(Un)doing Polishness: Negotiation of Ethnic Belonging in Personal Narratives about Karta Polaka

Abstract

The article is based on a qualitative study of how Polishness is constructed in personal narratives about Karta Polaka (the Polish Card, Polish Charter). The interviews with possessors of the Polish Card, a document issued by the Polish state to the citizens of the former USSR identifying themselves as Poles, was conducted in 2015 in the city of Hrodna in western Belarus. The article uses the example of Karta Polaka to show how people who apply for the Polish Card perceive, negotiate, and reconstruct the idea of Polishness that this document implies. The author suggests that the demand for Karta Polaka among citizens of Belarus cannot be explained by ethnic opportunism entirely. Pragmatic and symbolic reasoning to apply for the document often overlap. Moreover, as the author argues, Karta Polaka evokes the process of negotiating ethnic belonging among participants of the study. The article departs from the theoretical standpoint that ethnic belonging is neither merely a matter of individual choice nor a passive absorption of ethnic discourses produced by states, laws, or ethnic entrepreneurs. Combining the premises of performative and dialogical approaches to identity construction, the author shows empirically which discourses influence people’s sense of ethnic belonging and how these discourses are negotiated in their personal stories.