The Recent Politicisation of Immigration in Poland in Light of Pre-Existing State Practices: Continuity or Change in the Understanding of Citizenship and Nationhood?

Multiple and complex links exist between the notion of citizenship and the manner in which nation-states approach migration. Immigrants are non-citizens who nevertheless reside in a country alongside its citizens. Their very presence puts into question the presumed continuity between the state, its population, and its territory. Whereas the very idea of a nation-state supposes the existence of a strictly defined and limited group of citizens who constitute the nation and in whose name the state exercises control over a portion of land, migrants’ mobile lives render those assumptions problematic. It is hence not a surprise that many countries attempt to strictly control their migrant populations. Poland, up to recently a country of emigration rather than immigration, seemed for a long time exempt from the debates and controversies this topic gives rise to in the rest of Europe. It is only since 2015 that the issue of immigration became politicized, as right-wing parties - and in particular the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) - made a virulent anti-immigration discourse part of their political offer. In this discourse the links between the treatment of immigration and the understandings of citizenship are clearly made, with citizenship defined as synonymous with belonging to an ethnically bounded nation. However, it is postulated in this paper that explicit political discourse is far from being the only source of such definitions. Rather, it is through the everyday actions of state agencies, including street-level bureaucracies, that conceptions of citizenship are produced and imposed. In particular, the selection of the “worthy” migrants who will be allowed to reside in a country and perhaps ultimately become citizens, is deeply rooted in interpretations of a nation’s boundaries, of proximity, and of otherness. Thus, it seems justified to ask whether the ideas of citizenship, nationhood, and immigration promoted today in Poland are truly new, or if they have roots in preexisting state practices. How do they relate the conceptions that have been implicitly guiding the actions of state officials before the topic even became a subject of public debate? What can the study of everyday practices tell us about the definitions of citizens and of “worthy” immigrants that were and are prevalent within Polish institutions? In order to answer those questions, this paper is mainly based on a study of Polish street-level immigration services carried out in 2014, just before the issue of immigration became politicized. In particular, it draws on a case study conducted by means of participant observation and semi-structured interviews in an agency of this kind. The aim is to look at the mechanisms of inclusion, exclusion, and selection at work in the absence of a strong political discourse on the topic. This initial study is also put into perspective with a document analysis focusing on the current discourses around immigration in Poland, in order to explore the relations, continuities, and shifts that might exist between those two periods and two spheres.