Migration as Hope: Space, Time and Imagining the Future

In this paper, I look at different contexts of economic migration in the Polish highlands in the cities of Ło´ dz´ and Lublin. I consider what social and economic factors make migration an investment and a belief in a better future and what other factors may lead to rejection of the possibility of migration. The periods I am considering are the years of crisis during the late socialist era, the period of structural adjustment following the end of socialism, and the period following accession to the European Union. I focus on kinship and households and the way in which formal and informal economic activities, networks of care and reciprocity, and the possibilities of migration are negotiated within and among them during these very different economic periods. I argue that migration is both a future-orientated and a backward-looking process and one that involves movement between different temporalities, spaces, and regimes of value