POLISH migrants who have flocked to Britain since EU expansion believe that their “whiteness” is helping them to find work, according to a study published yesterday.

But the report also found covert racist views among migrants and hostility towards multiculturalism in Britain. Poles emphasised that being “white” was an advantage and that that was what English employers were telling them.

Although the report said that a third of young Poles thought the multiculturalism of London was an asset where “everyone can make it”, 30 per cent had more or less covert racist views.

“Judged through their own experience of a relatively homogeneous country, our respondents express surprise and often hostility to this (multicultural) state of affairs,” the report said. It added that 90 per cent said that “Poles are not very tolerant” towards other ethnic minorities, Asians and blacks.

The report said that during interview some Poles had reacted with hostility towards ethnic minorities.

Hundreds of thousands of Poles have arrived in Britain since May 2004, when the EU expanded to take in eight former Soviet states. But many do not intend to stay permanently, as large numbers of Eastern European refugees did after the Second World War. Instead they embark on a life of circular migration with journeys home of two months or more.

Almost a quarter are buying or planning to buy property in Poland with money earned in London, according to the initial findings of a small study by the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism at the University of Surrey.

“Polish migrants undertake a strategy of keeping options open, taking a ‘wait and see approach’ and adapting as life goes on, not excluding going back, bringing families to the UK, travelling the world and moving to the US or Australia,” the study said.

Britain, and particularly London, is seen as a society where “everyone can make it” by Poles who are individualistic, driven by the desire for success and believe strongly in an idealised market economy.

“Almost two thirds say that they have advanced socially. Even if somone sees themselves as on the very bottom of the ladder, they are full of hope and belief in the myth of the meritocratic paradise,” the report added.

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