From Hegemonic to Hybrid and Back? The Context-Adaptive Masculinity of Polish Male Migrants

Abstract

The article aims to address the complexity of the models of masculinity (re)produced in the transnational context and explain the role of religion in this process. It draws on qualitative research conducted among religiously committed Catholic male migrants from Poland who have settled in multicultural and secular societies: England, Belgium, and Sweden. The transnational context often makes it difficult for migrant men to practice hegemonic masculinity. Our analysis shows how the isomorphic mechanisms allow for (re)constructing new forms of masculinity that combine diverse and often contradictory meanings available in the transnational contexts (i.e., associated with subordinated masculinities or with femininity). Such hybridized version of masculinity not only helps to adapt to the new transnational context but also allows for rebuilding the privileges traditionally offered by hegemonic masculinity. We also discuss the role religion plays in this process by giving credibility to this hybrid masculinity by rooting it in the sacral order and thus legitimizing it.

Keywords

religion immigration patriarchy Europe hegemonic masculinity

A question that has received attention in recent decades is that of how masculinity is practised in contexts that make it difficult for males to exercise power and achieve patriarchal dominance (Bridges and Pascoe 2014; Demetriou 2001). This question is directly linked to broader enquiries on how social change impacts transformations of masculinity. In some social contexts, men often use various strategies to help them retain power symbolically (Chen 1999). Migration and transnationalism exemplify such contexts, which seriously complicate the social practices of masculinity (Charsley and Wray 2015; George 2005). For male migrants, the experience of migration often leads to a demotion of their social status. Migrant women, meanwhile, in general often experience emancipation following migration (George 2005). Women frequently gain greater economic independence in the host country, but also free themselves from the pressures of patriarchal family relationships or social pressures in the sending local community (Siara 2013). Compensating for the loss of opportunities for patriarchal domination in the private and public sphere, male migrants construct new patterns of masculinity using various rules, practices or values from a professed ideology (e.g., religious or political) (Charsley and Wray 2015; McDuie-Ra 2012; Osella and Osella 2010). Religious organisations are mostly patriarchal institutions that allow men to compensate for the loss of opportunities for gendered dominance. Our research therefore explores the role religion plays in male migrants’ attempts at compensation and in reproduction of more general mechanisms of patriarchal dominance. Religiously engaged Polish male migrants, involved in Polish Catholic organisations operating in highly secularised countries and gender-progressive societies with a high number of Polish migrants (England, Belgium, and Sweden), serve as our case study to show the process of reconstruction of masculine domination in a complex social environment. Our findings reveal that religious participation, beliefs and norms play a pivotal role in constructing masculinity among Polish migrants. Looking transnationally, our research highlights the role the religious context, shaped by local Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam, as well as the secularisation process and the migrant environment, play in shaping the mechanisms of reproduction of patriarchal dominance. This observation drew our attention to the question of changes to masculinity models. While institutions are a common approach to the study of gender (see Leszczyńska 2019; Martin 2004) and many institutional theories on gender emphasise their transformations, research says little about the mechanisms of that change. Investigating these mechanisms is all the more important when we consider that social processes in recent decades such as secularisation, egalitarisation or modernisation in Western societies are bringing intense changes in gender patterns (Sammet and Bergelt 2012). We argue that the theories of new institutionalism, and in particular the concept of isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977), can help to capture these mechanisms and explain the processes of masculinity construction, especially when men’s dominance is challenged. We show how isomorphism through the mechanism of imitation and incorporation of meanings from the transnational environment allows religious Polish migrants to reconstruct patriarchal dominance in the public and private spheres, including towards women. Our research will thus allow us to understand what happens to gender under the influence of traditional (religious) rules as well as progressive values and secularisation. Using this theoretical approach, we offer a tool to observe the dynamics of change in models of masculinity influenced by different contexts.

Context-Adaptive Masculinity – Theoretical Background

An important trend in research on masculinity focuses on its transformations under the influence of sociocultural contexts, such as modernisation, democratisation, but also the growing social power of feminist movements or gender emancipation (Borkowska 2018; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). These studies often analyse models of hegemonic masculinity in such different contexts, understood as the configuration of the social rules and practices underpinning the patriarchy. They include research on the circumstances that hinder or prevent men from practising power and domination (Bridges and Pascoe 2014; Demetriou 2001). Migration exemplifies such circumstances because it often leads to degradation of male migrants’ social status (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner 1994). This is often an “alienating” experience (George 2005, 211) as the new post-migration setting challenges the masculine identities from the “homeland.” Men in the new country often lose their dominant status by becoming part of a minority ethnic group (Chen 1999). Additionally, the status of male migrants also changes in relation to the transforming status of migrant women. Emancipation of migrant women in exile, through such factors as their growing economic independence, makes them independent from traditional family arrangements, also undermining the position of men as breadwinners (Charsley and Wray 2015). Therefore, even if migration may strengthen men’s economic capital by enabling them to earn higher wages, at the same time it can reduce their status by renegotiating gender relations with women, who also gain, among other things, economic independence after emigrating. Demotion of men’s status is also caused by intersectional relations of gender, class, and ethnicity/race, which take on a particular importance following emigration. Male migrants experience a decline in social status due to their different ethnicity or race in the host country, and it is not uncommon for class status to decline, even though it was relatively high in the country of origin (as in the case of the men interviewed).

Located at the bottom of the racial/ethnic social ladder in the receiving societies, male migrants respond to these changes in various ways (Hansen 2012; Montes 2013; Pasura and Christou 2018). One approach is “hypermasculinity” (Suh 2017). This is expressed through physical violence and violent confrontation, such as fights or practices that inflict physical pain (Gutierrez 2019). Such violent practices can even threaten male migrants’ life and health (Charsley and Wray 2015; McDuie-Ra 2012; Suh 2017). The “hegemonic bargain” (Chen 1999) illustrates another way of enacting hegemonic masculinity by male migrants who attempt to fulfil cultural expectations in unconducive conditions. Chen shows how Chinese immigrants in the USA cope with difficulties by adopting characteristics typical of the dominant gender models through strategies of compensation, deflection, and denial. In practising compensation, men work on an athletic body, which is supposed to be a realisation of the power attributed to hegemonic masculinity (Chen 1999: 592). Deflection involves taking action to challenge the negative stereotypes permeating the host societies (Chen 1999: 593). Among these activities, Chen distinguishes career-oriented practices, the multiplication of economic capital or, in general, the accumulation of various resources to symbolise power, prestige and strength. Denial, on the other hand, involves separation from the stereotyped group (Chen 1999: 595). In a certain sense, the denial strategy corresponds to the practices of hybrid masculinity that build on separation from some of the meanings ascribed to hegemonic masculinity (Bridges and Pascoe 2014). Men whose social conditions hinder or prevent them from achieving patriarchal domination express hybrid masculinity to negotiate with local valorised masculinities. However, whereas the practice of denial as described by Chen emphasises minorities’ assimilation of the dominant gender models, the essence of hybrid masculinity is also “strategic borrowing” and selective appropriation of subordinated and marginalised characteristics such as emotionality or vulnerability. For example, hybrid masculinities include elements associated with non-heteronormative masculinities, or femininities accompanied by a simultaneous selective distancing from hegemonic masculinities (Arxer 2011; Barry and Weiner 2019; Bridges and Pascoe 2014; Diefendorf 2015). While some interpretations point to an egalitarian role of hybrid masculinity, it is widely recognised by scholars that the inclusion of rules associated with marginalised and subordinated categories is a strategy that helps to restore men’s social status, promote hegemonic masculinity, and reclaim white, heterosexual, masculine privilege (Bridges and Pascoe 2014; Demetriou 2001; Eisen and Yamashita 2019; Hirose and Kei-ho Pih 2010).

Conceptualising masculinity as a social institution is particularly useful for capturing the process of using meanings from a transnational context to reconstruct gender. An institutional conception of masculinity implies that masculinity stems from a recursive relationship of the social rules and practices taking place in a community. Viewing gender as a social institution is not new (e.g., Leszczyńska 2019; Lorber 1994; Martin 2004). However, most institutional gender theories focus primarily on the social practices that sustain gender rules. They acknowledge that gender is subject to change, but do not explain the mechanisms of these changes. Drawing on “new institutionalism” (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977), we aim to fill this gap. New institutional theory appears to include tenets that address multiple scales of social life. This theory explains social institutions as sets of social practices and formal and informal rules that social actors interpret. We contend that masculinity is a social institution and, like other institutions, is subject to processes of isomorphism. Isomorphism refers to the dependence of institutional rules and social practices on their institutional environment. This dependence may manifest itself in imitating the institutional environment and thus taking over the rules that constitute them. It emerges primarily as a response to the uncertainty of the environment outside of institutions and is the result of social actors seeking proven and effective solutions and gaining their legitimacy (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). An example of institutional isomorphism is the situation in which the Catholic Church, with its patriarchal structure and norms, operates in an environment that is undergoing social change and placing the value of gender equality at its centre. In such an environment, egalitarianism and equal treatment are cherished values. In order to attract worshippers, the Catholic Church is beginning to emulate Protestant Churches, which have more progressive gender policies and more communal, less hierarchical structures. In such institutions, women are more likely to hold senior positions (such as chancellor or diocesan spokesperson). Similarly, Catholic institutions operating in more conservative and traditional settings are more likely to sustain their patriarchal power and clerical structure (Leszczyńska 2016). The reproduction of institutions in the changing conditions therefore follows the rules that have social recognition in the environment and is associated with those practices that have achieved relative stability in a given social space, as in the example above (when egalitarianism becomes a recognised rule in the community, it also begins to be practised within conservative institutions) (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977).

New institutionalists also emphasise that inclusion of various rules from the environment in the institution contributes to its heterogeneity. This can lead to the emergence of tensions and contradictions (Chmielewski 2011) in the rules that constitute an institution, resulting an internally incoherent social institution, that is, to mutually exclusive expectations on the part of social actors. This diversity of institutional rules is accompanied by different practices that social actors undertake to reduce or integrate different and contradictory rules and legitimise emerging inconsistencies. In our study, references to religion and the transcendental order are an important mechanism through which male migrants reconstruct models of masculinity. Such references reduce conflicted expectations and legitimise new emerging models of masculinity.

Existing studies confirm the significance of religion in constructing new masculinities and their relationship with the patriarchy, especially in communities associated with Protestantism (Aune 2010; Bartkowski and Hempel 2009; Dube 2014). Yet there are fewer analyses referring to the experiences of Catholic men, while research on masculinity and religion in transnational/migratory conditions is even scarcer, with the notable exception of studies on the practice of Catholicism by Italian American working-class males (Maldonado-Estrada 2020) or the religiosity of Catholic males from Western European (e.g., Irish, see Kelleher 2009) or Ibero-American societies (Heep 2014). A small number of studies support the conclusion that male migrants compensate for their exclusion in the host country by becoming involved in religious organisations focusing on their country of origin (e.g., George 2005). Contributing to this stream of research, we aim to analyse the meanings within masculinity with which Polish migrants identify.

Transnational Contexts of Polish Migrants’ Masculinity

Floya Anthias suggests that migrants have a presence in three distinct spaces: the society they migrated to, their homeland, and among other migrants. This highlights the complexity of migrant identities and their social connections across different contexts (Anthias 2002, 500). This description conveys well the situation of the migrants we studied. Compared to the receiving societies (English, Belgian and Swedish), Polish society at the time of our research was highly religious and Catholic. Even if the percentage of non-believers in Poland has grown in recent years, religiosity in the country remains at a much higher level than in Belgium, Sweden, or England (Pew Research Centre 2015). When we conducted our research, more than 80 percent of Poles defined themselves as believers, 94 percent of whom were Catholic. At the time there were 49 percent Catholics in Belgium, 19 percent in the UK and 2 percent in Sweden (Pew Research Center 2018a; 2018b). Although the devout Catholics in Poland constitute a diverse community (including people who identify with a conservative worldview as well as progressive ones, e.g., those who support access to abortion), the institutional Church in Poland is strongly patriarchal, anti-egalitarian (Leszczyńska 2019; Leszczyńska, Urbańska, and Zielińska 2020), and actively involved in anti-gender equality mobilisations among Poles (in Poland and also abroad) (Graff and Korolczuk 2021). Furthermore, Catholicism strongly intersects with the Polish national identity, with a widespread belief in Catholic discourse in Poland that being Polish is the same as being Catholic. This connection helps to solidify the essentialist gender models within the country and among Polish migrants (Fiałkowska 2020). As in other nationalist discourses, its Polish version ascribes femininity with caring and reproductive functions, whereas masculinity is linked with the imperative of heterosexuality and the role of defenders of the nation (Nagel 1998). With few exceptions, the Polish Catholic Church’s structures abroad (i.e., the organisations of the Polish Catholic Missions) in which our interviewees were involved (e.g., organising religious communities, mobilising religious men’s movements) also reproduce a religious-nationalist discourse. Meanwhile, structures such as parishes or dioceses of the Catholic Church in England, Belgium, and Sweden are characterised by ethno-cultural differentiation because Catholicism is becoming predominantly a religion of migrants from different ethnic groups and cultures, not only European (Krotofil 2013). Furthermore, the Catholic Churches in England, Belgium and Sweden operate in secularised and multicultural societies (Pew Research Centre 2015).

These three countries are also characterised by higher levels of gender and minority equality in their societies. As the Gender Gap Index shows, Poland has a much lower level of gender equality in various areas of life (such as: economic participation and opportunity or health and survival) than Belgium, the United Kingdom or Sweden. The local versions of Catholicism, including Church organisations in these countries, are also much more gender egalitarian and open to cultural diversity than Polish organisations (in parishes and dioceses in England, Belgium or Sweden, women are more likely to hold positions of authority or to be admitted to various religious functions, e.g., ministers of the sacraments) (Leszczyńska 2016; Leszczyńska, Urbańska, and Zielińska 2020). Weaker gender egalitarianism sustains the domination of conservative models of masculinity in Polish society (Graff and Korolczuk 2021). At the same time, there are differences with the practices of masculinity of Polish men (including migrants) (Bell and Pustułka 2017; Wojnicka and Nowicka 2022). However, despite the growing diversity, a model of masculinity based on power/domination, heteronormativity, and aggression still dominates (Fiałkowska 2020). It is reflected in the worldview of Polish society and is also reproduced by the teaching of the institutional Church in Poland. Polish men of different generations share the belief that “true masculinity” (normative masculinity) and traditional values (the perception of women’s roles as carers, nurturers, housewives and helpers, and men as breadwinners or caregivers for women and children) are under threat today (especially from so called “gender and LGBTQ + ideology,” which is identified with the LGBTQ + movement). Surveys have shown that there is widespread support among young Polish men for the traditional patriarchal family, with the dominant role of the man as the breadwinner and the woman as the nurturer of the household. A study from 2018 found that the model of such a family and of a men’s dominant role over women is supported by as many as 78 percent of men aged 18 to 39 living in Poland (Pacewicz and Jurszo 2019). Similarly, references to a model of family-dominant masculinity appear in the statements of the male migrants in our study.

The host society, Polish society, and the migrant diaspora constitute important contexts in which the masculinity of migrants engaged religiously, culturally and socially in Polish Catholic organisations is constructed. Apart from these contexts shaping the identities of Polish migrants, the global dimension cannot be forgotten. The global masculinity templates constructed by Christian activists from Europe and USA from anti-gender movements, also involved in building a backlash against gender equality (Graff and Korolczuk 2021), offer an additional dimension. The Men of Saint Joseph groups, to which which our interviewees belong, take actions that are expressions of opposition to progressive gender change. We write about this in the empirical part of the text. The model of religiously engaged masculinity to which Polish migrants refer has become increasingly popular in recent years in Christian movements (e.g., Promise Keepers), especially those stemming from Protestantism (Dube 2014; Harper 2012). Litmus tests for the model of masculinity typical of religious Christian male movements are practices of emotionally engaged fatherhood, the leadership role of the man in the family and sexual “purity.” These practices are justified by references to the sacred (Dube 2014). Line Nyhagen (2021) also points to the class dimension, as they are typical of white, heterosexual, middle-class men.

As we show in our analyses, Polish male migrants problematise their gender identities in reference to local gender models, social structures (such as social class), and the transnational context. They also discern their race and, as we show in following sections, reflect on their religious belonging. Therefore, we answer the question of what importance these different contexts (global, religious, national, transnational) have in the process of creating migrant masculinity. In other words, how do male migrants imitate meanings from the transnational context? We pay particular attention to references to religion, especially how Polish men legitimise the (re)produced model of masculinity, and what role religious beliefs and rules play in this process (e.g., references to the role of the sacred or religious practices in the construction of masculinity).

Methodology

The article draws upon in-depth interviews with Polish men engaged in the social, cultural and religious activities of Polish organisations of the Catholic Church in England, Belgium, and Sweden (32 lay and 15 ordained men) as well as data gathered in undisguised observation. These organisations are Polish Catholic Missions (hereafter PCMs). Coordinated by Polish priests, PCMs aim to maintain a religiosity among Polish migrants and to reinforce the national identity of Poles abroad. We conducted the research between 2016 and 2018 in several time sequences. In this article, we focus on what they have in common, i.e., what models of masculinity are dominant for Polish men living abroad and who is active in PCMs. The interviews we carried out were based on outlines divided into thematic blocks (concerning, inter alia, religious and gender topics). We analysed transcripts of interviews, recorded only with our interlocutors’ approval. We analysed the transcripts with a content analysis technique using MAXQDA 12 software (https://www.maxqda.com/).

We began looking for our interviewees for the research by analysing the websites of Polish structures of the Church operating abroad (such as Polish parishes and the rectorates and coordinators of PCMs) in the three countries. We conducted our research in the PCMs functioning in England (London), Sweden (Stockholm, Malmö, and Gothenburg), and Belgium (Brussels and Antwerp). This analysis of the websites led us to important social actors in the religious and social life of the Polish diaspora. After identifying the key individuals for our research, we approached them requesting an interview officially through traditional channels (post or telephone), or by email. We then expanded our sample using snowball sampling, making use of the contacts recommended by our interviewees. While conducting our research, we received permission to carry out the research from the heads of the PCMs in which our interlocutors were socially and religiously active.

Our interviewees were socially and religiously involved in PCM parishes. They either held official posts, regulated by state and Church law, or undertook informal activities determined by custom (e.g., organising informal charity activities). Most were relatively young (aged between 20 and 45). The key to selecting the men for interviews was their religious engagement in the Polish structures of the Catholic Church operating abroad (both full-time work in the PCM, but also activity in movements, communities, initiatives and various groups in the PCM). The majority of our interviewees had migrated after Poland’s accession to the European Union (after 2004), although there were also some participants who had arrived from Poland earlier (e.g., in the 1990s and even earlier). Most of the laymen in our sample were from the middle class in Poland, with secondary or higher education acquired there. They came from both large and smaller cities, but rarely from villages. In the host countries, the laymen held stable jobs, working as qualified specialists (pharmacists, architects, executives) or company owners. The priests we interviewed were usually parish priests in PCM parishes. Some of them had been performing this function for a short time (two or 3 years), but others had been parish priests abroad for over a dozen years. They were between 35 and 68 years old. In contrast, most of the lay men were relatively young (aged between 20 and 45).

The composition of our sample also reflects a division of class-based involvement within the organisations we studied. Whereas middle-class men were dominant in the male religious groups operating within the PCM (such as the Men of Saint Joseph), working-class males mainly worked physically for Polish churches as “handymen,” performed minor repairs, renovations, but were rarely engaged in the activities of religious groups (such as the Men of Saint Joseph), which were time-consuming.

Our positionality as female, Polish researchers also mattered because of the gender and nationality of our respondents. Identified symbolically as Poles, we were treated as familiar by our interviewees. Even if our personal attitudes to religion varied (non-religious/agnostic as well as “believing but not belonging”), our Catholic identity, by linking it with nationality, was usually taken for granted, and this further strengthened familiarity. Only occasionally were we asked about our religious identity, usually at a later state of the interviews when trust was already established, so our more distanced attitudes to religion did not impact the dynamics of the interviews. We talked to conservative Catholic men, descended from a patriarchal culture in which gender relations between men and women are still based largely on a relationship of domination and submission (Bourdieu 2001). The fact that we are women was both a limitation and a resource in our research (Wojnicka 2020). On the one hand, it could cause the men to distance themselves from us (however, we did not experience this, or our interlocutors did not express it to us directly). As we show below, the interviewees only considered a homosocial male community to be a safe space for the expression of masculinity in the group. On the other hand, our respondents willingly took on informant roles, explaining to us the world of migration, gender, and religion. We interpreted this as an expression of interest in our research. However, occasionally we also sensed that undertaking such an explanatory role can also be interpreted as condescending. Our reflection corresponds with Katarzyna Wojnicka’s observation (2020) that such attitudes are common for men from conservative masculinist movements who interact with female researchers.

The intersection of our national and gender identities also had a more subtle impact on the research process. By conducting interviews abroad in Polish, we activated not only the national identity shared with our interlocutors, but also models of femininity and masculinity embedded within Polish nationalistic discourses (Nagel 1998). In line with the nationalist discourses, our interlocutors defined us as Polish women, who are protective and trustworthy. They sometimes emphasised this after completing the interviews. Perhaps our respondents’ projection of these gendered characteristics onto us made them more willing to talk to us about their experiences of masculinity and gave us better access to empirical knowledge. As feminists, we did not want to reproduce the patriarchy by reinforcing gender stereotypes, but we did not discuss the validity of their attitudes towards/views on gender roles. Following Wojnicka’s (2020) suggestions, we prioritised access to knowledge about groups that are hermetic, which allowed us to better understand how the interviewees understand and interpret masculinity. None of our interlocutors asked us any questions about our views on gender or masculinity, which we perceived as symptomatic, a sign that they digest our worldview as taken for granted.

We present the results of our research below, retaining our interviewees’ anonymity. The names used in this report are fictitious, and all data that might reveal their identities has been removed.

Findings

In this section, we present the results of our analysis on how Polish migrants reproduce a model of hybrid masculinity. Our research reveals that migrant men religiously engaged in groups and movements or gainfully or charitably employed in PCMs construct a complex model of masculinity that refers to different contexts of transnational space. Contact with other cultures among Polish male migrants becomes an important determinant of isomorphism, which in the context of migration involves imitating gender patterns that are recognised as successful by male migrants in the transnational environment. Construction of a new model of masculinity involves a practice of “symbolic separation” (Bridges and Pascoe 2014) and detachment from selected gender meanings, practices and models perceived as non-normative. Among these models are patterns of masculinity that are non-religious, emotionally distanced from loved ones and not emotionally involved in the family or using violence. We discuss this symbolic separation below. However, building such a new model also involves inclusion of selective meanings from rejected models of masculinities that help to restore domination and power. Hence, included in this model are, firstly, meanings associated with the masculinity reproduced within religious groups connected to Protestantism. Secondly, the model includes meanings that the interviewees attribute to marginalised masculinities – ethnic (especially Muslim) and, indirectly, non-heteronormative. Thirdly, this model contains selected meanings attributed to traditional, hegemonic masculinity, such as struggle or strength. Our analysis shows that the meanings that our interviewees draw on intersect with class, race (whiteness) and ethnicity and are reinterpreted to construct this new model of masculinity. Religious views and values help to consolidate the new framework. We discuss this in more detail in the following subchapters.

Symbolic Separation of Models of Masculinity

The meanings of masculinity from which our interviewees distance themselves are connected to the model that our interlocutors called “traditional masculinity.” The interviewees saw the core of “traditional masculinity” as consisting of various attributes. In particular, these attributes are a focus on paid employment and the breadwinner role, emotional absence in the family, areligiosity, and also violence. The figure evoked by our interviewees to embody these meanings was the Polish male worker, a man working physically, indulging in “low” pastimes, as the interviewees phrased it, and concentrating on money rather than on building bonds or spiritual values. The typical Polish man, as Ryszard and Kosma from England stressed, was religiously “withdrawn.” He is a “macho” man and “slyboots,” who “stands outside the church.” He is also unable to build an emotional fellowship, especially with his family, and is the source of social dysfunctions. As one of our interlocutors, Bartosz, said, “90 percent of men in prison in Poland are there because their fathers left them when they were small children.”

Similarly, violence, not only in individual relations (e.g., towards women or children), but also as a characteristic of collective actions, constitutes a typical practice of traditional masculinity for the interviewees. In Polish migrant communities, as our interviewees in England noted – men who are skinheads or involved in militaristic male groups and who glorify war heroes that can be questioned for their violence towards minorities exemplify this model of masculinity. For our interviewees from England, this militant version of masculinity, seen as typical of manual workers abroad, was a way to compensate for various deficits and post-emigration “frustrations.” These frustrations, they thought, resulted from class exclusion and the increase in women’s independence abroad. According to one priest from England critical of nationalist upsurges in the Polish diaspora, skinheads were predominately “builders and bricklayers.” Many of the participants in our research distanced themselves from such violent military masculinity. Other research confirms that this model of aggressive masculinity in the name of a narrow understanding of ethnicity has been an accepted gender norm among Polish migrants for decades, especially among the older generations (Garapich 2009). Its rejection, as observed in our research, can be explained by the intersection of this model with the lower social class that contradicts our interviewees’ own middle-class aspirations.

Another model of masculinity from which our interlocutors symbolically separated themselves was the white masculinities of the receiving countries (and more broadly, Western Europe). As this model, due to migrant positioning, is not (yet) available to our interviewees, they discredit it. Such masculinities are attributed with unvalued progressivism and moral liberalism as well as with non-heterosexuality. This linking helps migrants to further strengthen their separation from such devalued white masculinities. Simultaneously, as we show below, selective identification with white masculinities was an important mechanism of building racial identity for the migrants in relation to what they imagine as Muslim masculinity in Europe.

New Inspirations – Religiously, Emotionally and Socially Engaged Masculinity

The collected material also shows that masculinities reproduced by Polish migrant men imitate the models practised by religious men in recent decades in groups associated with Protestantism in the United Kingdom and United States. As, for example, Paweł from Belgium and Aleksander from England noted, their new post-migration masculinity is inspired not only by the actions of religious activists from the global Catholic men’s movement, the Men of Saint Joseph, but also by the activity of the Promise Keepers, a mythopoetic, Protestant community of men who were invited by the leaders of the movement to Polish parishes in England. The activity of these groups is geared toward building a strong, religious masculinity in opposition to both the liberal processes of egalitarianism (such as gender equality) and non-religious traditional models of masculinity (such as the man being the breadwinner but earning a living through manual labour). An important element of masculinity reproduced by these groups is male emotionality and male bonding.

Although these movements have developed in recent years in Poland, our interlocutors only became interested in them after emigrating. The sources in which the migrants seek inspiration for the construction of masculinity are guidebooks and American films (e.g., Courageous, Fireproof), or workshops for religious men. As Aleksander said:

[…] he [an activist from Promise Keepers] told us that as men we are the apostles of Christ […] we should simply expand these groups, as through these groups, men find their identity, they find what they are for the Church, that they should be pillars of the Church. I myself was very distanced, always in the back row, not very involved. And these are amazing things that the Men of Saint Joseph group did to me, that I suddenly began to get involved, that we suddenly started to open up to new groups, first in [city in England]. (Aleksander)

Alexander, a male migrant, has thus only just started to participate in collective prayers, Stations of the Cross services, religious group meetings on masculinity and religiosity, organised by the Men of Saint Joseph. It was the influence of these activities, he notes, that led him to begin to change his understanding of masculinity. The experience of migration among the Polish men interviewed therefore transforms not only their religious identity, but also their notion and practice of masculinity. Our interviewees encountered religions other than their own and different gender roles which stimulated their self-reflection on models of masculinity.

In the process of changing the construction of masculinity among migrants, religious conversion plays a major role. This was especially visible among Polish men in England, as well as some young men in Belgium and one in Sweden. Out of 17 laymen in England we talked to, only three identified as believers before leaving Poland. The majority of our interlocutors described themselves from the time before emigration as “distanced to religion and the Church” and/or as “atheists and anti-clericals.” Our respondents therefore separate themselves from a model of non-religious and emotionally distanced masculinity, identifying with a new model that is religiously, emotionally and socially engaged. This new model is one whose characteristics coincide with what Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) define or refer to as emphasised femininity.

With the transformation of masculinity comes a renegotiation of the understanding of agency in the experience of our interviewees. In many patriarchal systems, hegemonic masculinity is characterised by self-determination and independent action, which derive their power from an individualistic understanding of the subject, who is understood as the source of causation. Agency is thus inscribed in masculinity (Adamiak 1999). Meanwhile, the models of femininity in many traditional religions (Catholicism, Judaism or Islam) entail a vision of agency derived from the sacred/God. The source of this causality is thus beyond the human (Avishai 2008). However, our interviewees – secular religious men – locate their causality primarily in a sacred and transcendent reality, rather than in the self, understood as an autonomous subject. The men interviewed thus experience causality in a way that patriarchal religions attribute to femininity.

The migrants’ inclusion of meanings traditionally assigned to femininity in the model of masculinity was also accompanied by their reinterpretation. Their religious conversion itself, although it leads to attaining the attributes traditionally associated with emphasised femininity, takes place in a “manly” way. An example of the migrant reconstruction of masculinity as a result of a religious conversion can be found in Krystian’s statement on his conversion from being a “militant anticlerical” and atheist to becoming a “true man of God.” This transformation of masculinity is metaphorised through references to physical acts – he “smashes” and cuts the “shackles of the old life.”

Boom, it changed [after emigration]. Previously [in Poland] there were parties, and even militant anticlericalism. And then suddenly there it is. Out of atheists, here we turned into real men of God. […] When I gave my life to Jesus – truly, and not just some priest saying “give your life to Jesus” – everyone repeats the phrase. It was like I spoke to Him myself, that’s what I call it: man to man, like men we chatted and then there was a breakthrough, everything started to change, smash, all the shackles of the old life, and then I was baptised in the Holy Spirit, just a complete change. (Krystian, England)

Thus, dichotomous models of masculinity emerge from the statements – from atheism pre-migration to converted and religious post-migration. Many of our interviewees’ stories about the transformation in masculinity that took place after emigration reflected a tension between the pre-migration, traditional and new model for the men. This is a tension between rationality, hedonism and hypersexuality representing the traditional model, and faith, engagement, emotionality, and sexual abstinence representing the new model. In various patriarchal systems, the former attributes are typical of hegemonic masculinity, while the latter group are often associated with femininity (Smith et al. 2015).

Sexuality is an important element in models of masculinity and also appears as a significant element in our interviewees’ statements about their male experiences. The interviewees talked about experiences of migration and religious commitment as having transformed men’s attitudes towards the body and sexual pleasure, but also changed their attitudes towards women. For example, Krzysztof and Krystian described their masculinity prior to their religious transformation as “completely tainted,” “debauched,” and “impure.” “Impurity” in their statements meant “promiscuity,” masturbation, and pornography. The new model of masculinity according to the interviewees distances men from such impurity, but also, in their view, from gender violence. For the men, the practices of this new model include fatherhood and marriage, providing a woman and children with not only economic means but also emotional security. It entails an apparent renegotiation of the broader gender system and patriarchy by breaking – at least in declarative terms – with male aggression and violence against women. Yet this does not mean that the new model is egalitarian from a gender point of view, as it is still based on differences understood in essentialistic and hierarchical terms. Although our interlocutors include characteristics stereotypically associated with femininity in their construction of masculinity, at the same time, as we will show below, they strengthen patriarchal definitions of it through, for example, references to physical strength and male spiritual power. The new model of masculinity that religious men are constructing can be interpreted as potentially improving the situation for women, because an important feature of it is the rejection of violence against women. This is how Bartosz from England described the transformation of masculinity experienced by a Polish man from the Men of Saint Joseph group in a Polish church: “He went into the church and was healed. It hit him. He began calling his girlfriend [and apologising], whom he had previously treated like a floor cloth.”

Men’s religious groups play a central role in the reproduction of new masculinity after emigration among the interviewees. Such groups, notably the Men of Saint Joseph, are particularly starting up within the PCMs in England, although they also have an admittedly weak presence in the other two countries. In England, there were 14 such groups in Polish parishes in London alone at the time of the research, and nearly 30 in England as a whole. In Belgium and Sweden, there were religious men’s groups, but not under the banner of Men of Saint Joseph, and they were not as popular as in England. The objective of men’s religious groups is male initiation into “new” masculinity, causing “men to return to their place, to grow as better parents, better fathers, husbands,” as Bartosz from England said. Such communities therefore mediate in the transformation of the traditional model (during group meetings, prayers, various rituals, and other collective activities), and become a place of expression. In groups, our interviewees share their weaknesses and learn to cry, thereby challenging the model associated with traditional masculinity in which men do not show emotion, including sadness. As our interlocutors said, men in male religious groups “teach” masculinity; they are “brothers” who build emotional bonds (Kosma, England), talk about the “male heart” (Aleksander, England) and “masculine tenderness,” spiritually “embrace” and “give strength” (Krzysztof, England).

As illustrated above, our interviewees incorporate traits such as emotionality or male bond-building into the pattern of masculinity, also by drawing inspiration from the Protestantism they encountered in exile. This incorporation of traits can be read in terms of isomorphism, which is the imitation by an institution (in this case, the institution of masculinity) of phenomena from the environment. The isomorphism of rules from the context is not a simple reflection of the environment, but is accompanied by processes of interpretation, symbolic selection, and consequently hybridisation, undertaken by the people reproducing the institution. The model of masculinity reproduced by male migrants incorporates competing, and even potentially contradictory meanings. The masculinity of Polish migrants thus becomes more a heterogeneous conglomerate of rules and practices than a homogeneous model. Religion plays a particular role in this process of constructing of masculinity, in both its symbolic and the structural dimension, by becoming a tool for male migrants to legitimise and validate this complex set of meanings of masculinity.

The Image of Muslim Masculinity as an Inspiration for Hybrid Masculinity of Polish Migrant Men

Our interviewees include in their model of masculinity not only practices and meanings of Protestant masculinity – and indirectly also femininity – but also meanings associated with masculinities from ethnic and religious minorities. One reservoir of meanings from which the male migrants draw is the masculinity attributed to Islam, often shaped by Islamophobic and colonial discourses widespread in Poland (Bobako 2018). This practice of reconstructing the model of masculinity is based on selection of meanings. Some of the elements of masculinity that the interlocutors attribute to Islam are incorporated into their model of masculinity, while they disavow other elements, such as race and ethnicity, becoming attributes of Europe’s “Other.”

An important element of the new masculinity for male migrants is fatherhood and emotional involvement in the family. The model of masculinity prescribes that the male migrant should be a protector materially and emotionally “responsible for his wife” and actively engaged in raising their children. He “guides the children to the Church” (Ryszard, England), teaches them prayers and love for God (Paweł, Belgium), kneels at home (Łukasz, Sweden), and converts the whole family (Darek, Belgium, Aleksander, England). Although this model of emotionally engaged masculinity has its roots in the Protestant teachings of the Promise Keepers, in interviews with our research participants the perceptions of the Muslim model of fatherhood is also an important frame of reference in constructing this model. As Ryszard says, “in Islam the men pull the families to the Church, not the women. Mostly men. They lead their families there, and it should be like that in Catholicism, because historically it was men who led their families towards the Lord. And that is a good direction” (Ryszard, England). Migrants imitate images of Muslim men’s religious involvement in public spaces (e.g., public religious practices or religious instruction). Bogusław, though critical of multiculturalism, finds a model of male religious engagement in the practices that he sees as typical of Muslim men in Europe.

I’ve met people here who finally proved to me that “man, either you’re a believer or not, you should be proud of it, and not hide it and be pious in the church and then leave incognito.” No, we’re not incognito, and regarding Islam, in a sense we could really learn from them, this flaunting your faith, the 100 percent engagement, regardless of whether you’re in your place of worship at 1 p.m. and so on, or simply on the street, suddenly it’s time and you go on your knees on the street and couldn’t care less. In a sense that is something we don’t have. (Bogusław, England)

Thus, the identification and idealisation of Muslim masculinity among male migrants is distinctive, but also variable. As Kamila Fiałkowska (2020) writes, in the rival migrant masculinity market, competing for work and a higher social position, Poles “win” over other ethno-nations of migrants by building relations with Brits based on the category of race (whiteness) and religion (Christianity, in opposition to non-European Muslim migrants). As Fiałkowska writes, and our research confirms, while such racial-religious identifications among male migrants can be read as symbolic bridges leading Polish men to the culture of their host country, gender identifications of Polish males with Muslim male migrants in Western Europe are more problematic (Fiałkowska 2020). Our interviewees interpret Western European masculinities as liberal and debauched. As a result, they in fact build such symbolic bridges with imagined figures of the Muslim male, whom they perceive as guardians of the “natural” gender order, protecting against progressive changes. The Polish men that we interviewed therefore start to form ties of similarity with Muslim men. An example of such a symbolic or multicultural bridge, created by the notion of a “good Muslim,” is also introduced by one interlocutor from Belgium, a former participant in a Polish nationalist organisation, which he separated from to disassociate himself from the antisemitism he believed it promoted: “We have a Muslim friend, a very good person […] There are not many Catholics who are such good husbands. I think that as a Muslim, he is a very good person” (Kamil, Belgium).

Our research shows that divergent images of Islam prevail among male migrants. As we mentioned above, the new model of hybrid masculinity among male migrants eschews violence. Their frame of reference is the Islamophobic image of Islam, which they define as foreign to Europe, its negation, and a threat. In the male migrants’ opinion, the Islamophobic threat mainly concerns women, human rights, and gender equality. Interestingly, our respondents do not identify themselves with such values, often viewing them as a distortion of true European values. In relation to Islam, however, the respondents acquire the status of markers of Europeanness, allowing them to distinguish themselves from Muslim “others.” The female body, according to our interviewees, becomes the main arena for the struggle for power between the new Polish masculinity and that of Islam. On the one hand, Polish men position themselves as defenders of women’s autonomy, but on the other hand, they reproduce the patriarchal rules of the female body, treating it as male property and an object for male pleasure, that is serving the male view and gaze. This positioning of themselves as defender and simultaneous objectification of the female body is evident in Marcin’s statement:

They [Muslim men] patrol at night. There are districts where there are prostitutes on the streets; there, it’s OK. But I heard of various cases, where just by being present they almost chase away, right, girls on the street. But sometimes they [the girls?] get beaten up by Muslims, or people drinking alcohol on the street get harassed, or scantily dressed girls get called “sluts.” […] I don’t necessarily want a half-naked girl prancing around when I’m walking with my son. Without my son, I wouldn’t mind [laughs] but, in general, a girl dressed in a short skirt, and she feels threatened because there are Muslims [men] standing there trying to impose on them. (Marcin, England)

Marcin constructs an image of Islamic masculinity as being at odds with progressive ideas, such as the emancipation of women. Many of our interlocutors also orientalise the masculinity of Islam, assigning exotic and irrational characteristics to it and presenting Islam as uniform, non-European, and wild. At the heart of this Islamophobic image for the male migrants lies their perceived opposition between the European “civilised world” and the world beyond. Such a homogeneous image of Islam, in which they do not mention Muslim diversity (e.g., Polish Tatars), reproduces the belief in the immutability of the aforementioned binary division between the civilised, progressive world of Europe and the non-progressive world of Islam, represented by Muslim migrants (Bobako 2018). This distancing to the purported masculinity of Islam among the interviewees, contrasted with them finding similarity with “European masculinity,” is visible in the comments of Józef from England: “It is different [masculinity]. Let’s say other European countries. I have Italian colleagues, Hungarian colleagues at work, colleagues from various countries in Europe who also have a different culture, but still, they are similar, and we share, talk about things.” However, as we discuss further below, this Europe versus Islam binarism that our respondents speak of is a volatile one that serves to legitimise the new hybrid pattern of masculinity among male migrants.

Post-Migration Legitimation of Masculinity

By adopting the characteristics attributed to Protestant masculinity, femininity, and Islam, the male migrants construct a “new” masculinity. As a result of isomorphism, they assimilated meanings that have previously been marginal to them, and thus masculinity becomes heterogeneous, constructed from often conflicting meanings. The new masculinity, therefore, requires a legitimacy that gives credence to its existence. In this model, as we see, the interviewees discredit the practices and meanings of traditional masculinity that helped them to distinguish it from femininity (including physical strength and aggression), while incorporating stereotypically ascribed femininity (such as emotionality, religiosity). Hybrid masculinity is therefore not given to men, but is acquired, and must be proven. In order to prove their masculinity, men have to pass various tests of courage. These are challenges related to both physical endurance (the long night of the Stations of the Cross) and social commitment (many hours of evangelisation on a busy street in the city centre). Legitimation of masculinity takes place in reference to the host society, male religious communities, and one’s own ethnic group. These tests allow the Polish male migrants to be incorporated into a new masculine community. Yet this incorporation is not a one-off event – the hybrid status of new masculinity requires constant confirmation by male migrants, and religion plays a unique role in the process of legitimising such masculinity.

For male migrants, the process of legitimisation of new masculinity utilises traditional domains (such as such as physical strength or courage), which are reinterpreted. One such domain is battles and the associated topos of the warrior, who uses strength and spiritual courage. An important recurring motif in the statements is the image of the battle that is taking place in the world. However, the battlefield is not physical, but metaphysical, spiritual; the fight between good and evil. The battle is against temptations, sin, and weaknesses (Krzysztof, England, Łukasz, Sweden). The main weapon in the fight among good and evil is empowering prayer. An example of the spiritual warrior for our interlocutors is Jesus Christ, whom they contrast with aggressive models. Łukasz from Sweden, in the following statement, contrasts religious masculinity with two topoi – those of the macho “muscle man” and the pop culture “Romeo”:

I’ve only just discovered what masculinity is. It is not a biceps or another muscle floating around. […] So, because a guy, if he doesn’t relate his masculinity to the masculinity of Christ, who never hit anyone yet is the most masculine guy in the world, everyone would want a husband like that. […] So, if a guy doesn’t have a model – look at Antonio Banderas, with his hair treatment, unbuttoned shirt showing his chest, and thinks he’s manly. Shove someone up against a wall, or kick them or whatever, and you’re manly. But that is not manly at all. Masculinity is the strength to battle temptations. (Łukasz, Sweden)

As Łukasz’s statement shows, masculinity is a spiritual force that men use to fight sinfulness and weaknesses. But the battlefield in which male migrants engage is sometimes more precisely defined. The battlefield is contemporary European culture associated with Western countries. Our interlocutors regard contemporary European culture, including the liberalisation of lifestyles in migrant communities, secularisation, as well as emancipation of women and the LGBTQ + community, as spiritual threats. Bogusław from England goes so far as to call London a “satanic city,” in which “there is not much room for God; the streets are all ‘multiculti.’” The problem, in his view, is the city’s “excessive” tolerance, where the norm is “weirdos on the streets” and Muslims. Therefore, although the men of Islam are becoming a coalition partner for Polish migrant men in the struggle with progressivism, paradoxically, the same Polish men portray Islam itself as a threat, which Polish Catholics want to face up to in the spiritual battle.

Examples of actions taken by our interviewees and interpreted in terms of a spiritual struggle or battle are collective practices in the public sphere, including protests and prayers outside abortion clinics. Our interviewees also undertook proselytising campaigns on London’s busy Oxford Street. Another example of spiritual battles that aim to fight secularisation and liberalisation in contemporary Europe is Extreme Ways of the Cross, in which Polish men, including many of our interviewees, undertake exhausting walks in cities and elsewhere (on mountains and cliffs). The purpose of the Extreme Way of the Cross, the interviewees said, is to face one’s own physical and spiritual weaknesses, to meditate and pray to help males out of their crisis of masculinity and to experience a service for the conversion of another man. During these walks, which usually take place at night, participants sing, carry crosses, and recite the Rosary with various intentions in mind, including the religious conversion of Polish and English men and of secularised Europe into Christian Europe. These hikes demand physical effort and become a way for the men, including our interviewees, to toughen their bodies and discipline their masculinity.

The Polish men’s spiritual battle to validate masculinity encompasses not only Europe, but also Christian Churches (Anglican, Lutheran), including the local Catholic Church in England. Mirosław from England said that English Catholicism is morally dubious and damaged by political correctness, and therefore should be fought for. Similar descriptions are given of the Belgian Church by Darek and Damian from Belgium, who say that Belgian Catholicism is degrading the sacred – as demonstrated by lectors reading from tablets, for example. The interviewees refer to Protestantism in Sweden as a sect and see Anglicanism as depraved and in need of a spiritual fight. According to Krystian in England, by disavowing the Virgin Mary, Protestant tradition becomes false. According to the interviewees, the aim of the Polish men is to fight against the secularisation, depravity and demoralisation of Christianity. Although our interviewees draw on the Protestant masculinity model (and the previously mentioned Promise Keepers movement), they simultaneously separate themselves from Protestantism. The Polish men therefore refer to themselves as “men of God,” “soldiers defending Mary” (Krystian, England), “armed with God’s weapon,” which is public prayer, and the “helmet and sword of salvation” (Bartosz, England).

The spiritual battle is also to include local Catholicism which, according to Krystian and Ryszard from England, requires spiritual reformation and evangelisation. The objective of the men’s battlefield activities is to expand Polish Catholicism and attract people to what Krystian calls “the right” tradition, which rejects progressivism and liberalism in religion. Ryszard, meanwhile, talks about his plans for the future in the Polish parishes, foreseeing the inclusion of the local PCM in the English parish, which could provide an opportunity to evangelise the English.

Legitimation of the new masculinity among the male migrants took place not only in regard to the societies and religions of their host countries, but also in relation to the Polish national community. Some of our interviewees were actively involved in religious-national groups, such as the Catholic Kingdom of Polish Knights (Militia Regni Poloniae). However, our interviewees distanced themselves from radical right-wing groups associated with violence in the public sphere (including Polish skinheads). At the same time, the men perceived the role of Poles in Europe in terms of a messianic-nationalist discourse, stemming from the Romantic ideology developed in eighteenth-century Poland. At the centre of this doctrine was the belief in the moral superiority of Poland, which was to be the Christ of Europe (that is, called by God to save other nations) (Janion 2000). However, Polish migrants’ reproduction of masculinity is associated not so much with aggression or political mobilisation in the name of ethnic interests as with a moral battle for the Polish nation (Krzysztof, England).

Concluding Remarks

The masculinity reproduced by the Polish migrant men we interviewed is built on both its separation from the meanings attached to various gender models and inclusion of them. The men distance themselves from the models they considered to represent traditional, liberal, or Muslim masculinities, while at the same time selectively imitating and reinterpreting them. Religion played a distinct role in the men’s process of isomorphic imitation of masculinity models from the transnational context, embedding these appropriated meanings and practices of masculinity in the sacred order. The strength they connected with traditional masculinity, engagement in the family associated with Islam, and criticism of violence towards women typical of liberal models became attributes of their new masculinity, while also being reinterpreted by them. At the same time, religion sets a demarcation line for Polish migrants that separates their own masculinity from other gender categories, despite appropriating some of the meanings ascribed to them. Religion then becomes a mechanism of social segregation and a tool of a kind of gender mobility for the migrant men that lifts their Polish masculinity to positions that are dominant in the symbolic gender order. In the post-migration experience, Polish men consider other masculinities as insufficient or threatening. Meanwhile, the sacredly legitimised masculinity of Polish migrants gains credibility, in their opinion, as the only tool that helps the men to cope with threats to the Catholic moral order. These references to other gender models, which the men isomorphically imitated and incorporated, and from which they have separated, become the core of the masculinity they created but also a potential for changing patterns of masculinity.

This isomorphism has complex ramifications. Including meanings from a complex environment, as the male migrants did, makes masculinity more flexible, but may also contribute to strengthening patterns of masculinity that actually oppose cultural and gender diversity. The effect of isomorphism is to construct context-adaptive masculinity. Such masculinity, as illustrated in our interviews with male migrants, may therefore exclude ethnic minorities, LGBTQ + communities, women and men who do not fit the reproduced model. By building diverse symbolic coalitions – with the masculinity of Islam against secularisation or against Islam with liberal masculinities – the male migrant’s model of masculinity gains dynamism and flexibility. At the same time, it produces gendered power relations that require the constant confirmation and legitimation that their religion provides. It is worth asking whether in a different context, e.g., a non-religious community, the function of legitimiser offering credibility to the new patterns of hybrid masculinity could be fulfilled by an entirely separate phenomenon, e.g., an ideology.

Additionally, it is worth considering the new masculinity’s potential to build more egalitarian gender relations. Seemingly, this model mimics the progressive patterns of masculinity’s distance from violence against women and transfers emotional, caring practices to men. By imitating different masculinity practices from the environment and incorporating different meanings of masculinity, the pattern of masculinity undergoes change. However, the basis of this model views gender difference in essentialist, dichotomous, and androcentric terms, strengthening the patriarchy and legitimising male domination. One of the practices that constitute the new masculinity model is the incorporation of meanings hitherto excluded from hegemonic masculinity. Yet one could say that this isomorphic inclusion is “predatory” towards the categories used by the “new” masculinity. It is also telling that the attributes “absorbed” by the men into their new masculinity model tend to reinforce male power in various systems – family, national, or religious. Masculinity closer to the sacred gains supernatural legitimisation for migrant men – its power deriving from this legitimacy that is not only material but also spiritual.

The model constructed by male migrants does not renegotiate relations within a gender order/regime but only expands the masculinity model conceptually. Therefore, we can recognise this model reproduced by migrants as the realisation of hegemonic masculinity. As Demetriou (2001) writes, the hegemonic model is not a closed set of characteristics, but it changes depending on the context in order to sustain male domination. In our view, the model of masculinity reconstructed by the male Polish migrants is a kind of strategy seeking to reproduce the patriarchy and not to change it – not only in the context of migration, but also in the face of global changes to gender orders such as egalitarisation. As a result, by including religion and references to meanings from the sacred sphere, the hybrid masculinity reproduced by the migrant men supports the existence of male hegemony, albeit in a renewed form.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our colleagues from the Faculty of Humanities of AGH University in Krakow, Faculty of Sociology of the University of Warsaw, the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, for their comments on the research results, and to Ben Koschalka for copy editing and translating.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Science Centre in Poland (2014/14/E/HS6/00327).

ORCID iDs

Katarzyna Leszczyńska

Katarzyna Zielińska

Author Biographies

Katarzyna Leszczyńska is Associate Professor at the AGH University of Krakow, at the Faculty of Humanities. Her research focuses on the relationship of gender and social institutions. Author and co-author of books (in Polish) e.g., Gender entangled institutions, 2016, Scholar; Beyond Borders. Gender in Catholic Migration Organisations, 2020, Nomos, and articles in Polish and international academic journals, e.g., in: Journal of Contemporary Religion, Gender, Place & Culture, Polish Sociological Review, Central and East European Migration Review. She is currently team leader of the team implementing the Gender Equality Plan for AGH University. She is also the leader of a Polish team that, as part of a consortium of research institutions from Europe, is conducting the project “NEXUS. Twinning Research and Innovation Institutions to Design and Implement Inclusive GEPs” funded by the European Commission's Horizon Europe program.

Katarzyna Zielińska is Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her academic interests focus on intersection of religion, gender and politics. She has published numerous articles in Polish and international academic journals (e.g., East European Politics and Societies, Religion, Gender, Place & Culture, Journal of Contemporary Religion, State and Society, Culture, Health and Sexuality), (co-)authored three monographs in Polish (Beyond Borders. Gender in Catholic Migration Organisations 2020, Nomos; The Struggle for Hegemony? Religion in the Polish Public Sphere – the Example of Parliamentary Debates, 2018, Jagiellonian University Press; Debates on Secularization Theories, 2009, Nomos) and co-edited a few multi-authored volumes.

Sylwia Urbańska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. Her speciality is sociology of the family and gender studies; she studies social changes in the context of migrations and rural communities. Her articles have appeared in academic journals, e.g., Gender, Place & Culture, Journal of Contemporary Religion, Central and Eastern Migration Review, Qualitative Sociology Review, LUD. She published books (in Polish) e.g.,: Beyond Borders. Gender in Catholic Migration Organisations, 2020, Nomos; The Polish Mother from a Distance: Experiences of Migratory Workers, 1989–2010, 2015, Monografie FNP series, and in the collections Farewell to the Polish Mother (2012).

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