ABSTRACT

This chapter investigates the perceptions of the Polish–Ukrainian border developed by young people who cross the border for educational purposes. While the Polish–German border has been heavily researched (Meinhof and Galasinski, 2000a; Schultz et al., 2002; Stoklosa, 2003; Petrat et al., 2009;; Sandberg, 2009), the Polish–Ukrainian border has not been addressed to the same degree by an internationally oriented research. Although the Polish–German and the Polish–Ukrainian borders are deeply bound to the same historical incidents, both border contexts are different (Bialasiewicz and O’Loughlin, 2002; Scott and Matzeit, 2006). After being socially frozen for decades, the Polish–Ukrainian borderland is only slowly starting to develop, and youth mobility – educational and work migration – that first was directed towards more urban areas or towards the old EU-member countries, also directs towards the region’s several big cities, which are offering studying possibilities.