The main object of this article is to present the history of the establishing legal regulations in Poland concerning additional place names and other official signs in the languages of national minorities. This process has been always very difficult, because as it teaches the experience of many European countries, it affects issues related the national identity, the role of the national language in the state and the tradition of recognizing linguistic diversity in a given country. In the article, I will try to show that the introduction of such regulations in Poland has been with the one hand an important, perhaps even historical, change in the functioning of the Polish society and administration which consisted of official admission of other languages into the public sphere thus violating the dominant tradition of Polish language dominance in the country. From the other hand, the presence of a minority place-names indicates a change in the way in which minority groups publicly present their ethnic identities. It takes place not only through maintaining national cultures and learning the mother tongue but also through increased visual presence in the public sphere.

The article’s subject is the status of the homosexual minority in the world of sports, which–as one would assume–is a hetero-normative world. The author draws attention to the different situations of lesbians and gays in sports as a result both of the manner in which sports themselves are seen and of how femininity andmasculinity in sports are viewed (certain types of sports activity are perceived as being masculine, and certain as being feminine). The attitudes of the male and female athletes themselves are described, as well as the attitude towards them in the sports environment and their perception in public opinion. The Gay Games, competitions for sexual minorities, are also presented, with their relation to mainstream (heterosexual) sports. Particular attention is paid to the ambiguous status of sexual minorities and various practices used within these milieus and towards them.

Teresa Willenborg’s book is devoted to analysis of the situation of the German population of former German territories which were granted to Poland in 1945 basing on diplomatic conferences of great powers: USA, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Willenborg focuses on experiences of Germans who decided to remain in their hometowns and villages. The subject of her interest is here mainly a term of becoming ‘foreign’ and ‘solitare’ in their own homeland after 1945. Thanks to usage of various Polish and German sources the author managed to stress the fact, that the history of post-war expulsions and national minorities often requires a transnational approach.

The article examines the language biographies of two generations of a family of German origin in the Czech Republic from the end of World War II to the present day. The content analysis of the biographies is based on the application of the narrative interview method developed in qualitative sociology. The analysis of the data obtained by this method follows the stages in the language use of the two informants in coping with the challenge of the language policies of the state.

The current of minor literatures – developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari on the basis of an analysis of Franz Kafka's works – is a kind of breakthrough in the modern and post-modern interpretation of literary texts. Its basic aspect is the minority, expressed in various ways, determined by the social exclusion of the artist, set within the framework of a dominant foreign culture, the emanation of which is primarily language. This immanent feature affects all levels of a literary work, leading to the creation of a specific apparatus. One of the most interesting representatives of this current is Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky – a Russian writer from a Polish noble family. The writer's work – focused mainly on criticism of the central category of logos – is based on a set of philosophical concepts that transfer reflections to a paradigm different from the modernist or socialist realist tradition. One of the key objects of analysis in such an approach is the question of sound and the reception of music itself. The author of the article presents the concept of sound philosophy present in Krzhizhanovsky’s works, which at the same time characterizes the whole current of minor literatures and – similarly to other sign systems – introduces a distinction between minor and dominant elements.

Confronted with a natural tendency of marginalization national/ethnic minorities and immigrant communities respond by adopting two diverse strategies of showing their presence in the public sphere of the host country. Depending on the level of their integration and the goals they want to achieve, they can either stress their links (affinity) with the majority culture or the differences that mark them out. However, some minority communities succeed in achieving a distinctive presence in the public sphere already at the stage of launching its own media.

With the Act on the Polish Card Poland followed the pattern of some European states (mostly Central and Eastern European ones) of enacting specific domestic legislation conferring special treatment and benefits to persons who are recognized as its kin-minorities. The most important analysis of this phenomenon from the perspective of international law was the 2001 Venice Commission’s report entitled “Report on the Protection of National Minorities by their Kin-State.” The Polish legislation was adopted in 2007, so for obvious reasons it was not considered by the Venice Commission. However, a rather unexpected and unusual examination of the Polish kin-state legislation from the perspective of international law came from Belarus. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Belarus (CCRB) conducted a comprehensive examination of the Act on the Polish Card in 2011. The main aim of this article is to present and comment on the reasoning of the CCRB. Beginning with the broader context, this article starts with a presentation of the origins and a short description of the Act on the Polish Card, followed by a discussion of why the Polish Card and other kin-state legislation instruments are topics of concern in international law. The main part of the article is devoted to the presentation and assessment of the 2011 CCRB decision on the Act on the Polish Card. The author’s assessment confirms at least some of the concerns put forward by the CCRB, i.e., that both the Act on the Polish Card and the practice based on it contradict some norms and principles of international law, namely the principle of territorial sovereignty, the norms of consular law, and several bilateral treaties in force between these two states. Bearing in mind that despite those concerns more than a quarter-million Polish Cards (also sometimes called Pole’s Cards) have been issued so far by the Polish authorities, the article ends with a discussion of why such a prolonged nonconformity with international law is possible.

The Return Directive allows for the detention of minors during removal proceedings, but only as a ‘last resort’, for ‘the shortest appropriate period of time’ and with the primary consideration of the ‘best interests of the child’. While the Directive attempted to provide some safeguards to minors, these are undermined throughout, as the enforcement of such provisions depends significantly on their incorpo-ration into domestic law. I provide an overview of the EU detention policy, map the existing domestic law framework in light of the benchmarks set out by the Directive and human rights instruments, and argue that there is a lack of consistency in the case study of Poland. In doing so, I analyse the limitations to detaining minors in light of the human rights treaties, of the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights, and of the role of the monitoring body – the Committee on the Rights of the Child. In discussing the different types of jurisprudence, I illustrate how different bodies speak with the same voice on the detention of minors. Based on these findings I attempt to contribute to the policy debate on how to reconcile and balance the implications of two policy objectives affecting irregular migrant children - the protection of minors and immigration en-forcement. I identify detention policy aspects, for which the legislation should be further harmonised, and I develop models of good practices based on other Member States’ practices, thus providing a set of policy recommendations to the Polish legislator as to what fair and effective irregular migration governance might entail.

One of the key parameters determining detection properties of silicon PIN detector structures (p⁺-ν-n⁺ or n⁺-ν-p⁺) is minority carrier diffusion length in p-n junction regions p-n (p⁺-ν or n⁺-ν). The parameter concerned strongly depends on quality of the starting material and technological processes conducted and has a significant impact on detector parameters, in particular dark current intensity. Thus, the parameter must be determined in order to optimise the design and technology of detectors.

The paper presents a method for measuring the spatial distribution of effective carrier diffusion length in silicon detector structures, based on the measurement of photoelectric current of a non-polarised structure illuminated (spot diameter of 250 μm) with monochromatic radiation of two wavelengths λ₁ = 500 nm (silicon penetration depth of around 0.9 μm) and λ₂ = 900 nm (silicon penetration depth of around 33 μm). The value of diffusion length was determined by analysing the spatial distribution of optical carrier generation and values of photoelectric currents.

This article focuses on mobility of companies in the European Union in the light of the Court of Justice’s judgment in the C-106/16 Polbud – Wykonawstwo sp. z o.o. case. The Court of Justice has once again interpreted the treaty provisions relating to the EU freedom of establishment in the context of cross-border conversion of companies. The in-depth analysis of the case from the substantive law perspective as well as from the conflict-of-law perspective has raised some doubts with regard to the background of the judgment. Therefore, the article assesses whether the cross-border transfer of a seat took place in the Polbud case or the cross-border conversion, or possibly a new company has come into existence. Most of the analysis is aimed at exposing the risks related to the companies’ mobility under the rules adopted in the Polbud judgment, in particular in the absence of respective European and national regulation.