Tożsamość współczesnych nomadów jako problem polskiej literatury migracyjnej
The Identity of Contemporary Nomads as the Problem of Polish Migration Literature

Summary/Abstract: The article concerns selected literary works of Polish writers which take up the subject of migration after Poland’s accession to the European Union. The author places the Polish writing in Great Britain and Ireland in the context of global geopolitical inequalities. These inequalities tend to affect mutual perceptions of the nations and ethnic groups concerned whose identities clash in the cultural meltingpot of the British Isles. The departure point is the difference between the contemporary ‘migration literature’ and the literature of the émigré circles of the 19th and 20th century. The author identifies the following important issues in these contemporary narrations: the nomadic status of the migrant, the relation between the (Western) centre and the (Polish) periphery, between the homeland and the exile, between the subject’s feeling at home and perceiving otherness. These binarisms, so characteristic of postcolonial writing, constitute transnational forms of identity. Two extreme attitudes which are present in the discussed works, namely nationalism and cosmopolitanism, are suggested to be interpreted as manifestations of “in-between” identity.

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