Threads of vulnerability: Migrant precarity and class-sensitive nostalgia in Wioletta Grzegorzewska’s autofiction

This article explores migrant precarity and class-sensitive nostalgia in the autofiction of Wioletta Grzegorzewska (Greg), a Polish-born writer whose work portrays the complexities of eastern European migration to the United Kingdom. Her narratives challenge idealized notions of transnational mobility by foregrounding linguistic displacement, economic insecurity, cultural alienation, and systemic marginalization. Through texts such as Island Notebook, Swallowing Mercury, Students’ Halls, Wolf’s River, and Secret Conductors of Clouds, Grzegorzewska constructs a nuanced critique of the conditions shaping contemporary migrant life. Employing postcolonial and feminist theoretical frameworks focused on class, gender, and mobility, this article examines how her autofiction juxtaposes intimate recollections of childhood in post-communist Poland with the often-harsh realities of life in the British low-wage economy. It argues that Grzegorzewska’s work offers an essential counter-narrative to dominant discourses of European integration and cosmopolitan success, foregrounding the hitherto overlooked and under-represented struggles of eastern European women within the expanding global precariat.