1187 | 452 | Mgr. | Alexandra Dresler
Since the 1990s, the Polish-Ukrainian border has been undergoing constant development, when its meaning, character and function are changing against the background of the processes of European integration and also due to the EU’s response to significant geopolitical events associated with increasing pressure from Russia. On one hand, the enlargement of the EU promised the growth of institutional support for cross-border cooperation and the gradual opening of borders for the Polish-Ukrainian neighbourhood, but at the same time it erected completely new borders – symbolic ones._x000D_
The EU and its geopolitics therefore show that although the importance of borders as barriers is gradually weakening and borders as physical barriers are disappearing in many places, on the contrary they are strengthening and at the same time being supplemented by new borders, often distributed in space invisibly and independently of border lines. These include various social and cultural boundaries, but also individual boundaries, created either institutionally for the purpose of securitization (e.g., visa regime or biometric and CCTV technologies) or from below, through various social phenomena such as perception, stereotypes, behaviour, interaction, etc._x000D_
The author will present an article focused on the social perception of the border in the Polish-Ukrainian borderland, in the regions and localities directly adjacent to the border and across the population that lives there. The study answers the question of how the European integration processes and the EU policy, resulting in changes of the meaning and function of borders, affected the everyday life of the population and their perceptions of both – the EU and its neighbour. _x000D_
Alexandra Dresler
Faculty of Science, Charles University
ID Abstract: 452