“Poland Counts Euro-orphans”. Moral Panic and Gender in the Exclusion and Stigmatisation of Migrant Families

Abstract

This article analyses the transnational parenting phenomenon in Poland and the moral panics — reaction to it as shown in both public discourses and actions of public institutions. Such features can be found while analysing discourses about “euro-orphans” (such a label is given to migrants’ children) that have occupied public discourses since mid-2007 in Poland. Based on discourse analysis of about 500 press articles from 2007–2008, I argue that in spite of the growing influence of global mobility in contemporary family life, and economic migration as a family strategy of survival, various “moral entrepreneurs” such as leaders of NGOs, social workers, educational workers, therapists, scientists, etc. construe the features of transmigrant parents as deviants, and label the strategy of migration as an individual act of family abandonment and serious threat to the well-being of the nation, etc. This deviancy discourse pertains particularly to the trans-national strategy adopted by mothers whose gendered role is in the Polish culture strictly connected with the role of child-rearing and with nurturing the nation the “Mother Pole” icon). I argue that moral panics in reaction to contemporary family change and actions of public institutions serve the function of the re-traditionalisation of the family to the traditional functionalist model.