ABSTRACT
This chapter reconstructs the continuities and discontinuities in the practices of daily life which ordinary people from the Belarus Lithuania border region had experienced during the more than 20-year history of the borders existence. Polish ethnicity also plays an important role not withstanding that Amjany is located in the Belarus Lithuania border region. In the particular case of the Amjany women involved in cross-border petty trade, the selectivity of the border regime is an advantage. Shuttle trade, which had historically appeared as people's response to the Soviet economy of deficit and, later, to the post-socialist transition. The unpretentiousness of the method of gaining some economic profit from cross-border mobility may also explain why shuttle trade has turned out to be such a widespread economic activity in the region. Ethnic boundaries, are not just a symbolic construction of differences between various ethnic groups but also a substantial ground for the strengthening of social boundaries.
