Localized geopolitics and everyday Europeanization at the Ukraine-EU border: Ukraine’s western border regions between EU integration and the war with Russia

• Applicant: Dr. Tatiana Zhurzhenko
• Subject Area: Human Geography ; Political Science
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563288563

During the past decade, Ukraine’s border with the EU has gained new strategic importance as the country’s "gateway to Europe" and frontier of Europeanization. With the full-scale Russian invasion, it has turned into a life-saving corridor and a site of solidarity for millions of Ukrainian citizens. Due to the geographical proximity to the EU and NATO, Ukraine’s western border regions enjoy relative security; they have become a "safe haven" for IDPs and relocated businesses from the east and south. At the same time, these regions are the first to experience problems in Ukraine’s relations with its EU neighbours, such as memory wars with Poland or tensions over the rights of the ethnic Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia. Moreover, in the context of the Russian aggression, Ukraine’s western border, historically a product of great power deals and now an external NATO border, is also a site of geopolitical contestation. According to the Kremlin’s rhetoric, eastern Galicia, Transcarpathia and northern Bukovina (along with Volhynia and southern Bessarabia) are "Stalin’s gifts to Ukraine". Creating alternative narratives and regional identities is a challenge for the local Ukrainian elites, who are often caught in the conflicting priorities of Kyiv on the one hand, and the EU neighbours, on the other. Residents of the western border regions live through and experience these geopolitical contestations from below, through everyday practices of crossing the EU border. This project aims to study processes of Europeanization from below and localized geopolitical conflicts in three regions of Ukraine (Lviv, Transcarpathia and Chernivtsi) bordering with Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. It builds on three theoretical pillars: 1) the concept of Europeanization applied beyond the borders of the EU and dealing especially with the societal aspects of this process; 2) a "bottom-up" approach to geopolitics understood not as the prerogative of states but involving local communities and ordinary citizens; and 3) the notion of the border as multiscalar, historically multi-layered and co-constructed by local actors through multiple cross-border ties and everyday practices. The project employs a multi-dimensional model of analysis addressing discursive representations of borders and geopolitical imaginaries as well as everyday practices of border crossing. Research methods include 1) qualitative content analysis as well as critical discourse analysis of selected "geopolitical texts" produced at the local level; 2) interviews with representatives of the local elites (public administration, NGOs, academia and cultural milieu); 3) focus groups and individual interviews with local residents who are frequent border crossers.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants