Stretching the Border: Shopping, Petty Trade and Everyday Life Experiences in the Polish–Ukrainian Borderland

Abstract

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.

Not really at home: Adaptation strategies of Asian migrants in Ukraine

“…Experts such as Szytniewski et al. (2020) stress the importance of local cross-border agreements between Ukraine and the three EU countries—Poland, Hungary and Slovakia—which allow inhabitants within a 30–50 km wide border zone to cross the EU border and stay there for up to 90 days within a six-month period.…”

Cross-Border Shopping on the European Union Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Market: Determinants of Lithuanian Shoppers’ Behavior in Poland

“…Consumers are driven not only by utilitarian motives but also by hedonic ones when crossing country borders to shop for the goods and services sold across the border [2]. Thus, the differences and similarities that may be found in a borderland are experienced mentally [29].…”

Cross‐border market building for narcotics control: A Polanyian analysis of the China–Myanmar border region

“…First, the internal characteristics of these unique spatial formations have become clearer through fine-grained and in-depth case studies. These range from attempts by firms to forge cross-border industrial clusters (Sparke et al, 2004;To & Mahanty, 2019); the establishment of formal and informal networks to capture price differentials within the border region (Mahanty, 2018(Mahanty, , 2019; the emergence of transient and often clandestine labour flows across borders (Malik & Gallien, 2020;Szytniewski et al, 2020); and the proactive implementation of experimental policies by the state (Simmons, 2019;Wright, 2019). Second, similarities and differences between border regions are foregrounded through comparative analyses (Fricke, 2015).…”