What is it about?
Published in the 'Rural Imaginations for a Globalized World' volume of 'Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race Online', this chapter analyses two films through the role and agency of Central and Eastern European labour migrants within contemporary representations of the European rural space. Drawing on the concepts of rural authenticity and homonationalism, the chapter explores how migrant characters are portrayed as labouring in the Italian and British countryside for the benefit and pleasure of other, often local, characters. Both 'Under the Tuscan Sun' (Wells, 2003) and 'God’s Own Country' (Lee, 2017) depict migrants as essential to sustaining a romanticised vision of rural authenticity that dominates Western European imaginaries. Yet their presence in these rural settings is far from ideal; it is marked by exploitative labour conditions and their positioning as inferior to local populations. The films highlight the tensions globalisation introduces into rural life, including the marginalisation of migrants and queer people. I argue that, although both films appear to engage with and question conventional rural imaginations, they ultimately reinforce a re-romanticised countryside grounded in traditional and patriarchal values.
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Why is it important?
This chapter builds on the work of the ERC-funded Rural Imaginations project (2018-2024), led by Professor Esther Peeren, which investigated the politics and aesthetics that shape how rural spaces are understood, narrated, and imagined across various media. The chapter focuses on the role of migrants within these representations. Despite their longstanding and visible presence in the history of the European countryside, migrant labourers and their agency in shaping rural life are often constructed as out of place within nationalistic rural imaginaries, which are rooted in idyllic and exclusionary visions of belonging. However, Eastern European migrants have become increasingly present in contemporary cinematic depictions, not only due to their substantial demographic presence in rural labour forces but also because their whiteness affords them a degree of inclusion that other migrant groups may not receive. This chapter examines how these dynamics are shaped by (homo)nationalist tendencies in rural imaginations. Through a close analysis of the two films, it argues that what may initially appear to be progressive representations of rural space ultimately reproduce traditional, patriarchal values, reinforcing rather than challenging the rural status quo.
Perspectives
It has been an honour to write this piece with the guidance of Esther Peeren, and to benefit from the insightful edits of Tjalling Valdés Olmos, as well as the support of the Rural Imaginations team in helping me conceptualise my findings. As a Polish-Bulgarian migrant residing in the Netherlands, I am particularly attentive to the tropes and stereotypes that seasonal workers from Eastern Europe are often subjected to. Having the opportunity to explore and speak to these issues through the lens of this research has been very meaningful.
Dominika Mikołajczyk
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This page is a summary of: Rural Authenticity and Homonationalism in Filmic Representations of Central-Eastern European Migrants in the Italian and British Countryside, June 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004731943_021.
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