The paper discusses the issue of the national identity of foreign-born academic employees working in Poland. Based on 100 in-depth interviews, it answers the question ‘to what extent foreign-born researchers feel Polish and declare to be a part of the Polish academic community,’ and analyses why do they feel like insiders. While the interviewees relatively rarely felt Polish, they quite often declared belonging to the Polish academic community. The way they presented their place within these two communities raises the question of the appropriateness of the general category of 'insiders', because foreign-born academics turned out to be a very diverse community. Some of them treated Poland instrumentally – as a stage of their academic careers, but some became Polish patriots. Paradoxically, the latter opted for local science without supporting internationalization.