Racialised Encounters

This chapter examines racialised encounters of middling migrants across five Polish localities differing in scale, economic profile and demographic composition, namely the metropolitan centres of Kraków and Wrocław and the smaller towns of Strzelin, Jelcz-Laskowice and Opole. Drawing on qualitative interview material, the analysis distinguishes between modes of experiencing racism (direct, second-hand, mediated and media racism) and forms of racial aggression and microaggression embedded in everyday interactions. In metropolitan settings, cosmopolitan branding is shown to coexist with routine boundary-making. This reveals the conditional character of neoliberal inclusion: migrants are valued as human capital, yet evaluated as racialised bodies. In smaller towns, constricted anonymity amplifies difference, while migrants themselves engage in the othering of local residents. This produces a pattern of double exclusion. The chapter argues that racialisation works not only upon middling migrants but also through them, as racial and class hierarchies intersect within a neoliberal regime of sorting which admits difference on its own terms.