Project Description

The aim of this study, located between geography, political science and anthropology, is to analyse different challenges to the liberal script in border regions, in particular with regard to sovereignty, mobility and individual vs. group rights. The case of Ukraine offers an interesting within-case variation on the claims and practices surrounding borders. It thereby speaks to a broader comparative and transregional context. First, the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine are among the most blatant contemporary challenges to the liberal script as enshrined in international law. Second, Ukraine’s western regions bordering the EU are characterized by the tension between mobility and controlled access as well as the contestation of competing notions of the nation-state and the political regimes they underpin (e.g. on both sides of the Ukrainian- Hungarian border). And third, Ukraine’s border with Transnistria – a de facto state let in between Moldova and Ukraine – highlights the practical and security implications of a contested border on neighbouring states. The feasibility of the qualitative data collection has been tested in the pilot study Ukraine‘s Contested Border Regions with funding by the Research Unit Borders in 2019. The new data will be of interest to European policy-makers and opens up possibilities for engaging the wider public by bringing to life a range of border experiences. The project extends the international network of SCRIPTS in Eastern Europe.

Research Questions

• Why and how is the liberal border script, as enshrined in national politics, international law and EU norms and regulations, contested in Ukraine’s border regions?
• What are the driving factors and who are the actors behind these contestations?
• What are the effects of different types of contestation on the perceptions, practices and identities of those living in the contested regions?
• How is the liberal script maintained or redefined as a result of these challenges?

Research Approach

The novelty of the project lies in the in-depth and comparative analysis of different border regions and contestations at once. Four border regions have been selected for this study, including two border regions with a highly uncertain territorial and legal status: the Ukrainian-Russian border, the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, and the Ukrainian-Polish border. Research methods include in-depth interviews with representatives of the local elites of the border regions and focus groups with local residents who are frequent border crossers.

Relation to the Liberal Script

The project helps to pin down the big conceptual questions at the heart of the Cluster while also increasing the visibility of Eastern Europe as one of the regional focal areas of SCRIPTS. Ukraine is currently experiencing one of the most blatant international challenges to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, as enshrined in international law. The annexation of Crimea and the support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine were Russia’s direct response to Ukraine’s westward-oriented reform process and closer relations with the EU and NATO. The full scale invasion since February 2022 has accelerated Ukraine’s integration into the EU; at the same time, the impact of the war on Ukrainian society, the restrictions of rights and freedoms imposed by martial law and Russia’s further occupation of Ukrainian territory pose new dramatic challenges to the liberal script. This clash of different conceptions of domestic and international politics and law provides direct insights into the institutions, norms and promises of the liberal script as defined by the Cluster and into an alternative script practiced by Russia. The main contribution of the project is the multi-sited perspective “from below” that helps to understand how high-level politics is filtered and affects local perceptions and practices.

Publications

Sasse, Gwendolyn / Minakov, Mykhailo / Isachenko, Daria (eds.) 2021: Post-Soviet Secessionism: Nation-Building and State-Failure after Communism, Stuttgart: ibidem.

Sasse, Gwendolyn 2022: Der Krieg gegen die Ukraine, München: C.H. Beck.

Sasse, Gwendolyn 2023: Russia's War Against Ukraine, Cambridge: Polity Press.

von Löwis, Sabine / Sasse, Gwendolyn 2021: A Border Regime in the Making? The Case of the Contact Line in Ukraine, Historical Social Research 46(3): 208-244.

von Löwis, Sabine / Gritsenko, Zotova А. 2021: Friends or Foes? Changes in Cross-Border Practices and Attitudes toward Neighbours along the Russian-Ukrainian Border after 2014, Ethnographic Review 4: 220-237.

von Löwis, Sabine / Eschment, Beate (eds.) 2022: Post-Soviet Borders: A Kaleidoscope of Shifting Lives and Lands, London: Routledge

von Löwis, Sabine 2023: Die Grenzen der Ukraine. Koordinaten der politischen Geografie, in: Benz, Wolfgang (ed.): Die Ukraine. Kampf um Unabhängigkeit. Geschichte und Gegenwart, Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 303-318.

Zhurzhenko, Tatiana 2022: Making and Unmaking the Ukrainian-Russian Border since 1991, in: Palko, Olenka / Ardeleanu, Constantin (eds.): Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century, Montreal: McGill University Press, 329-354.

Zhurzhenko, Tatiana 2023: Between the ‘Opening to the West’ and the Trauma of Rebordering: Towards a Genealogy of Post-Soviet Border Studies, in: von Löwis, Sabine / Eschment, Beate (eds.): Post-Soviet Borders: A Kaleidoscope of Shifting Lives and Lands, London: Routledge.

Zhurzhenko, Tatiana 2024: Everyday Europeanization and Bottom-Up Geopolitics at the Ukrainian-Polish Border, Geopolitics 2024: 1-43.

Zhurzhenko, Tatiana 2024: Ruptured Histories, Contested Memories, Fluid Borders: Monuments in the Northern Black Sea Region from Catherine II to the Russo-Ukrainian War, in: Bumann, Ninja / Jobst, Kerstin S. / Rohdewald, Stefan / Troebst, Stefan (eds.): Handbook on the History and Culture of the Black Sea Region, Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag.