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Paper short abstract:

The subject of my ethnographic narration will be small, rural, roadside communities living in constant (trans)local and transit flow. This flow is beyond direct control of these communities but at the same time shapes their economic strategies and affects their socio-spatial (im)mobility.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper, I will present the results of the ethnographic research I was conducting between 2013 and 2016 in roadside villages located alongside national road no. 92 and motorway A2. These two big road infrastructures are the main transportation corridors between Polish East and West borders. Villages which I was visiting are situated on a 90-km stretch between Nowy Tomyśl and the border crossing in Świecko. The landscape of these mostly very small towns is characterized by service points dedicated to long distance transportation and tourist industry, whose operation revolves around auto-mobility, warehouses or shipping and logistical centers. Its visual aspects can hardly be all associated with rural landscapes. It is clear that these towns must be considered as places of intensive, constant - local, translocal and transit - movement and flow of different kinds of goods transported by trailer trucks, economic immigrants, tourists, and everyday public and private micro-mobility of inhabitants. In my paper, I would like to show how the execution of these various forms of flows, its directions and intensity do not only determine the socio-economic local life but is also in itself determined by global political fluctuations. I will also answer the questions of how this constant but various and nuanced flow shapes people's mobility potential and to what extent it is interrelated with material/infrastructural aspects of rural locality