and values,
but then how to sort of normalise that in the way that they become comparative and therefore therefore implied in this process of,
I don't know, deciding about but the rule of law or not.
Well, to to to me, it goes back to this balance, I think, between the qualitative and quantitative in social science,
how we employ these two, and how do they speak to each other.
I'm not I am the quantitative, of course, sheds light on a lot of what is happening on the ground.
And it's a way of systematising the reality around us. But at the same time,
without us being critical behind the numbers and how they've been sourced and
what what are the actual numbers of know how these numbers were gathered,
etc.? And without bringing a little bit more, maybe a nuanced qualitative narrative,
these numbers can become quite yeah, like you said, not really telling much.
And but at the same time, I think there is the problem of going just towards qualitative and just having,
you know, localised views of what is here and what is here,
what is there, which then sort of means that not rendered themselves that well to a meaningful comparison or to policy decisions.
It's attention, right? I mean, this guy has a very factual question, actually.
I'm just curious about the pool of your interviews.
So how are you formal or heterogeneous or on the other hand.
Yeah. And you form a heterogeneous and represented this.
People were in terms of in terms of the occupation, in terms of simply social background,
in terms of which is obviously a very, very, very important command of English.
And then also the fact, you know, the the the site of previous residents,
because it tends to matter actually when you're looking at where does people are coming from in different parts of Poland.
So there is this question regarding the interviews and the second and the second and the second question.
I know that you've essentially focussed, you know, your, your, your project, your research on the UK, but I would be actually interested,
you know, to learned about your observations regarding the Irish case and in this respect perhaps the religious factor,
the belief factor, the fact that we essentially have the people coming from the, the,
you know, nearly Catholic society basically ending up as you keep going to Ireland.
I don't know the answer, but essentially, you know, I was hoping that perhaps you would have something to say about this.
So the question about the interviews and so I'm a qualitative research,
I cannot claim at any point that my research is representative of all the migrants who arrived in the UK.
And I think I made this reservation at the beginning of my presentation.
Nevertheless, in approaching my respondents, I was trying to be as diverse as possible.
So in my sample you will find people who, with tertiary education, those who came just with secondary education,
those in the 20 to 32 age bracket, but also some of them were who are slightly older.
I think my older respondent was around 53, 54.
So that's as far as the interview is concerned. I think I was a little bit more my my participant observation in that legal angle was
a little bit more representative because basically I was first there as interpreter.
They needed somebody who would be able to interpret on behalf of the Polish clients.
And later on they trained me in employment law.
So I become I became the investor and started taking on some cases about yes when there were disputes with employers,
either via the grievance procedure or the modified giving procedure.
And that was also quite a varied spread of people, to be honest with you.
I would say there were more men than than the woman who decided to seek help and seek advice, maybe because they felt themselves as breadwinners,
as those who really have to face up to the problem and do something about this about the Irish case.
I must I must really admit that I haven't done this comparison,
but I know some of my colleagues who who were focusing on the adaptation or the integration of Polish migrants in Ireland.
So I'll be happy to point you to their diaries and maybe we can ask them if you would comment on what you referred to in that last question for sure.
And I would like to go back to the comparative.
Aspect of your. Research. So there were 60 respondents from each of these groups as well.
Is that right? No.
So that the 60 respondents were the interviews I conducted with the Polish migrants and as far as the legal culture project was concerned,
they were get 6 to 8 focus groups in each of the countries.
So each of the focus group would be between seven and eight participants and a thousand people,
citizen and representative survey in each of these countries.
I see. I see. What is the implication of this kind of study in qualitative research in the social sciences?
Because you have this kind of discussion, which is, of course include interest and impact of as well and.
So what is the claim on shows with this kind of research and this with this kind of
it's supposed to be a footnote to quantitative research that's been carried out.
Migration, what it sort of became, what it delivers in terms of knowledge,
in terms of input into policy decisions, into understanding of migration cultures.
Perhaps the each question that came to.
Run things up from the bottom of my heart. I'd like to see a little bit more footnotes to quantitative reasons instead of the main body of things.
It's not a footnote. But at the same time, I think the quantitative data delivers a really rich picture of what's happening on the ground,
which, you know, presenting it always comes with reservations.
Okay, this is my sample. And let's say this part of it is representative, but this part of it is purposeful.
Therefore, I need to be really well, not humble, but realistic about what threat posed to him was a way of approaching the culture.
I can tell you in that in in the bigger scheme of things,
which I think the many of the quantitative scholars do not do not have, because the idea of numbers is that they are neutral.
And that's something I as the qualitative scholars, would like to challenge.
But then the numbers are not necessarily neutral, that they come from certain ways of of it being sampled that they come.
I mean, every data is imperfect ultimately.
And I think that I think realising this imperfections,
but at the same time recognising the richness and the actual information that is contained between them.
And then I think putting the qualitative and quantitative, I mean, there are lots of big projects now that are mixed methods data.
So using the qualitative in order to account for the gaps in the quantitative data,
to give a slightly richer, more nuanced picture behind the numbers,
but at the same time using the quantitative in order to generalise this very rich narratives and descriptions that are out there behind the guides,
quote, quantitative scholars.
So triangulating these two, using one to account for the weaknesses of the other and bringing out the richness of the other,
I think could be a way forward. And compared to present well on these very, very wise words.
And I'm sure, you know, everyone wants to continue the discussion, but our audience has dwindled a bit and it is getting late.
And we've had a fascinating conversation on a book, which I haven't had the chance of reading yet,
but I think we can really recommend and indeed put on our website.
You can centre the program. I let Michael I have the last word, but I, I think these are really important both in and of itself in the,
in an area which really underpins European integration as well as the whole very highly politicised debate.
So bringing some sanity to this debate in the bigger, bigger public sphere is key, but also for the field as a field of inquiry in how we do things.
Of course the law is text and his words and I mean all of us who are committed to triangulating and to,
you know, the core of qualitative research will support what you just said.
And at the end of the day, you're studying behaviours, attitudes, culture.
I mean this is all very difficult to pin down if you've done it in a very systematic and fascinating fashion.
And it sounds to me like your ongoing research project is going to be super promising,
so you have to promise to come back and tell us more for the next phase.
But in the meanwhile, I'd like all of us to thank you and thank you for your discussant.
And above all, thank Nicholai for bringing such a wonderful program to the European Centre,
bringing all of us together, and we're looking forward to further conversations.
Thank you. Thank you.