Entering the Final Year: Reflections from a Four-Year Study of Migrant Children in Polish Schools

As I enter the final year of a four-year research project on migrant children in Polish schools, I find myself pausing more deliberately—both in the field and at my desk. Looking back is no longer simply a matter of summarizing findings; it has become a way of noticing what took time to come into focus. This moment of reflection allows me to consider not only what I have learned, but also how my understanding of integration, inclusion, belonging, and schooling has shifted over the course of the research.

Over four years of interviews, classroom observations, and conversations with teachers, parents, and children, I have witnessed both remarkable resilience and persistent structural constraints. What has become increasingly clear to me is that “integration” is not a stable endpoint but an uneven, relational process—one that unfolds differently across schools and is shaped as much by institutional priorities and public narratives as by children’s own efforts.

Diversity, Hierarchies, and Uneven Visibility

Early in the project, I was struck by the growing diversity of migrant children attending schools in Poznań, Wrocław, and Kalisz, the three sites of our research. The students I met came from a relatively wide range of countries and migration trajectories. Some had fled war or political instability; others came with parents who secured a job in Poland. Their educational trajectories varied considerably, from uninterrupted schooling in one place to attending schools in more than one country.

As the research progressed, however, I began to notice a pattern in how this diversity was being recognized. In many schools, particularly after 2022, children from Ukraine became the most visible reference point for “migrant students.” In interviews, training materials, and everyday conversations, their experiences were often used—implicitly—as the model around which inclusion efforts were organized.

While this focus reflects genuine need and urgency, I observed how it also produced blind spots. Children from other countries, especially those whose migration trajectories were less publicly recognized or whose linguistic repertoires extended beyond Polish, Ukrainian, or Russian, were more likely to fall outside targeted support structures. Their needs were present, but less easily named.

This uneven visibility did not appear to result from indifference. Rather, it emerged from how schools respond to numbers, proximity, and dominant public narratives. Recognizing this dynamic has been one of the more uncomfortable, but necessary, realizations of the project.

Language, Learning, and What Children Already Know

Language quickly emerged as a central theme in our fieldwork. For most migrant children I encountered, Polish was a new language, and their access to learning, peer relationships, and recognition in the classroom depended heavily on how quickly they were able—or expected—to acquire it.

I repeatedly observed that children who received early and sustained language support were better positioned to participate across subjects. At the same time, I became increasingly aware of how language support was framed almost entirely in terms of deficit: what children lacked in Polish proficiency. This framing was particularly limiting for students whose languages were not institutionally recognized or supported.

In classrooms, however, children often worked otherwise. I watched students quietly translate tasks for one another, switch between languages when explaining a concept, or rely on gestures, drawings, and shared understandings to participate. These practices unfolded largely beneath the instructional radar. Most teachers were unfamiliar with translanguaging as a pedagogical concept and, in many cases, viewed the use of languages other than Polish with hesitation or concern. When space was made for multilingual practices—such as permitting multilingual note-taking or allowing peer explanation across languages—it tended to be tacit and situational rather than deliberate, rarely articulated as a legitimate or valued teaching strategy. Attending to these moments over time, translanguaging became visible to me not as a method introduced from above, but as a practice already embedded in classroom life, prompting me to rethink learning not as a linear progression toward Polish-only competence but as a process grounded in children’s full linguistic repertoires.

Teachers Working at the Edges of the System

Teachers featured prominently in my interviews because they were positioned at the center of an expectation that migrant children should learn Polish quickly and “catch up” academically. Yet many teachers had little to no training in teaching Polish as a second language. Subject-matter teachers, in particular, were often unprepared to adapt their lessons for students still developing basic language skills. In practice, children were expected to participate fully in standard classroom instruction while learning Polish largely through immersion, without structured support.

In one school, I observed lessons where storytelling, visual materials, and collaborative work allowed multiple points of entry into the curriculum. These practices supported migrant children, but they also reshaped classroom dynamics more broadly. At the same time, many teachers spoke openly to me about exhaustion and uncertainty. They were expected to respond to increasing diversity with limited guidance and resources, relying largely on personal commitment.

Belonging Beyond Academic Achievement

What children did outside formal lessons often mattered just as much as what happened during class. In informal conversations and observations during breaks, I saw how friendships—or their absence—shaped children’s sense of belonging.

Academic learning was only one dimension of migrant children’s school experience. Social integration also depended on access to informal school spaces—clubs, sports, arts, and other extracurricular activities. Yet in many schools, migrant children were discouraged from participating in school-based extracurricular programs. Their limited Polish was often cited as the reason, even when the activity did not require advanced language skills. I heard children push back against this logic. One girl argued, for example, that to be in a choir “you don’t need to speak perfect Polish—opera singers sing in many languages without speaking them.” Despite such arguments, the school’s attitude often left families with little choice but to seek extracurricular opportunities outside the school system, in community programs or private clubs.

Families in the Background—and the Foreground

Families of migrant children often faced obstacles that extended beyond the classroom—economic strain, unfamiliarity with the education system, and language barriers that limited their ability to engage. While interpretation was not required by law, some schools did provide support through intercultural assistants. However, these assistants were primarily available to Ukrainian families, leaving many other migrant parents without translation or interpretation resources. In schools where deliberate efforts were made—through interpreters, translated materials, or regular communication—parents spoke of feeling more confident and included. These encounters reminded me that family engagement is not peripheral to inclusion, but central to it.

Looking Ahead: Questions for the Final Year

As I and my team move into the final year of the project, my focus is increasingly on synthesis and responsibility: how to bring these observations together in ways that do justice to the complexity I have witnessed.

Several questions now guide this final phase:

How can schools broaden their understanding of “the migrant student” beyond a single dominant profile?

What would language support look like if multilingualism were treated as a resource rather than a temporary problem?

How can teachers be supported structurally, rather than relying on individual goodwill?

How might schools engage families as partners rather than afterthoughts?

Final Reflections

Four years of research have taught me that supporting migrant children in Polish schools is less about finding the right model and more about sustaining attentiveness—to difference, to inequality, and to children’s everyday practices of learning and belonging.

As this project draws to a close, I am increasingly aware that the most important task may be to ensure that what I have learned does not remain confined to analysis, but continues to circulate—challenging assumptions, informing practice, and making visible those children whose experiences too easily slip from view.