Migration “orphans”

When parents go abroad to work they don’t always have the possibility to bring their children with them. They amount to over 2 million (perhaps 3…) The remittances of Poles working in EU countries other than their own to family members in Poland amount to 35 billion euro. This has led, ten years since Poland’s EU adhesion, to a worrying phenomenon: thousands of children left without parental guidance must provide for themselves or depend on the meagre financial support given to them by their grandparents, by other relatives, or by their neighbours. Developmental psychologists have registered dramatic increases in terms of dysfunctions caused by the weakening of family and social bonds, accompanied by a deterioration in the family’s educational role. It’s a situation of emergency shared by other countries in central and Eastern Europe where outgoing migration flows have increased – Romania and Bulgaria stand as sad examples. Dramatic figures. The problem of minors left to grow up on their own, caused by the situation of the job market throughout Poland, has worsened over the years. According to estimates by the “Prawo Europejskie” – European Law – Foundation children in at least 110 thousand Polish households were separated from their parents, who left the country in search of a job. The ministry of Education is carrying out a new census addressed to Polish students on the composition of households. Figures are yet to be released. The previous survey carried out in 2008 showed that one in four school-age children were living in households with one parent working abroad on a permanent basis. In 46% of cases children were entrusted to the care of their grandparents, 29% to the parent living in Poland, while 7% were under the supervision of distant parents or of elder siblings. In 2% of surveyed household two siblings had been left to look after each other without adult supervision. Facing adolescence… “In those cases where the child is 6-8 years old and is entrusted to loving care during the parents’ leave it can still be hoped that no serious consequences will ensue”, said Joanna Jasak from the national Education Centre. “In many cases children preserve strong emotional ties with their grandparents, and leaving them to their care for a given period is unlikely to cause serious damage” at behavioural, affective or psychological level, Jasak added. “Things gets worse when children are adolescents and their grandparents haven’t got the energy to contain the temper tantrums typical of that age.” “The result is that fifteen-year-olds live alone but they’re unable to take care of themselves nor of their home.” For example, “they forget to pay the bills even when they have been sent enough money by their parents living abroad”, said Joanna Jasak.The doors of prison. “Emigration for reasons tied to work began with the opening of borders of EU countries in 1997, thus children surveyed in 2008 have grown into adolescents or young adults and in many cases their unsolved problems have grown worse”, said Simona Wojtowicz, director of the juvenile detention centre in Nisko. The director of the penitentiary underlined not to generalise problems that are still lacking figures that substantiate them and analysed a set of concrete cases, such as that of a young girl sentenced to prison for having killed a friend of her father’s who got drunk and tried to rape her while her mother was working outside Poland. “The family situation of young detainees is a given factor”, she said with a saddened voice. Moreover, in 2013 1200 minors sentenced to juvenile detention centres for offenses of various kinds – theft, burglary, possession of narcotic drugs – came from households with both parents working abroad. Parents’ voice. Poland isn’t the worst situation. As underlined by German news outlet “Deutsche Welle” in recent years 50% of all children in Moldova had lived in single-parent households for a given period of time. Over the past ten years 9 million minors in Ukraine have lived a part of their childhood as “orphans.” Figures collected by several NGOs show that at least half million Rumanian, Bulgarian, Moldavian and Polish children are presently not being raised by their parents. However, these same parents don’t accept being accused of having abandoned their families. “I prefer to leave and send money home to my children rather that seeing them die of starvation”, they usually remark, adding that in the present times, low-cost flights and skype shorten the distance and that “children don’t really suffer from our absence.” “The State could do much more to counter this situation”, said Sonia Grodek, a Polish woman living in London. Undoubtedly the economic development of the countries of departure, coupled by job opportunities, are the most effective answers to the problem of “migration orphans.”