Border Control Culture on the Polish-Belarusian Border in 2021-2023
Material, Normative and Symbolic Dimensions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.23.2026.101.13Keywords:
border control, Border Guard, border control culture, Polish-Belarusian borderAbstract
In recent years, Poland has faced unprecedented immigration pressure. In addition to the massive influx of war refugees from Ukraine, irregular migrants have challenged the Polish border control. During 2021, the first year of the crisis, the number of unauthorized border crossings made on the Polish-Belarusian border increased by 12.5 times. This led to significant changes in state border policy and border control practices locally implemented by the Border Guard (BG). The assessment of the reaction of the Polish authorities and the BG as a leading actor in this challenge aroused several controversies. Researching legal sources, official media releases and scholarly literature, I argue for a multilayered explanation of how the BG coped with this task. I examine this issue in light of the border control culture (BCC) concept, which makes it possible to embed border control practices in a broader cultural-normative context. I propose a more comprehensive approach to the BCC to show that the main actors in these processes, i.e. BG officers, operate in a specific work environment. It has three components: material, normative, and symbolic. This approach shows that changes in the material artefacts and legal norms referring to border control and ideas and views about the purpose and meaning of the border and the BG service are integral elements of the BCC and can stimulate BG officers to take the desired actions.
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