Visualizing Transborder Lifeworlds in the Polish-German Border Region

The work of migrants and transborder commuters in rural and peripheralized localities is often considered invisible or, in fact, actively ignored. This multimodal essay reflects on transborder lifeworlds in the Polish–German border region, drawing on insights from using photography and sound recording as a research method. In the hands of anthropologists and sociologists of work, these methods can be powerful tools for foregrounding intersecting lifeworlds, hidden hierarchies, and power dynamics that shape the places under study. Engaging with both visual and auditory dimensions enables researchers to re-visit their observations and share them with others, opening up new perspectives and re-interpretations, transcending what may have escaped attention or what they perceive differently because of their positionality. Through the curated photographs and soundscapes, this essay offers an intimate, sensorial engagement with everyday life that extends beyond words. Paying attention to crossing, interacting, and overlapping border-zone lifeworlds is essential not only for the study of local context but also for mobility and migration scholarship focusing on labor mobilities to rural and peripheralized regions and the in/visible power relations tied to broader global systems.

doi: 10.1111/awr.70010 Open Access