Aleksandra Galasińska

Gossiping in the Polish Club: An Emotional Coexistence of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Migrants

This paper explores the emotional coexistence of three groups of Polish migrants in the UK. In particular it focuses on how this coexistence is reflected in narratives-in-interaction produced by members of Polish communities. Methodologically the paper is anchored in a constructivist view of emotions, when they are seen as discursive practice, as way of speaking, rather than as some internal states associated with physiological conditions of our bodies. Consequently, discourse and narrative analysis is my chosen way to analyse emotions in a given research area of Polish migration. The data come from my current project on leisure activities as well as cultural consumption among Polish migrants and were collected in established Polish ‘centres’ in the UK. My informants belong to three different groups of immigrants: 1) post-World War Two immigration; 2) post-1989/pre-enlargement immigration; and 3) post-enlargement immigration.

Small Stories Fight Back: Narratives of Polish Economic Migration on an Internet Forum

A long and distinctive history of Polish emigration (see Iglicka-Okolska, 1997; Slany, 1997; Iglicka, 2001; Cyrus, 2006) has left its mark on the cultural tradition of Poland. Both literature and film discuss this phenomenon widely and the media feed returns to the topic frequently. The recent outflow from Poland after the EU enlargement of 2004 added a new dimension to the existing discussion about migration in both the public and private spheres as well as in academia. Having such a long tradition of migration it is not surprising then that consecutive waves of Polish migrants have had to deal emotionally with the existence of a grand narrative of migration and position themselves in relation to it. That means they have to produce or indeed reproduce their own versions of a migrant story. Moreover, they have to negotiate their stories with several groups of challenging ‘others’, that is, a local community in the home country, a local community in the host country, as well as existing Polish communities in the country of destination. This chapter discusses one such issue: the changing form and function of a grand narrative of migration among Polish migrants to the UK. I shall focus on stories of migrants as mediated and discussed on an internet forum.

Shopping for a New Identity Constructions of the Polish–German border in a Polish Border community

This article aims to show the varying constructions of the Polish–German border in the Polish border town of Zgorzelec. We are interested in how informants from three generations discursively position the frontier itself and the two towns on its either side: Polish Zgorzelec and German Görlitz. The data comes from a Europe-wide ethnographic project studying communities living on the borders between the European Union (EU) and its ascendant nations, funded by the European Commissions Fifth Framework Programme. We suggest that the inhabitants of Zgorzelec construct the border on two planes: public and private. In the public sphere, the border is constructed as a means of identifying ‘us Poles’ against all those living on the other side. In those nationalized terms, the border is also constructed as protecting Poland and Zgorzelecs (Polish) community. On the other hand, in the private sphere, the border is represented as virtually invisible allowing the individual to cross it for shopping or entertainment. The border becomes a gateway in which the individual becomes a customer, a shopper with his or her national identity pushed to the background. We also show that the two spheres intersect, creating spaces in which the two orders of discourse are made to co-exist and the discursive mechanisms of separation run next to the mechanisms of inclusion. We explore our informants’ discourses as mediated by the historical context of common experience (eviction, displacement, communism) pertaining mostly to the older generation and by the cultural-economic context (shopping, entertainment) largely in the case of our younger informants.

Introduction: Discourses of Social and Political Transformation in the ‘New Europe’

When in January 2003 European politics became divided over the (forthcoming) US-led invasion of Iraq, the US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld controversially spoke about ‘old Europe’ to refer to the (Western) European countries which did not want to join the US in their anti-Iraq actions. Though initially treated as just a diplomatic mistake or a slip of the tongue, Rumsfeld’s label was quickly picked up by the media in several European countries: debates started on who actually belongs to the ‘old Europe’ (in addition to France, Germany and other Western European opponents of the US), while even more intensified efforts were made to define who, in fact, could thus belong to the counter-category of the ‘new Europe’. Members of the latter were soon identified among several Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), an astonishing majority of which supported the US invasion. And, although many Western European countries (such as, for example, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Italy) supported the US in the 2003 invasion on an equal footing with their Central and Eastern European allies, it was only the latter who were defined as the ‘new Europe’. That label has persisted until today, contrary to that of the ‘old Europe’ which disappeared from the public debates once the intra-European divisions over the Iraq crisis calmed down.