Cross-Border Cooperation and Transformation of Regional Identities in the Ukrainian–Russian Borderlands: Towards a Euroregion “Slobozhanshchyna”? Part 1

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Zhurzhenko

It is well known that the idea and practice of cross-border cooperation have been developed in postwar Europe with the intention of overcoming the economic and social isolation of border regions and reconciling the hostilities between former enemies. But as a precondition for this process the new map of European borders had to be perceived as “final” and “just,” and as such it was legitimized on international and national levels. Moreover, it was the universal acceptance of the principle of the invariability of borders which made it possible for national governments to grant border regions more freedom in their contacts with the neighbours. The same applies in principle to the former socialist countries, where cross-border cooperation is supposed to help overcome the post-Cold-War division of Europe.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020(41) (3) ◽  
pp. 75-89
Author(s):  
Jan Pochwała ◽  

In order to support the development of Polish and Slovak border regions, after the accession of both countries to the EU, the “Interreg Poland – Slovakia” Program was implemented. One of the priorities of the Program is the protection and use of the common Polish-Slovak cultural and natural heritage for the development of cross-border cooperation. As part of Interreg since 2004, EU-Structural Funds have co-financed joint Polish-Slovak projects implemented in selected counties/poviat located in the following voivodeships/provinces: Śląskie, Małopolskie, Podkarpackie (on the Polish side) and Žilinskom kraji, Prešovskom kraji and Košickým kraji (on the Slovak side). The next editions of Interreg are becoming increasingly popular in Poland and Slovakia including its recognition by experts as well as the implementation of a cross-border effect.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8463
Author(s):  
Herman T. Wevers ◽  
Cosmina L. Voinea ◽  
Frank de Langen

EU border regions continue to face economic and social disadvantages compared to other regions in the same country. Since 1990, the European Commission has been implementing extensive territorial cooperation programs to support EU border regions in solving regional problems and building social cohesion. This study offers a contribution for decreasing the economic and social disadvantages of EU border regions by investigating the complementarity between institutional EU cross-border cooperation and social entrepreneurship. We argue that both concepts build upon similar drivers and characteristics with the aim of creating impact and bringing about change. We test and improve our initially literature-based framework to provide a better insight into how institutional and entrepreneurial processes could benefit from each other. We conduct interviews with experts operating at different governance levels and in various EU countries and border regions. The complementarity between both concepts is confirmed considering a differentiation between governance levels and fields of expertise. The results show that complementarity between the concepts mainly exists in terms of taking advantage of opportunities for a certain effect. The commercial activities of social enterprises are seen as effective, but it is necessary for social enterprises to establish sustainable EU cross-border cooperation and to improve regional social and economic development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Iryna Koval ◽  
Olha Turchenko ◽  
Ella Derkach

This paper presents an overview of the recent development in cross-border cooperation between Ukraine and Poland in the socio-economic scope and policy issues relating to cross-border regions. The authors focus on the evolution of the framework concerning the formation of Euroregions with particular reference to the issues connected to cross-border projects in such regions. In addition, the recommendations are proposed in order to identify some directions for future actions to be taken to promote the innovative development of such cooperation between Ukraine and Poland, taking into account the economic and political peculiarities of both countries.


Baltic Region ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Alexey V. Kuznetsov ◽  
Olga V. Kuznetsova

This article analyses how the role of border regions has changed in the regional policies of Russia and European countries since the early 1990s. The study aims to estimate the efficiency of Russia’s regional policy with regard to border regions (its completeness, a focus on actual problems, etc.) and to compare it with that of European counterparts. The article relies on publications on the experience of EU countries, earlier contributions from Russian researchers, federal regulations, and statistics on the regional distribution of federal investment in fixed assets. It is shown that the federal border region policy is largely a reflection of the features and problems of Russia’s regional policy as a whole. Currently, the development of cross-border cooperation is affected more strongly by national security concerns than by economic growth considerations. Cross-border cooperation is no longer part of the regional policy. Border regions, however, have received an increasing proportion of federal investments in recent years, particularly, amid the reunification with the Crimea. The study calls for better coordination between different areas of the federal socio-economic policy on border regions and closer attention to border regions’ foreign economic ties, particularly, within the implementation of the Strategy for the Spatial Development of the Russian Federation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 64-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Székely

The aim of this analysis is to follow theoretically the way, how a border area becomes an integrated, well-functioning border zone. The definitions and classifications lead up to the concepts of cross-border space generally constructed in the 1990’s, in the works of Ratti, Renard or Sanguin. The spatial organization of cross-border regions is generally represented in schematic maps, including more or less objects (border line, rivers, roads, railroads, canals, cities and other settlements, etc.) and flows (capital, labor-power, tourists, migration, etc.). Maps for different border types and levels of cross-border cooperation use different elements and seem not comparable. We summarize these different maps and suggest some modifications and extensions, offering a more general tool for the theoretical analysis. The IT age partially changed the channels of communication; thereby the update of the models is current.


Author(s):  
John Hoberman

Is the familiar left–right bipolar model of the ideological spectrum still relevant to political interpretations of national sports policies in the post-Communist age? This chapter describes what some may regard as a “post-ideological,” namely, post–Cold War, political world in which governments around the world offer political rationales for the instrumental use of sport. This chapter argues that there is a political doctrine governing the professed or actual use of sport by national governments that is so widespread and fundamental that it persists independently of traditional left–right political ideologies. These policies and their goals are quite uniform across the globe. There is a modern sports-functional orthodoxy that government officials everywhere feel they must adhere to that promises elite success plus public benefits. This functionalist discourse of sport is a state-sanctioned ideology that promotes the value of sport as a resource for implementing various forms of social engineering.


2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuk Wah Chan

AbstractThis article examines the contested identity of a particular group of Viet-kieu, who were born in China and who returned to Vietnam in the 1970s, by looking into their personal histories, descent backgrounds and the political and socio-economic processes they lived through in the past few decades. Unlike other Viet-kieu who returned from the West, the Viet-kieu in the borderlands rarely received any attention from the media or academia. They led a double life both in China and in Vietnam and experienced dramatic changes of fate from the 1970s, through the 1980s, to the 1990s. Their hybrid cultural endowment and cross-border familial ties were both detrimental and beneficial to their social and economic life within different historical contexts. Reopened borders around the world in the post-Cold War era have generated discourses on transnational economic integration, regional connectedness, as well as fluid mobility and identities. It has become a fashion to criticize the study of culture and identity as rigid entities, while the increasing stress on subjectivity and agency has made identity seem ever more evolving and changing. Putting aside the romantic notion of fluid and multiple identities, this article brings up a number of empirical cases to illustrate how identity is often shaped by the possibilities and constraints under different politico-economic circumstances.


2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 2718-2734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaj Zimmerbauer

This paper studies how supranational regions are built through the interplay of borders and networks. The focus is on how territory and network become manifest in planning, and in particular on the actual contexts in planning where the territorial discourse is emphasized. Conceptually, territory–network interplay is linked to recent discussions on relational/territorial space, multidimensionality of sociospatial relations, and thin and thick region building. The Barents Euro-Arctic Region is used here as an example, and the region's recent geoeconomic turn is studied first. The paper concludes that, despite geoeconomization, network is not dominant over territory as a key category in supranational region building. Although the contemporary (new) regionalist planning discourse emphasizes the institutionalization of network-oriented regional (economic) spaces without definitive boundaries, processes such as representing the region in branding or (re)defining who is eligible to join the official structures of cross-border cooperation entail a degree of territorial thinking and make use of the notions of boundedness and spatial symmetry. In planning practices networks commonly create the territory effect and vice versa. However, due to their different ontologies, network and territory can appear as separate or even contradictory discourses as well.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-53
Author(s):  
Tatiana Shaban

Cross-border cooperation among the Eastern neighbours of the European Union can be understood as a new approach to public policy and border governance in the region. There was no border cooperation strategy between communist and European countries during Soviet times. The question of the management of the Eastern border of the EU, especially with Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova, came on the agenda in 1997, when accession to the union was finally opened to Eastern and Southern European candidates. With the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement that came into force in 1998, Ukraine signalled its foreign policy orientation as European, asserting that Western integration would help modernize its economy, increase living standards, and strengthen democracy and rule of law. The European Commission required “good neighbourly relations” as a further condition for accession and in conjunction, the concept of “Wider Europe” was proposed to set up border-transcending tasks. The Carpathian Euroregion was established to contribute to strengthening the friendship and prosperity of the countries of this region. However, the model was not fully understood and had only limited support of the national governments. This article uses the Carpathian Euroregion as a case study to show that overall Ukraine and the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood presents more opportunities for effective cooperation with the EU rather than barriers or risks.


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