Security practices of state and non-state actors at the German-Polish border

The social integration across internal European borders has long been a relevant aim of the European Union. However, the common European border regime is being challenged constantly from various sides and backgrounds. Not only the external fringes of the EU but also the internal borders have become an occasional object of criticism. Especially with regard to the Polish-German border, a border that has considerably gained public media’s attention as a place of insecurity, demands are emerging that stand in contrast with the proclaimed cooperative approach of the internal EU border regime.

The research project “(In-)Security at the internal Schengen border. Security practices of state and non-state actors at the German-Polish border” analyses how the relation between border and security is produced in discursive and everyday non-discursive practices. The research will particularly focus on the negotiation of the relation of state and non-state securitizing practices at the border between Germany and Poland. This will be done by combining the qualitative analysis of newspaper articles, social media communication and political party programs with interviews with actors of security authorities and locals of the border region. Visual methods are applied in the research process. The project thus integrates both discourse analytic and practice-theoretical/reconstructive approaches.

The research project is conducted at the Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig and the Technical University Dresden, Germany.

Results/Publications

Beurskens, Kristine (2022): Border anxieties: Populist emotional politics at internal EU borders. In: Space and Polity (published Open Access June 2022). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562576.2022.2084375

Renner, Nona / Miggelbrink, Judith / Beurskens, Kristine / Zitterbart, Antonia (2022): Schengen Borders as Lines that Continue to Separate? Media Representations of Pandemic Dimensions of Insecurity in Eastern German Border Regions to Poland. Journal of Borderlands Studies, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2022.2039265
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08865655.2022.2039265

Phan, Paula (2021): Raus aus der Uni – ab in die Forschung: Praktikumseinblicke einer Dresdner Studentin. In: IfL-Blog [Weblog], 10 June 2021. Online Publication: https://blog.leibniz-ifl.de/2021/06/raus-aus-der-uni-ab-in-die-forschung-praktikumseinblicke-einer-dresdner-studentin/ Call date: 20.06.2021

Beurskens, Kristine / Miggelbrink, Judith / Renner, Nona (2020): Volatile Grenze. Diskurse und Praktiken der Integration und Desintegration am Beispiel der deutsch-polnischen Grenze. Covid-19 als Zäsur (Tagungsdokumentation), 4 pages. Editor: AK Med. Geo. https://wp.med-geo.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/COVID19-Zaesur_Beitrag_Beurskens_Miggelbrink_Renner.pdf, 27.10.2020

Beurskens, Kristine / Miggelbrink, Judith (2020): Geographien der Unsicherheit: Bürgerwehren an der ostdeutschen EU-Binnengrenze, In: Naumann, Matthias / Becker, Sören (Eds.): Regionalentwicklung in Ostdeutschland. Dynamiken, Perspektiven und der Beitrag der Humangeographie. Berlin, Heidelberg. S. 71–82. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-60901-9_6

Beurskens, Kristine / Miggelbrink, Judith / Creutziger, Christoph (2016): Securitisation from below? Civil engagement within processes of bordering in internal EU borderlands. In: Grabski-Kieron, Ulrike / Mose, Ingo / Reichert-Schick, Anja / Steinführer, Annett (Eds.): European rural peripheries revalued: governance, actors, impacts. (Rural areas ; 1), Berlin : LIT, 2016. S.172–195