Paper short abstract:

Researching mobility by the Polish-German border we focus on immobilities (of locals who wish no migration; transborder workers who continously wait; and of newly arrived Ukrainians who reach the border and decide not to move further) and their entanglements with our protagonists’ parallel futures.

Paper long abstract:

In our project on labour mobility in the Polish-German border region, we focus on specific sites in Brandenburg – the doughnut-shaped region around Berlin. We look at logistics centres (distributing products of Amazon, Zalando, and other corporations), Tesla-Gigafactory, fields where asparagus is grown, and other places that every day attract thousands of transborder workers from Poland every day. In our research, we come across all types of immobilities: immobility of those in Germany who wish migration did not happen; of transborder workers who spend significant parts of their lives waiting (for transport, between shifts, in transit, waiting to arrive); and also of newly arrived Ukrainian refugees who reach the Polish-German border but consciously decide not to move any further. These physical immobilities are sometimes linked to supposed social immobilities. For instance, many Polish workers work below their qualifications (yet some use the financial gains for social mobility back home).

The immobilities we observe are also linked with our protagonists’ future-making narratives and practices. Already at the early stages of our research, we clearly see the parallel, and not explicitly connected future-making narratives and practices of the different groups: local inhabitants, environmental activists from Berlin, Polish transborder workers, and Ukrainians who keep Polish border cities alive while their Polish inhabitants work, e.g. at Tesla. We explore these (parallel) futures and the different notions of (im)mobility together with our research participants to understand their understanding of the entanglements of time, space and (im)mobility.