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Stretching the Border: Shopping, Petty Trade and Everyday Life Experiences in the Polish–Ukrainian Borderland
Author(s) -
Szytniewski Bianca B.,
Spierings Bas,
Van Der Velde Martin
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of urban and regional research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.456
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1468-2427
pISSN - 0309-1317
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2427.12857
Subject(s) - embeddedness , everyday life , ukrainian , state (computer science) , sociology , work (physics) , scale (ratio) , plan (archaeology) , political science , geography , law , social science , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , algorithm , computer science , engineering , cartography
This article examines the practices and experiences of Ukrainian border crossers who are engaged in informal small‐scale economic practices, namely shopping and petty trade, at the Medyka border crossing in Poland. By examining the societal, network and territorial embeddedness of the economic activities of these border crossers, we aim to shed light on the practices and experiences that form part of their daily lives. For many, the presence of the state border has become a resource for shopping and petty trade. People share a common purpose of making the most of their border crossing; they work together to plan and coordinate, or improvise and semi‐plan, in the borderland and beyond, to supplement their income or to make a living. As a result, daily life for these border crossers occurs on both sides of the state border, ‘stretching’ the border in both a mental and a physical sense, despite the controlled institutional demarcation between Poland and Ukraine.