Precarious Times: The Changing Economic and Political Situation in Poland

Poland belonged to the frontrunners of neoliberal transformation in 1989, which contributed to subsequent waves of ‘crawling crises’ (Maciejewska et al. Reference Maciejewska, Mrozowicki, Piasna, Myant, Theodoropoulou and Piasna2016, 229–254). Their result was the expansion of precarious work, which can be understood as ‘employment that is uncertain, unpredictable and risky from the point of view of the worker’ (Kalleberg Reference Kalleberg2009, 2), often identified but not reducible to non-standard contracts and low-paid jobs.

The recent waves of precarisation strongly affected young people. According to the European Labour Force Survey (Eurostat), Poland is the EU country with the second highest share of workers with temporary contracts (24.3% in 2018 for aged 15–64 and 62.6% for the youngest population, 15–24 years old). Young people aged 15–24 are also more often employed with civil-law contracts (i.e. contracts to perform a specified task and contracts of mandate or business-to-business cooperation with self-employed persons) as compared with the entire working population (Report GUS 2016); with civil-law contracts representing a particular kind of work contract to perform short-term services or tasks, and which exclude workers from some Labour Code rights, such as minimum wage or working-time regulations. Young people in Poland are quite well-educated, but a mismatch between the fields of education and jobs performed is common (Szafraniec Reference Szafraniec2012).

The counter-forces of labour to these negative developments are fragmented. Trade unions have lost the bulk of their members as a result of restructuring and privatisation, but also due to their incapacity to expand to new economic sectors after 1989. Trade union density in Poland is one of the lowest in the EU (10–12%), while other factors of union strength, such as collective bargaining coverage (approximately 15%) are not much better. As documented by one of our earlier studies (Gardawski et al. Reference Gardawski, Mrozowicki and Czarzasty2012), non-unionised young workers in Poland tend to see unions either indifferently or in a negative light, as the bureaucratic structures representing traditional segments of workers, such as miners, teachers or nurses.

Thus, the conditions of precarisation create a socio-economic problem to be politically addressed. Yet, the trust in politicians in Poland after 1989 has not been particularly strong; it reached its lowest in the last 10 years, with trust in political parties staying below 20% and the government at less than 40% (Omyła-Rudzka Reference Omyła-Rudzka2016). There is a rather negative attitude towards politicians and political parties among young people:

A similar divide between political elites and the people was also noted in the recent studies on new authoritarianism (Gdula Reference Gdula2017).

In 2015, this popular discontent with the PO-PSL (Civic Platform–Polish People’s Party) government (in power from 2007–2015) paved the way for the victory of the right-wing conservative Law and Justice Party in the parliamentary and presidential elections. The party made many people believe that Poland was bedraggled, weak, dependent on foreign capital and governed by a network of liberal elites who despise ‘normal people’ in favour of their European and transnational interests. In the same parliamentary elections, the (nominally) left-wing, post-communist social-democratic party (the Democratic Left Alliance) did not enter parliament. Instead, for the first time, several far-right candidates representing the National Movement made their way to the Sejm as a part of Paweł Kukiz’s party.

Even though the winners of the elections often claimed that it was the support of young people that brought them victory, the outcomes of the representative surveys demonstrate a more complex picture and suggest the existence of an ongoing void in the area of political representation. According to tentative results of the quantitative module in the PREWORK project, in December 2016 only 26.4% interviewees stated that they were rather satisfied or extremely satisfied with the state of the economy in Poland and only 17.4% said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the government.Footnote ⁴ Despite criticism of the economic and political situation in Poland, no labour-related movement comparable to Spanish indignados has emerged in Poland in recent years. In the next section, we refer to several explanations for this situation.

Explanations for Growing Support of Nationalist Movements

David Ost and Don Kalb are among the authors who discuss the interconnections between the rise of far-right populism and class-based discontent following neoliberal transformation. According to Ost (Reference Ost2007, 9), economic inequalities typical of capitalism, generate emotions that ‘need to be organised along some lines or cleavages’ and ‘for liberal democratic outcomes, economic anger is best organised along class lines, meaning that economic conflicts get expressed as economic conflicts, rather than as ethnic, racial, national or religious ones’. However, in a post-socialist context, class identities tend to be weak and class discourses indeterminate. East European parties tend to avoid the discourse of class which they see as linked to the authoritarian past when every deficiency in the system was explained via the covert workings of the people’s enemy. As a result, the mobilisation of the economically disadvantaged is taken over by illiberal parties that make use of cultural frames of reference, including those related to national identity, to oppose the liberal elites.

A similar point is made by Don Kalb (Reference Kalb, Kalb and Halmai2011, 1). He suggests that ‘working-class neonationalism is the somewhat traumatic expression of material and cultural disenfranchisement in the neoliberal epoch’. The ‘imagined nation’ is said to be ‘crafted by new political entrepreneurs generating protest votes against neoliberal rule’ (Kalb Reference Kalb, Kalb and Halmai2011, 13) identified with the bureaucratic and essentially non-democratic European Union and financial global capitalism. Neonationalism can be seen as the ‘return of the repressed’ (Žižek Reference Žižek2008), in the context in which the language of social class is weak (or delegitimised, as in the case of post-communist Eastern Europe) and the disadvantaged search for other ways of expressing their discontent.

The arguments by Ost and Kalb are just two examples of economy-centred explanations. Convincing as they are, they face some problems with respect to the results of empirical research on the Polish far-right movements. First, the basis of such movements is socially heterogeneous. As demonstrated by one of the surveys by the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS), 38% of people aged 18–24 (as compared with 17% of the general population) generally supported the activities of far-right organisations, such as the All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska) and the National Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny), with most of the support granted by service workers, skilled workers, farmers and students (Boguszewski and Głowacki Reference Boguszewski and Głowacki2016). However, another CBOS survey shows that the narrow group of ‘engaged right-wing supporters’, estimated at 11% of the 18+ population in Poland, are usually young men, living in large cities, well-educated and well-off (Roguska Reference Roguska2016). Second, the most frequent participants in various social protests in Poland in the last 15 years were not workers, but the representatives of intelligentsia and professionals (Domański Reference Domański2015), which shows that, generally, protests in Poland are dominated by slogans other than economic ones. Marches organised by the nationalist milieu as well as their discourse also attract people from different social classes, contrary to popular belief linking radical nationalism with the representatives of popular classes. Third, ‘the support for the programs of strengthening the Polish traditional national identity’ cannot be seen, as argued by Tomasz Zarycki (Reference Zarycki2009, 114), as mere smokescreens for primary economic problems, but are ‘to large extent connected with the need for recognition, enhancing the symbolic capital of large segments of the society stigmatised by the feeling of cultural marginalization’.

The problems of economic explanations of new nationalism call for a closer look at its cultural and identity-centred explanations. Some of the authors refer to general social changes concerning globalisation processes while they explain the rise of new nationalism. Anthony Giddens (Reference Giddens1991, 196) sees the predilection for dogmatic authoritarianism as a psychological phenomenon which occurs when the feeling of ontological certainty is at risk because of the disruption of the existing order and multiplication of conflicting authorities. Zygmunt Bauman (Reference Bauman1991) suggests that people tend to confirm their identity by referring to other people and to affiliate with community in order to avoid loneliness and powerlessness. Looking for stable points of reference and for belonging can lead them to nationalist references, including nationalist milieus. However, it can also be suggested that the differences between economic explanations and identity-centred explanations are relative, as in both cases collective mobilisation is understood as the result of negative effects reflecting, respectively, a disadvantaged material situation or cultural disorientation, conflicting values and the lack of recognition.

Daniel Płatek and Piotr Płucienniczak point at the opportunity structure theory as a distinct group of explanations of the mobilisation of the far right. We include it in more general culture–based explanations, even though they also recognise the role of economic factors. According to the theory, ‘the extreme right is not only a by-product of an anomic situation, but rather an agent seeking favourable opportunities and actively adjusting to its social environment’ (Płatek and Płucienniczak Reference Płatek, Płucienniczak, Jacobsson and Korolczuk2017, 292). Discussing this approach, the authors refer to Rafał Pankowski (Reference Pankowski2010), who sees the revival of the national democracy tradition, antisemitism and fundamentalist Catholicism as means for representatives of the right-wing to enter mainstream political discourse.

According to the CBOS (the Public Opinion Research Centre) surveys, the differences between those declaring left-wing and right-wing political views in Poland are rather minimal as regards the economic sphere: both categories support progressive taxes and generous state social support while opposing far-reaching privatisation. The differences are mostly visible in the sphere of cultural identities and values. The right-wing supporters are euro-sceptical, convinced of the need for a closer relationship between the State and the Catholic Church, opposed to legalising homosexual relationships, and support a total ban on abortion (Feliksiak Reference Feliksiak2015).

The most important nationalist organisations, such as the All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska, MW), the National Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, ONR) and the National Rebirth of Poland (Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski, NOP) rarely refer to economic exclusion in their discourse and activity (Kajta Reference Kajta, Kowalewski, Rakusa-Suszczewski and Rozalska2018). Even though the movement seems to capitalise on the economically-driven discontent, it lacks a coherent economic programme. The primacy of cultural and identity agenda and the silencing of labour market experiences are also evident in the interviews with members of the nationalist organisations to which we will refer to next.

Between Culture and Economy: The Motives for Young People Supporting the Right

The remaining part of the article is based on two lots of data. First, these are 30 biographical-narrative interviews with young participants of the Polish nationalist movement derived from the project: ‘The identity of the participants of the Polish nationalist movement’ carried out by Justyna Kajta. Informants included regional leaders and members of the All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska, MW), the National Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, ONR) and the National Rebirth of Poland (Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski, NOP), most of whom (28) were students or university graduates. Second, we draw from the analysis of biographical narrative interviews with young precarious workers collected in the PREWORK project. In the latter case, informants included both university graduates (24 cases) and those without tertiary education degrees (39 cases), working with temporary and civil law contracts, trainees or unemployed. The analysis only covers right-wing supporters, which included three core cases and 13 context cases.Footnote ⁵ The data were analysed using coding techniques typical of grounded theory methodology (Glaser Reference Glaser1978).

The analysis of the interviews with the activists and members of the nationalist organisations demonstrates the heterogeneity of their social background, which has earlier been observed in quantitative research on right-wing supporters (Boguszewski and Głowacki Reference Boguszewski and Głowacki2016). People we spoke with came from different social classes, have parents with various education degrees and have different economic situations. It does not seem that engagement in the nationalist organisation is the simple result of family socialisation or the answer to economic deprivation. Parents’ or grandparents’ political beliefs differ. While some of the narrators were brought up in conservative or right-wing families, others’ parents support the main oppositional party towards the Law and Justice (PiS) government, Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO) or are not interested in politics at all.

Analysis of the interviews shows that the contemporary nationalist movement has diverse ideological frames of reference, which enhances its chances to attract new supporters. Criticising the social and political reality in Poland, narrators refer to the dominance of liberal discourse which is connected by them with the threat to tradition and important values (i.e. religion, nation, family), a passive and manipulated (by the media and liberal politicians) society, and hypocritical media and political milieus. In this context, they define themselves using four main types of identity framing (1) educators of a new patriotic (‘awakened’) generation; (2) defenders and creators of the Polish identity and history against liberalism, postmodernism and European ‘leftism’; (3) anti-systemic activists resisting the ‘system’ identified with the social, political and economic setting established after 1989, including corrupted (‘post-communist’) elites, the mass media and an economy subordinated to foreign capital, and politics ignoring the needs of ordinary people; (4) socially and politically engaged citizens involved in ‘work at the grassroots’ for the nation, its collective memory and forgotten heroes (e.g. the veterans of anti-communist guerrillas) and assisting the disadvantaged and poor, for instance offering gifts to children in children’s homes or organising material support for the residents of pre-Second World War Polish territories in the east (Kresowiacy).

The weakness of left-wing organisations in contemporary Poland causes people from different social environments who seek anti-establishment activism, to find themselves in the nationalist milieu. It gives them the opportunity to feel a part of the anti-governmental, anti-systemic movement, to express their dissatisfaction as well as to be socially/politically involved. An example is the narrative of the activist of the All-Poland Youth, Tadeusz:

It seems that the narrators build their identity mainly on that of resistance. It is constructed by social actors who feel (culturally and politically) marginalised and define their situation as devalued by the existing conditions (Castells Reference Castells1997, 8). The references to the economic situation in Poland are much less common than to political and cultural issues. Even though some narrators critically assess their chances on the labour market and share the experiences of economic emigration and precarious jobs, such themes are usually of secondary importance in their life stories. While the nationalists share similar cultural worldviews and values, they do not have a coherent economic programme. In the interviews collected, heterogeneous economic views were typical: some informants supported radical variants of economic liberalism (e.g. the liquidation of obligatory contributions to the State Insurance Company), while others expressed the need for retaining some elements of the welfare state. Many talked about their lack of interest in the economy:

The lack of coherent economic views seems to be a general aspect of the political and economic consciousness of young people. Other studies on the youth in Poland documented the growing relevance of hybrid models and indecisiveness regarding economic preferences (Gardawski Reference Gardawski2017, 116).

Similar observations follow from the analysis of narrative interviews with right-wing supporters among the young precarious workers interviewed within the PREWORK project. On the one hand, there is almost univocal criticism of the high-level politics both on the side of the governing party (Law and Justice) and key parliamentary parties in opposition (such as Civic Platform or.Modern/.Nowoczesna). On the other hand, as compared with left-wing supporters, who often explain their political choices by their criticism of working conditions, right-wing voters and activists refer mostly to cultural factors in justifying their preference for traditional values and social order. An example is Alina, a doctoral student in the field of Polish philology, who supports the Liberty/Wolność party led by the Euro-sceptical Janusz Korwin-Mikke, known also for his public praising of traditional gender roles:

In order to support herself during her PhD studies, Alina works on short-term contracts as a copywriter and an academic teacher. Yet, as she explains in other parts of the interview, she is satisfied with her job (‘I’m able to support myself doing it and I find pleasure in it’) and does not criticise her economic situation. She justifies her political views by non-economic issues related to the influence of her husband (‘interested in politics’ and supporting the Liberty/Wolność party as well) and, more fundamentally, the need to retain ‘conservative’ values which she acquired during her upbringing in a rather religious environment in an old mining region in Poland. Such a choice might be seen in terms of defending stable and predictable foundations for individual life strategies in the context of fears of disruption of social order by the expansion of cultural liberalism which is promoted by the liberal media and left-wing circles (‘my views are anti-leftist’). Similar to Alina, other right-wing supporters rarely explain their economic attitudes by work or labour market conditions and more often explain their choices by their opposition to liberal elites, the mass-media and ‘leftist’ milieus, which are seen as threats to the nationhood, tradition and ‘normalcy.’

However, there are rare, but interesting, cases in which some general statements about economic situation are included. The first type of such situation is the narratives of aspiring and real ‘self-made men’ who tend to criticise the undeserved (and often only imagined) ‘privileges’ of some categories of people, including refugees and those living on welfare. An example is Marian, an IT specialist, who says:

In the case of Marian, who, following emigration, short-term jobs in construction and production plants, took a loan and invested €2500 in IT training to get a job in an IT company. Here, anti-establishment political views are combined with radical liberalism and criticism of the welfare system, grounded in a belief in the individual achievements of hardworking people juxtaposed with those ‘unwilling to work’. Thus, cultural motives follow economic ones and result in an anti-solidarity vision of a fragmented society of competing individuals which can be occasionally integrated within spectacular manifestations of nationhood, in opposition to generalised cultural Others (i.e. leftists, Muslims, homosexual couples, to mention a few issues tackled in the interview). Unsurprisingly, Marian is fascinated by the Independence Marches in Warsaw, which gave him (similar to the other narrators who participated in it in both PREWORK and far-right activist samples) a chance to participate in a festive, albeit ephemeral collectivity united by national symbols (‘when you walk in a crowd of tens of thousands with Polish flags, singing the anthem together, this is an incredible experience’).

Another type of justification, usually limited to the anti-immigrant component of right-wing views, was more often encountered in the narratives of those economically disadvantaged, in low-skilled and low-paid jobs or unemployed. The need to protect culturally defined community as the source of social embeddedness can be interpreted as a response to the feeling of economic uncertainty and symbolic exclusion, additionally intensified by the fear of becoming dominated by cultural others. An example is Marianna who currently attends job activisation training organised by the Voluntary Labour Corps and links her criticism of refugees with her experiences during migration to the UK:

Despite the presence of right-wing attitudes among some of the informants in the PREWORK project who were not active members of nationalist organisations, it has to be stressed that in most cases they did not translate into the participation in the nationalist events and mobilisation. What is more important, however, is that in none of these cases was a direct link between precarious work and right-wing social criticism explicitly made. In the case of right-wing activists, nationalist and right-wing views represent a particular kind of ‘anti-systemic’ (meaning anti-establishment and anti-liberal) counterculture against liberal elites held responsible for the course of system change after 1989. In the broader category of young workers, they seem to reflect the need to retain the traditional principles of social order which can provide some basic security and orientation points in the context of uncertainty and risks only indirectly related to their work situation.