TY - JOUR T1 - ‘White Dress, Guests and Presents’: Polish Migrant Families’ Practice of First Communion and Negotiation of Catholic Identities in Wales JF - Central and Eastern European Migration Review Y1 - 2018 A1 - Kaczmarek-Day, Aleksandra KW - Catholic identity KW - First Communion ritual KW - mothers KW - Polish migrants KW - Wales AB -

This article examines how migration to Wales modifies Polish Catholic families’ religious practices. It focuses on how the First Communion ceremony is performed. Within the Polish migrant community I witnessed three distinct ways of arranging this. Some families travelled to Poland to their parish churches of origin. Of those who celebrated it in Wales, some did so in a Polish church, others in their children’s Catholic school’s church. These choices had different effects. Holding First Communion in Poland confirmed children’s Polish identity and home-country bonds. It exemplified both the fluidity of the families’ intra-European migration experience and the strength of transnational networking. Holding it in the local Polish parish reinforced both families’ and childrens’ identification as Polish Catholics. In the school’s church, it strengthened migrant families’ negotiations of belonging and their children’s integration into the Welsh locality. Mothers’ active involvement in all settings led some to contest Polish religious customs and revealed emerging identifications related to children’s wellbeing and belonging. Unlike arrangements traditional in Poland, families’ religious practices in Wales seem to have become more individual, less collective.

VL - 7 CP - 2 EP -

183

U2 -

30 April 2017

U3 -

7 May 2018

U4 -

13 June 2018

SP - 165 ER -