While Polish migration to the UK has attracted much academic attention, there has been less discus-sion about the consequences of Polish migrants’ encounters with difference in socially diverse UK contexts. In particular, relatively little has been written about how Polish migrants describe or refer to ‘visible’ difference in terms of ethnicity, nationality, religion, class and gender. This reflects a broader tendency in migration studies to frequently overlook the production and transnational transfer of mi-grant language. In this article, I explore how Polish post-2004 migrants to the northern English city of Leeds produce ‘the language of difference’ and how this migrant language is passed on to non-migrants in Poland. I distinguish two types of language of difference – the language of stigma and the language of respect. I note that migrants construct both speech normativities through engaging with rhetoric exist-ing in the Polish and/or the UK context as well as through developing ‘migrant slang’ of difference. I further argue that the language of stigma and the language of respect are transferred to Poland via the agency of migrants. The article draws upon a broader study of Polish migrants’ values and atti-tudes towards difference and the circulation of ideas between these migrants and their family members and friends in Poland. It contributes to emerging debates on Polish migrants’ encounters with differ-ence and social remittances between the UK and Poland.

This article explores the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) migrants from Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in Scotland. Drawing on interviews with 50 migrants, the article focuses on the experiences and aspirations which they articulate as being part of ‘a normal life’, and analyses them within broader conceptual understandings of security and ‘normal-ity’. We first examine how normality is equated with an improved economic position in Scotland, and look at the ways in which this engenders feelings of emotional security and well-being. We then explore how more positive experiences around sexuality and gender identity are key to a sense of emotional security – i.e. of feeling accepted as ‘normal’, being visible as an LGBT person but ‘blending in’ rather than standing out because of it. Finally we look at the ways in which the institutional framework in Scotland, in particular the presence of LGBT-affirmative legislation, is seen by participants to have a normalising effect within society, leading to a broader sense of inclusion and equality – found, again, to directly impact upon participants’ own feelings of security and emotional well-being. The article engages with literatures on migration and sexuality and provides an original contribution to both: through its focus upon sexuality, which remains unexplored in debates on ‘normality’ and migration in the UK; and by bringing a migration perspective to the debates in sexuality studies around the normal-ising effect of the law across Europe. By bringing these two perspectives together, we reveal the inter-rela-tionship between sexuality and other key spheres of our participants’ lives in order to better understand their experiences of migration and settlement.