ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on small, rural roadside communities living in constant (trans)local and transit flows. Such flows lie beyond the direct control of these communities, yet simultaneously shape their daily economic strategies. This study draws upon ethnographic research I conducted between 2013 and 2016 in roadside villages and towns situated along Poland’s national roadway 92 (DK92) and a new section of the A2 motorway that opened in 2011. These two large road infrastructures form the main transportation corridors between Poland’s eastern and western borders running through the centre of the country. Here, I examine the relationships between the economic transformation after 1989 and the modernisation connected to roadway infrastructure development in contemporary Poland. I analyse grassroots understandings of and the execution of the economic transformation, exploring the interconnections with and repercussions of increased mobility. I, thus, demonstrate how local and mobile people—ordinary citizens, representatives of local governments, entrepreneurs, transiting immigrants, road workers and lorry drivers—adapt, change and maintain informal and/or semi-legal economic strategies. Some of the phenomena I consider include word-of-mouth marketing; informal loyalty agreements offered by roadside petrol stations, restaurants and inns; responses to continuing cuts to public transportation; and the rebranding of small and medium-sized enterprises experiencing financial difficulty.
