Recovering Solidarity? Representations of Polish Identity in Multicultural Australia

Abstract:

In contemporary Poland, 'solidarity' is one of the 'keywords' to which different political forces appeal. In the 1980s, the same concept became associated with the building of independent civic movements, and particularly with the Solidarność social movement. Yet to understand the appeal that the idea of solidarity continues to have in the collective imagination we need to understand how it has been put in practice not only in Poland, but also by the Polish diaspora during and after the socialist period, as well as how the same idea 'migrates' to other contexts. Drawing upon the analysis of published and archival materials as well as on conversations with Poles who have settled in Australia since the 1980s, the seminar examines some uses and understandings of 'solidarity' by different Polish organizations and social actors in the last four decades. It illustrates a paradox: although the wave of Polish migrants who came to Australia in the 1980s as political refugees is commonly referred to as the 'Solidarity wave', it was particularly the Poles who migrated to Australia after World War II who embraced the idea of 'solidarity' as a form of struggle for Poland's freedom and independence from Soviet domination. Yet the subsequent demise of state socialism and Australia's transformation into a multicultural society affected not just representations of Polish identity, but also the meanings many Australians of Polish heritage attach to solidarity (and Solidarity) nowadays.

Biogram:

Jaro Stacul (PhD Cambridge) is Assistant Professor of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. He focuses on issues of populism, migration, and the state in Europe (Italy and Poland), and has held positions in various academic institutions in Australia, Britain, Bulgaria, and Canada. He has recently carried out long-term fieldwork, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, on populism in Poland, and has subsequently undertaken a new project on the Polish diaspora in Australia. He has also conducted research on how undergraduate students in Atlantic Canada balance work and study. His publications include the monograph 'The bounded field: Localism and local identity in an Italian Alpine valley' and the co-edited book 'Crossing European boundaries: Beyond conventional geographical categories', both published by Berghahn Books.

Recommended literature:

• Drozdzewski, Danielle. 2011. Waves of Migration Exclusion and Inclusion: The Experiences of Polish Australians. In Migration, Citizenship and Intercultural Relations: Looking Through the Lens of Social Inclusion, edited by Michele Lobo and Fethi Mansouri, pp. 59-73. London: Routledge.
• Klatt, Małgorzata. 2014. The Poles and Australia: A partnership of values. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly.
• Markowski, Stefan. 2009. Citizenship and integration: A snapshot of the Polish migrant community in Australia. Humanities Research 15(1): 75-99.