Transnational Migrants Thinking of a Better Future: Who, How, and What?

Thousands of Polish citizens commute between 2 and 4 hours daily to work in Germany and back home. In Germany, they perform simple and dull three-shift manual jobs in manufacturing or logistics. Their motivations are largely economic, rooted in the wage difference between Poland and Germany and corresponding to middle class dreams of more stability, savings and investments for future. The price they pay, however, throws them back into working class conditions, such as health issues, dissolving social life, no time for leisure, etc. In this contribution, we are interested if and how these commuters’ engage in struggles for a socially just Europe, and whether they concentrate their efforts on one or the other side of the Polish/German border. We view imagining a bright future as a privilege of middle-class migrants, translating into engagements in protests, trade unions, and other more formal ways of working towards more justice in this part of Europe. Many migrants are also skilful in how they resist discrimination in everyday, by naming it and developing alliances across ethnic groups. This strategy, too, can possibly contribute to a better middle class future.