People “Who Didn't Fit in Anywhere”: Polish Migrations to Washington State at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Abstract The purpose of this article is to analyze the decision-making process of migration, studied from the perspective of settling in a specific destination, namely Washington state. The research concerns Polish migrations to the mentioned region of the United States in the period from the 1980s to the present. Material was collected on the basis of qualitative research, using in-depth interviews and participant observation. Based on the collected data on the history of the research participants’ migrations to Washington, they were classified as one of three types: random migrants, seekers, and chain migrants. The categories proposed in this article are not entirely exclusive in some cases, because the decision to leave is influenced by many factors and is a very complex process. The unifying element in all three types is largely the randomness of going exactly to some destination, in this case, namely, to Washington state. Washington is not an obvious destination for Polish migrants, who have “traditionally” headed to the East Coast of the United States. This non-obviousness of the place, therefore, affects the complex fates of those who have ended up in the Pacific Northwest. This complicated and, in many cases, multistage journey to Seattle and surrounding towns is not a peculiarity of recent years, but one could say a characteristic feature of migration to the region.