
The EU-Ukrainian border near Dobromyl
in Nyzhankovychi in 2011.
On the photo is easy to notice
the difference in quality of road on
the both sides of the border.Photo by Andrii Bondarenko.
In a globalized world and particularly after the 9/11 attacks borders became places where state policy and control, power and exclusion are manifested. Free movement inside the EU, considered as a positive phenomenon, causes difficulties in cross border movement for those who live in adjacent areas. The contemporary European Union (EU) border regulations, in which the EU is creating supranational political community, are considered by critical thinkers “as antidemocratic, ethically dubious and socially unjust element of state and policing practice that withdraw from responsibility for human welfare” (Follis 2012, 7). In essay, I focus on the EU policy on its eastern borders, namely the Poland-Ukrainian border. My goal is to examine how changes in the border regulations between two countries beginning with 00’s have influenced cross border movement of people between Poland and Ukraine, and to reveal to what extent the concept of “Building Fortress Europe” is relevant.
Particularly, I analyze the issue from different perspectives, namely from the “top” that is the EU politics on the one side and from the “below” - how it shapes the life of ordinary people on the other. I consider the EU borderland as frontier meaning “a politico-geographical area lying beyond the integrated region of the political unit and into which expansion could take place” (Glassner and Fahrer 2004, 72). Thus, I am referring to the EU-Ukrainian border as frontier, as the EU border is changeable, and is moved with expansion of the EU to the east in 2004, and there are discussions about Ukrainian membership in the EU (that were reduced after Ukrainian Crisis from the beginning of 2014). I also refer to the concept of frontier, because of its defense function, in our case it is the strict EU policy regarding to its eastern borders and beyond as the Frontex agency (the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union) program will show.