THE SHIFTING AND RECONSTRUCTING OF EAST AND WEST: THE EMERGENCE OF A POST-MIGRATION SOCIETY IN POLAND’S WESTERN AND NORTHERN TERRITORIES

This article aims to synthesize the discussion of post-war migration in the Western and Northern Territories acquired by Poland. The main axis of consideration is the meeting of settlers coming from the east and west of the pre-war state. In spite of the centralized plans for resettlement and optimistic hopes, the Western and Northern Territories were first an area of conflict and only later an area of long-lasting integration. Living together revealed that the arrivals from the east and west differed from one another to a large degree, and this produced tension that was observable in their ways of referring to each other, their stereotypes and social images, and in their access to various forms of capital in the new location. The lifestyle of the migrants from Poland’s former west clearly achieved the status of the obligatory cultural norm, and the settlers from the former eastern lands were obliged to adapt themselves. The author proposes using the ideas of orientalization and occidentalization to describe these complicated mutual relations