Intersecting crises, hierarchies of mobilities and unequal border regimes – the case of Poland and its migratised populations

This paper contributes to the debates on how human mobility has been constructed and governed in the Polish (and more broadly European) context in the period marked by polycrisis in the Eastern European region. It argues that human mobility continues to be constructed as a crisis and positioned at the intersection of other crises. Such crisification of mobilities, in turn, continues to be rooted in the processes of categorisation and racialisation of migratised populations (biopolitics of otherness) – reflected in a continuum of unequal border regimes (as regimes of truth) in Poland. Poland’s case thus demonstrates how such regimes are at the heart of the political-judicial orders of Western nation-states, marking out groups – foreigners/non-citizens – who, based on ideas of belonging, membership, and deservingness, have fewer rights and privileges. The empirical part is a nuanced examination of the lived experiences of migratised populations, particularly women from the former USSR countries. Initial welcome to Ukrainian refugee women, constructed in terms of ideal victimhood, has been accompanied by hostility, rejection, and dehumanisation of people on the move caught up in the hybrid war with Belarus. One group was granted temporary rights to stay, work, and access services on the same basis as Polish citizens; the other has been treated as homines sacri – objects, but not subjects, of the law. Different groups (like Belarusians, Chechens, non-Ukrainian refugees, economic migrants) remain invisible, faced with long and complex legal procedures and challenges in various dimensions of their lives. However, the preferential treatment of the Ukrainian refugees has been short-lived; they are now ‘becoming’ migrants, increasingly differentiated into productive vs unproductive, less deserving vs non-deserving. The final contribution focuses on the impact of the above biopolitics of otherness on societal relations, including emerging conflicts and divisions. They are visible in steadily growing anti-immigrant attitudes and diminishing willingness to assist Ukrainian refugees in the Polish society, as well as in negative attitudes amongst migratised women themselves, thus contributing to the making and sustaining of the dominant ethnic and gender order in Poland.