Authors

Discussion

Georgian migrants residing in Poland are embedded within multiple language and cultural communities, which profoundly influence their collective identity creation and sense of belonging. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2020 and 2024 and amplifies the polyphonic voices of Georgian migrants residing across Poland, as they navigate intersecting social and political challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the full-scale war in Ukraine, and shifting political discourses within Poland. 

Through their narratives, Georgian migrants articulate a complex sense of belonging and moral obligation, often framed by transnational commitments such as familial care, community reciprocity, and the repayment of financial debts back in Georgia. By employing language autobiographies as a central methodological tool, I argue the way Georgian migrants conceptualise their experience of migration, mobility, and return, and how these imaginaries are embedded in their everyday linguistic and cultural practices

Ultimately, the paper presents migrants' perception of temporality as a lived, affective, and moral orientation which conditions their visions of the future and mediates their sense of place, identity, and trajectories within the broader entanglements of the East Europe and Caucasus region. This temporal uncertainty, marked by political instability and social insecurity along with geopolitical challenges and the anticipation of constant change, often translates into a state of extended liminality.

The sense of waiting and suspension becomes a structuring force in migrants’ everyday lives, shaping not only their emotional immunity but also their strategies of adaptation, resilience, integration and hope in an unpredictable regional context.

Key words: migration, temporality, uncertainty, Georgia, Poland.