The Polish Plumber and the Imaginaries of the East-West Divide in Hungary and Romania: Old Divisions and New Boundaries
Abstract
The figure of the “Polish plumber” crystallized within the “no” camp in the midst
of the French referendum campaign on the European constitutional treaty in
March 2005. Thereafter the metaphor gradually spread beyond the context in
which it had initially emerged. Although the manner in which the “Polish
plumber” was interpreted differed subtly from one national public space to the
next, in each national public space it built upon dominant imaginaries of the
“East”/“West” polarity. This paper explores the Hungarian and Romanian
interpretations of the “Polish plumber” as they bring to light the weight of
symbolic geographies, as well as their recent reconfigurations.