Migration and National Identity in Plzeň: What’s Brewing at the Heart of Europe?

Abstract

Based on desk research, a site visit and 2 interviews with Ukrainian migrants, this paper examines the significance of migration as a Central European phenomenon, even in and around those practices which are deemed to be millenary European traditions. Pilsner Urquell brewery, in Plzeň, Czechia, serves as an ideal research terrain: a capitalist assemblage that brings together individuals at various levels (owners, management, specialised workers, manual labourers) with different identity documentations, statuses and origins, while preparing the traditional Czech beverage. The diversity in status and nationality is linked to the production process as well as to consumption – such as extensive beer tourism as well as alcoholism. In this way, the paper helps to establish the migrant as a constitutive and not an unsavoury derivate persona in contemporary Western society. Behind every glass of beer, there is a shifting vortex of human relations; the actors involved are likely to have different nationality, residency and citizenship statuses, different documents and therefore different rights.