Sink or Swim,

Sink or Swim, From the Baltic to The Irish Sea
by M.A.Ferrario - ma.ferrarrio@ulster.ac.uk

"On arrival, I had to sink or swim’ says Fr Egijdius Arnasius’ at the Northbound symposia held at Magee this month on the Lithuanian and Polish communities in Northern Ireland.

Fr Arnasius, Lithuanian Chaplain in Ireland, was one of the invited speakers at the symposium, the second of the research series organised by the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at University of Ulster on the emerging European cultural landscapes in today’s Northern Ireland.

To date, the Polish and Lithuanian communities make up more than two thirds of the estimated 60,000 people that have come from Eastern Europe to live, work or study in Northern Ireland.

The impact that the recent migrations have made to the economic prosperity of the country is undeniable, however it is ‘the richness of the sounds of new languages in spoken the street’ that according to Bob Collins, Chief Commissioner of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, best describes the wealth brought by the people who leave their countries to make Northern Ireland their new home.

Reflecting on the recent changes in the Northern Irish community Mr Collins felt that the expression ‘migrant workers’ fails to describe the potential for growth ad richness of culture that the new comers can bring to the host society.

Migrant Workers, Ethnic Minorities, Migrants, … it seems that when it comes to find the right name for the people moving to this part of the world the capacity of the English language to create neologisms withers.

The Scottish government was quicker to embrace the linguistic challenge that surround the language of migration when in 2004 welcomed ’the fresh new talents’ as the ‘new Scots’, as Aleksander Dietkow, General Consul of Poland in the UK, was keen to point out at the event.

In the end, the overall winner of the terminology debate was Ewa Grossman, founder of Glosik magazine (Polish for ‘Small Voices’), who in her speech invited the locals to call her ‘darling’ in one of the broadest Northern Irish accent ever heard.

Bias, labels and relations with their new Northern Irish neighbours represent only one aspect of the issues that migrants from countries such as Lithuania and Poland face. Geographically close but culturally different, Poland and Lithuania share centuries of common past and a history of two distinct national identities

Neringa Liubiniene, anthropologist from Kaunas (Lithuania) shed some light on the complex relationship that exist between the Lithuanian and the Polish communities living in Northern Ireland ‘they (the Poles) are friendlier and more organized than us (Lithuanians)’ but also ‘I don’t like them (the Polish) very much, they took our Vilnus’ were some of the comments that Ms Liubinienė recorder during her field research and that were shared with the audience.

The very same theme was discussed by Dr Jan Jędrzejewsk, University of Ulster. Dr. Jędrzejewsk looked at the lessons Northern Ireland can learn from the history which ‘brought together and yet separated Poland and Lithuania’. ‘This may help all of us here in Northern Ireland to come to a broader, more mature understanding of the history and to see beyond some of the simplistic historical and cultural stereotypes that our perception of this part of the world is so often characterised by.’

Poet and writer Dr. Jerzy Jarniewicz then took this task one step further by trying to ‘make hope and history rhyme’ in his speech on Seamus Heaney and Polish poetry. ‘Though Heaney tends to build cultural and historical analogies between the two countries’ says the poet from Lodz ‘there are considerable differences in the way history is perceived: where the Irish poet tends to see history as redeemable, Polish poets, declare it a curse’.

The bridge between history and words was eventually built with the pictures presented by Evelina Saduikyte editor of the Lithuanian magazine Saloje. The photographs captured the day-to-day life of the Lithuanian communities in Ireland. ‘In 1999 the Lithuanian media began to promote Ireland as a good and place to go’. In 2003 the Lithuanian Embassy opened in Dublin to facilitate access into the island; shortly after, Saloje (Lithuanian for ‘In the Island’) was set up to provide information to and about the growing Lithuanian community in Ireland.

Saloje’s pictures went later on display during the evening reception at the Guildhall as part of ‘Small voices in the Island’ a photographic exhibition by Saloje and Glosik on the two communities in Ireland North and South. Cllr Maeve McLoughling kindly welcomed the audience with a warm public address.

Dr Ferrario, organiser of the symposia, explains that Northbound is designed to explore research on migration in Northern Ireland and provide networking opportunities for people who have come here to live, work or study. Each symposium will focus on a specific European community with France and Germany he focus for next event. The fourth and last symposium of this series will focus on the Balkan regions and is planned for spring 2008.

More information and contacts are available at http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/aich/nbsymposia/ or call tel (+44) 028 71375785 for more information

Copyright The Global Village Newsline 2007