Paper short abstract:

The lives of many labour migrants are characterised as precarious, and as a permanent state of temporariness. This paper looks at the lives of Polish labour migrants to the Netherlands to investigate how a sense of locality is produced or achieved, in particular through leisure pursuits.

Paper long abstract:

In modern society mobility has become a permanent condition. Attachment to and familiarity with places has ceased to be self-evident. This becomes apparent through the organisation of labour migrants' lives, which are often characterised by temporary housing and temporary jobs. On the other hand, it is too simplistic to suggest that these translocalities are non-places with very limited context-producing capabilities. It is my contention that people have a natural tendency to develop attachments to material objects and spaces. Leisure can play an important role in developing these attachments, transforming the translocality into a locality. It is my assumption that leisure activities carry a lot of potential in acquiring familiarity with and a sense of locality, perhaps even providing labour migrants with a sense of home. Leisure pursuits -being an area of people's live over which they can exert control- afford people an opportunity to conceptualise their temporariness as a meaningful and intimate experience. The paper will look into the realization of the potential of leisure activities as well as explore the limits and limitations of leisure activities.