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At the same time it is worth considering the intertwining of race and place. The notion of 'leftbehind' places, which has surfaced after the Referendum, can itself suggest that some localities are less developed, 'backward' and lacking a cosmopolitan, global aesthete. In a sophisticated critique of such power-laden tropes, Tomaney (2013: 658) has argued in defence of 'parochialism' seeking to 'rescue local attachments and a sense of belonging from comopolites', but in ways that are not necessarily reactionary or exclusive. A further way in which we might creatively rethink place outside of the familiar rubric of developed/underdeveloped, advanced/'left behind', core/periphery, cosmopolitan/parochial is through considering the relational, contingent, co-production of place. This can be found in postcolonial work that seeks to 'provincialize Europe' (Chakrabarty, 2000), develop an interrelated 'comparative urbanism' (Robinson and Roy, 2016) and appreciate how the imaginative scripting of the 'Orient' was symbolically and materially essential to how Europe constructed its own sense of self (Said, 1978). Some of these postcolonial interventions are differently taken forward in Katz's ( 2001) study of young lives in Sudan and New York. Here, Katz generatively deploys the notion of 'counter-topography' to connect seemingly disparate places and processes together, thereby demonstrating how 'growing up global' is about how global processes interact with the social and material facets of place. These are just some of the many ways in which policymakers and academics might rethink, rework and ultimately reconnect with people and places that have too often have gone marginalised or ignored.

The allure of ‘the west’ in socialist eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has been well documented. Poland, a country noted for the longstanding westward emigration of its population, maintained a particularly close relationship with all things western, especially during the latter stages of the socialist regime. Using material collected from life history interviews with Polish migrants in the UK, this article analyses a very specific manifestation of late socialist Poland’s ‘Imaginary West’: the high status of western things in the lives of children. These western goods, usually things such as sweets, toys and clothes, offered sufficient tangibility and authenticity to make the west feel tantalisingly close, while all the time remaining distant. Using Bennett’s (2001) theory of enchantment as its starting point, this article investigates three aspects of this widespread fascination with the west that were narrated in the interviews, and the very specific material relationships that were constructed and maintained with western objects. First, it considers the affective and aesthetic properties of western things and the ways in which they enchanted the children who encountered them. Second, it analyses the appeal of Pewex shops and the dollar economy as manifestations of western consumerism on socialist soil. Finally, it discusses the problems with this western consumption and the inequalities embedded in these exciting goods. Ultimately this article uncovers why west was often considered best and how this phenomenon was materialised and integrated into children’s everyday lives.