ABSTRACT
The recent geopolitical involvement of the EU in its eastern neighbourhood not only changed international political relations and perspectives on non-EU regions. It also stirred up local politicians, civil society protagonists, and economic agents at its external borders. Virtually overnight, new perspectives and variable scopes of action came into sight where formerly fixed local frameworks seemed to restrain heterogeneous projects and networks. Such rebordering almost inevitably includes rescaling, meaning that networks, scopes of action, and access to power resources become fluid. They may flexibly expand or shrink as local protagonists address discursive framings altered by geopolitics. Seeking to theorise such contextualised relationships between bordering and scaling, the paper discusses apt concepts of scale and discusses their relevance. Referring to the case of Ukraine’s ‘decivilised ants’, i.e. petty traders and smugglers who temporarily became active participants of the Ukraine conflict, the intertwining between geopolitics and everyday life are discussed. Making use of scale theory it is shown how altered resources, yet also constraints, are continually created and reshaped by flexible multidimensional rescaling.
