UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

In Poland the new, EU compatible Aliens Act (2003) introduces precise distinctions between different categories of foreigners, granting them unequal rights and subjecting to different restrictions on the Polish and larger EU territory. According to the Act, different stipulations apply to foreigners from inside and outside the EU, different to asylum seekers or persons of Polish ancestry. This paper, based on legal ethnographic work and field research in Poland analyzes some of politically consequential ramifications of such classificatory regime. It draws on my ongoing fieldwork among Ukrainians working in Poland and administrative personnel working on migration management. I use empirical data to illustrate the condition of living in permanent transgression of legal classification. I map the disjunctions within the legal national space where presence is an ambiguous concept and where subjects experience particular forms of social absence. The paper argues that the emergence of these disjunctive spaces is underwritten by historically specific moral economy. This economy must be analyzed in order to illuminate the specific relationships of intimacy that form within these spaces and reinforce the politically urgent strategic goals of the state.

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