Restructuring locality: practice, identity and place-making on the German-Polish border

Abstract

Taking cities as analytical entry points for investigating practice, identity and place-making, this article explores the differential restructurings of locality in the twin cities of Görlitz and Zgorzelec on the German-Polish border. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it shows how the local cities′ leaderships are attempting to wrestle the cities out of their downmarket positioning in the global economy. Deploying a performative research strategy of methodological relationalism, the article examines intersections between these cities′ strategies of situating local youth within urban regeneration and cross-border projects and local youth′s preferences for engaging in other kinds of place-making. By ‘seeing’ the cities in border regions through practices of place-making within the multiscalar processes of urban regeneration, new insights about ‘place’ are generated in which city branding is not the only kind of local restructuring to be acknowledged.

Keywords:

• performativity
• methodological relationalism
• practised space
• place-making
• rescaling
• German-Polish border

Notes

1. It would go beyond the scope of this article to consider the history of the border during the Cold War; see Schultz and Nothnagle (1999).

2. The German and the Polish school systems differ so that the German Gymnasium encompasses 10th–12th grade, whereas the Polish Gimnazjum covers 7th–10th grade. However, the pupils in both cases were between 16 and 17 years old.

3. From 5th grade, the German and Polish pupils, respectively, are taught the neighbouring language for four hours a week.

4. Statistical data from Stadtverwaltung Görlitz (2013) and the Central Statistical Office (GUS), Warsaw. Available from: www.stat.gov.pl/gus (3 November 2013).

5. All names have been changed for reasons of anonymity.

6. TOM was initiated 2007 by Jugendamt, Amt für öffentliche Ordnung and the police district of Görlitz (SZ 5.-6.5 2007).