Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal (Sep 2015)
„Auf den schaumigen Wellenkämmen suchte ich nach dem Gespenst der polnischen Bauern auf der Suche nach Boden und Brot“ - Reiseerfahrungen polnischer MigrantInnen auf der Seereise nach Südamerika, 1870-1930
Abstract
During the last third of the nineteenth century, thousands of Poles left the Austro-Hungarian, Prussian, and Russian empires in search of better living and working conditions in South America, especially in Brazil and Argentina. The voyages to these destination countries lasted several weeks and demanded strenuous efforts from the migrants. However, there are only a few descriptions of the passage by the peasants, workers, and farmers that shaped the largest part of mass migration to South America. The aim of this paper is to show how migrants experienced the passage in steerage. My research is based on Polish emigration memoirs edited by the Social-Economic Institute (Instytut Gospodarstwa Społecznego) in Warsaw in 1939. The institute’s aim was to gather information about the cultural, social, and economic situation of Poles in the past and present. In 1936, the institute organized a contest to obtain the most striking memoirs from Poles that had migrated to South America. Many of these show that the passage became an important moment in their migration process, during which they began to reflect on their current situation, their farewell from their home country, and of course their arrival in the new one. I argue that the specific situation on board, as well as the “farewell forever,” led to these kind of thoughts, which were also saturated with Polish national motifs.
