When Moses Came to Poland. Migrants, Myths, and Mourning on the Poland-Belarus Border

Abstract: How did Middle Eastern, African, and Asian refugees become caught up in and then central to a particular type of Polish “civilizational” border regime with Belarus – heavily racialized and militarized – under the Law and Justice (PiS)-led government – the largest party of the Zjednoczona Prawica (United Right) alliance – between 2015 and 2023? And why – under the apparently more liberal Civic Platform (PO)-led coalition after December 2023 – did it continue? This paper explores how this happened. It weaves together three different strands: a study of the legacies of collective historical trauma; a study of Polishness as a mutable and contingent identity shaped in part by domestic debates about history and current geopolitical forces, and a study of an evolving management regime on the Polish–Belarusian border.

Keywords: Poland, Belarus, Russia, migrants, refugees, borders, securitization, coloniality, trauma, therapy

Jo Harper is a journalist and writer who lives in Warsaw. He has written two previous books on Poland – Poland’s Memory Wars: Essays on Illiberalism and Our Man in Warszawa: How the West Misread Poland. He writes for the BBC, Politico, Deutsche Welle, and Polityka and teaches occasionally at the American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw. He has a PhD in Polish politics from the London School of Economics.

Loader Loading…
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Нагоре ↑

« »