PUNO Twentieth Century Polish History Seminar Series (Online via Zoom)
Dr Jim Bjork (KCL) will present a paper titled ‘Migration Status as Ethnicity: Natives, Migrants and Refugees in Postwar Poland’
Poland famously became ‘ethnically homogeneous’ during and immediately after the Second World War, as its previous minority populations were either killed during the Nazi occupation, forced to emigrate, and left outside of Poland’s post-1945 frontiers. And yet, across the western half of the country, subsequent discussions of the remaining, ostensibly homogeneous population routinely used what seemed suspiciously like an ethnic grid to analyse it. People were most often assigned one of three categories depending on their background, specifically their migration status: native, settler, or refugee. As in other contexts with such terms have structured public debates about community cohesion, these labels came with a host of stereotypes, both negative and positive. In this talk, I will be examining how this kind of ethnic grid was used in discussion of postwar social integration. Who was meant to integrate whom in this process of integration?
To register, visit https://www.tickettailor.com/events/polishuniversityabroadpuno