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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic research with senior working-class communities in Poland, this paper examines how the loss of socialist-era commons and welfare infrastructures after 1989 shaped political polarisation, nostalgia for state socialism, and contemporary right-wing support.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with senior post-industrial working-class communities in Nowa Huta, Dębica, and Oleśnica, Poland, this paper examines the enduring influence of social protection, belonging, and solidarity forged under state socialism in the context of a diminished welfare state under neoliberal capitalism. We argue that the intensification of political polarisation since the post-1989 transition is closely linked to processes of material dispossession, discursive devaluation, and the privatisation of resources that once sustained working-class life.

Our research partners frequently articulate a tension between right-wing political views and Catholic devotion and a nostalgic attachment to the collectively organised, secular everyday life of state socialism. Rather than interpreting this as ideological inconsistency, we suggest it reflects lived experiences of welfare retrenchment and the erosion of everyday infrastructures of care. Moving beyond state-centred accounts of welfare, our analysis foregrounds the commons as vernacular forms of social integration, protection, and dignity. Under state socialism, shared infrastructures such as allotment gardens and workers’ cultural clubs enabled social reproduction, mutual care, and everyday solidarity.

The enclosure and privatisation of these commons after 1989 marked a profound reconfiguration of welfare infrastructures and modes of belonging. We explore how the shared experience of this loss, and the silencing of claims grounded in it, has shaped contemporary political identities, including support for a nationalistic right-wing party that mobilises dignifying narratives while expanding social benefits. At the same time, memories and material traces of past commons continue to inform vernacular understandings and enactments of welfare, community, and solidarity among seniors.