‘Like a Bomb in the Gasoline Station’: East–West Migration and Transnational Activism around Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Politics in Poland

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between East–West migration in Europe and activism around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) politics in Poland. EU accession in 2004 was accompanied by an intensification of homophobia in Polish political discourse particularly associated with neo-populist Radical Right parties such as Law and Justice and the League of Polish Families. Marches for the tolerance and equality of lesbians, gay men and other sexual dissidents were banned or attacked by far-right counter-protestors in a number of Polish cities. This article examines the connections between East–West (and other) migrant flows to and from Poland and the emergence of transnational activist networks forged in response to these events. These migratory flows facilitated the forging of these networks and activist solidarities, generating material and affective support. The discussion of these issues draws on interviews with activists participating in these networks. Our argument shows that there is concern among activists about how to represent the post-accession East–West migration of lesbian and gay Poles and the extent to which this is due to homophobic oppression in Poland. Moreover we find that there is considerable investment in the potential for East–West migration to transform the attitudes of socially conservative Polish citizens.

Keywords:

• Transnational Activist Networks
• Polish Migrants
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Politics

Notes

1. There is a range of problems with the LGBTQ acronym. The term invites essentialist understandings of complex and multi-layered identities and creates an impression of collective interests and strong alliances across group boundaries where they do not necessarily exist. Despite its origin in Anglophone culture, references to LGBT or LGBTQ were common in all the activist contexts in which we conducted research. We use both acronyms in this article. Larger established organisations often deploy an LGBT rights rhetoric, even if bisexual or transgender politics may be marginal to their agenda. We refer to these organisations with the acronym LGBT. Conscious references to queer are less common. We use the acronym LGBTQ whenever this is warranted by the self-naming practice of organisations. We also use LGBTQ if we generically refer to the entire diversified field of gender and sexual activism.

2. More-detailed discussion of the study, our respondents and our own respective positionalities is provided in Binnie and Klesse (2011).

3. Polish activists in our study were also in intense communication with activists within Central and Eastern Europe—for example, in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

4. Wallace (2002) cautions us not to represent these migration flows as a singular and one-directional process, and includes (among others) a discussion of economic migration from Central and Eastern European countries into Poland and the impact of changing asylum politics and border control strategies of EU countries (cf. FFM 1997).

5. Burrell (2009) quotes figures published by the Home Office in 2008 which suggest that 540,000 Poles had worked in the UK since 2004—67 per cent of the total intake from A8 countries. Since the Home Office only records registered workers, this number is generally considered to be an underestimation. The Federation of Poles in Great Britain (FPGB) puts forward a figure of 600,000 new Polish migrants in the UK (Burrell 2009: 1).

6. While such general characterisations of migration flows are, to a certain extent, helpful in establishing major trends, they carry the risk of distorting the complex realities of many migrants’ lives (Ryan et al. 2009: 62). Research by Düvell and Garapich (2011: 8) states that the gender composition of Polish migrants to the UK changed between 2004 and 2009 from 56:44 (male:female) to 50:50. They also note that: ‘43 per cent were in the age group 18–24 and 38 per cent in the group 26–34. Comparing 2004 with 2009 figures shows that, in later years, proportionately more migrant workers were older’.