An intensity that transforms the field. Vagabonds and the eighteenth-​­ century biopolitical regime in Poland

Abstract

The article investigates the emergence of biopolitical mechanisms in eighteenth-​­ century Poland, focusing on the governance of migration and vagabondage in Warsaw during the Stanislavian period (1764–1795). It applies Michel Foucault’s theoretical framework to examine how Enlightenment elites responded to institutional pressures from mass migration. The analysis traces the shift from sovereign power — focused on the right to take life — to biopolitics, which governs life at the population level, and explores how migration intensity reshaped elite frameworks, prompting a shift in policy goals from eradication to regulation of vagabonds. Methodologically, the study combines historical sociology with philosophical interpretation, analysing elite discourse and institutional regulation, including municipal decrees, interrogation records, hospital and prison regulations and legislative acts on vagabonds and urban governance. The article is divided into two parts: the first reconstructs the conceptual foundations of biopolitics — emphasizing the shift from juridical and disciplinary power to governance ‘at the level of population’; the second identifies three biopolitical trends in Stanislavian Warsaw: framing vagabonds as a population-​­ level threat, the rise of empirical social knowledge, and a shift from eradication to regulation of marginal populations. Despite infrastructural limits, findings suggest Polish authorities began to manage social groups in ways foreshadowing modern biopolitical rationalities.