O rodzeniu się wielokulturowości z transgraniczem w tle
On the emergence of multiculturalism with transborderland in the background.

The example of COVID-19 pandemic (and its results) in the divided cities

Summary/Abstract: One of the consequences of the changes introduced to combat the growing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic was the decision to temporarily limit the unrestrained cross-border movement to and from Poland. Our thesis is that this decision, among many others announced by the national government, resulted in peculiar resistance, although mainly in the borderland and in divided towns. The resistance stemmed from the disruption of the daily lives of the inhabitants, who engage in their everyday activities (e.g. work, education) on both sides of the national border. Referring to A. Sadowski's conception, we posit that cultural pluralism (a pluralistic society) has emerged in these towns and, as a result, they are approaching the state of multiculturalism. On the basis of the existing data illustrating the protests taking place in divided towns, we analyse what arguments appear and by whom they areused in messages addressed to the Polish government, which describe the de facto destruction of the existing cross-border social order in divided towns. The analyses have shown disparities between the advancement of certain social processes in the borderland and the reflexivity of the central government, who made their arbitrary decisions without factoring in the specific character of socio-political order developed in recent years in the divided towns of the Polish-German and Polish-Czech borderland.

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