ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 focuses on the historic port city of Gdańsk in Poland, which is central to a European story of trade, industry and emancipation from oppression by way of the Solidarity Movement. The city itself is a recipient of conspicuous EU funding through which – together with private investment – considerable heritage and gentrification projects are afoot. Against this frame, the authors explore the conundrum of people’s apparent lack of sense of allegiance to European level bodies such as the EU, even as they live in places structurally shaped by that same body, and even as they may still identify as having a stake in a more general concept of European history. The chapter draws on concepts of scales to explain the mismatches and tensions between different mobilisations of the past, in which contrasting affective repertoires and subject positions are evident as part of the tense making of place.
