BORDERLANDS FACING A POLYCRISIS IN THE 21ST CENTURY. RESILIENCE AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES OF CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS

Melinda Istenes-Benczi and Teodor Gyelník, two members of the research group, participated and gave a presentation at the international scientific conference entitled “Borderlands facing a polycrisis in the 21st century. Resilience and future perspectives of cross-border relations”. The conference was held in two locations in Poland: in Wrocław on September 10 and 11 and in Opole on September 12.

The main goal of the conference was the scientific discussion of the topics of polycrisis, tolerance, cross-border relations and cross-border cooperation. The issue of polycrisis was clearly defined by Hynek Böhm and Shlomo Hosson, according to whom it is a process where functional regions face parallel challenges at the same time. Today, these challenges can take multifaceted polymorphic forms, such as geopolitical rivalries across the globe; economic crisis; unemployment and social unrest; health crisis, covid epidemic and closures; illegal and irregular migration; security challenges and terrorism; the crisis of border closures, the weakening of the Schengen system and the emergence of the new phenomenon, the so-called “Fortress Europe” and/or Brexit, and its effects on the European Union. These multi-valued polymorphic crises reinforce each other, thus exerting a deeper impact on societies and institutions.

The speakers at the conference emphasised the importance of flexibility. This means that the spaces are specifically able to resist the negative effects of the multi-valued “polycrisis”. At this point, several strategies were discussed in order to face the challenges, such as increasing the prevention measures of regions and institutions, deepening network connections between spaces, transferring knowledge or learning crisis management strategies from the business environment.

Research on polycrisis and resilience is extremely important for border science, as they have a huge impact on border permeability, cross-border cooperation and relations. The goal is to prevent the spillover effect of the crisis on the border structures and to prevent border closures or border restrictions due to possible crises. Cross-border connections and open and free movement across borders are important for many reasons, for example the cross-border movement of healthcare workers is an essential element of the health systems of many states, and a border closure can easily jeopardise the functioning of healthcare. Moreover, the often-celebrated European peace is also based on peaceful border relations between neighboring nation-states, so borderlands are not only potential sources of conflict, but also peace-making spaces suitable for promoting mutual trust.

The most dangerous border prevention process, “mental bordering” was also discussed. This means that borders are not only embodied in physical forms, such as border closures or border controls, but also in people’s mental space, thinking and imagination. This form of the mental boundary is the most timeless and the most difficult to deconstruct, since negative prejudices, hatred, transgenerational wounds must be removed and/or the identity framework of the given nation must be modified. This deconstruction is extremely energy-intensive, because the identity framework of the “I” is often built against the neighboring “Other”, as Jean-Paul Sartre notes in his writings: “The Other invades; the gaze of the Other shapes my body in its nakedness, makes it give birth, shapes it, makes it what it is, sees it as I will never see it. The Other holds a secret – the secret of what I am.”

The members of the research group gave a lecture on September 12, 2023 in Opole, in the panel entitled “Discourses and Narratives of Borders”. Their research “W/ordering in the EU. It was presented under the title “Changes of European discourse on migration”. The presentation focused on the analysis of the migration crisis from a security policy perspective in close connection with the b/ordering-borderism phenomenon. In addition to the presentation of the methodology used during the research, the audience was able to learn about the changes in the narratives appearing in the speeches of the presidents of the European Commission, as well as the changes in the narratives and the use of words in the states of the European Union based on the EU documents between 2015 and 2022. The results were illustrated by graphs produced using SpeakAI (mood analysis) and MAXQDA (word cloud, interactive word tree, etc.) software.

In addition to the aforementioned topics, the conference reflected on a wide range of topics such as migration in the elderly, identity structures, security policy on the Russian and Belarusian border, the consequences of the war in Ukraine, Euroscepticism, biopolitics, geopolitics, migration, Derridian “unconditional hospitality” and many other border topics.