Border. Space of Violence and Struggle

What is a border? Is it a line on the map dividing nation states or communities that used to be united? Or is it rather a wall; border infrastructure that is constantly fortified and improved - with cameras, coils of barbed wire, electronics - all that to prevent people from moving, while in fact making their journey more dangerous?

All these material elements constitute a border. But it is not only about them - the practices that take place there matter as well. On one side, there are soldiers and border guard officers patrolling the territory and using violence against asylum seekers, pushing them back into dangerous areas, where nature itself may detain or hurt them. On the other side, there are people on the move, who cross the border in search of a safe place and dignified life. Hence, the border is constantly produced by (but also produces) the constant processes of reinforcing and contesting it.

Short story of the crisis

August 2021 is deemed to be the symbolic starting point of the humanitarian crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border. That was when a group of 32 Afghanis sat in the glade to protest against being pushed back to Belarus and denied the right to apply for international protection for yet another time. The migrant trail across the Białowieża forest is not new, in the past many people would cross this green border in different directions to flee from violence and persecutions and find a better and safer life. The revival of this trail in 2021 was related to simplified visa procedures and increased number of flights to Minsk by President Lukashenko’s regime. Belarus did it in reaction to the sanctions imposed on this country by the European Union after fraudulent presidential elections in 2020 and bloody suppressed “revolution of dignity”.

This opened up new possibilities to people who sought a way to escape from their country of origin or residence. The Polish government reacted directly and immediately by pushing these people back to Belarus and refusing to accept applications for international protection - each person’s right, regardless of the way they got to a given country.

In September 2021 a state of emergency was declared in some parts of Podlaskie and Lublin provinces - for the first time since introducing martial law in 1981. The no-entry zone included 183 settlements and was accessible in fact only for the inhabitants of this zone, which made it impossible for journalists, NGO workers and people wanting to help to enter this territory. In October 2021 the so-called “pushback law” came into force. This law has sanctioned the status quo and obliged the persons who crossed the border in an undocumented way to leave the country and banned them from re-entering the territory of Poland and other Schengen area countries. It also entitled border guard officers to “walk these people off to the state border”.

The due date of the zone was prolonged multiple times - until June 2022. After the initial 30 days it was prolonged by another 60 days - that was what the constitution allowed for. Following these 90 days, a ministerial regulation was issued, and it included the very same region in order to preserve the zone with its bans. After numerous protests of human rights organisations and parliamentary opposition who pointed out that this solution was not in line with the constitution, the State border protection act was amended - from this moment on, it was possible to introduce no-entry zones without declaring a state of emergency. Donald Tusk’s government invoked this very act on 13th June 2024 to declare a “buffer zone” which now ranged from “only” 200 m to 2 km from the borderline.

These legal measures went hand in hand with advances in militarisation. The omnipresence of the border guard, army and the territorial defence force units became part of everyday life in Podlaskie, just like new fortifications built at the border. Solidarity networks developed in parallel with the violent activity of politicians. These networks included previously existing and newly formed initiatives and organisations created by locals and visitors that informed about human rights violations and provided continuous humanitarian support to the people in the forest, despite multiple attempts to discredit and undermine the legitimacy of their actions. Most of them joined an informal coalition named “Grupa Granica” (“Border Group” - translator’s note). These people and groups remain active to this day.

The shape the border takes and will take in the future is and will be influenced by new legal acts. The key role here is played by the planned amendment to the Act on Granting Protection to Foreigners on the Territory of the Republic of Poland, which authorizes the state to suspend the right of asylum for a given period or at a given territory, which completely contradicts international law.

What is “counter-mapping” for?

Maps have always served as a tool for learning, sharing information, and representing newly discovered and already known areas. Marking roads, rivers, watering places, towns, and streets was supposed to make it easier to get one’s bearings in the world or to exploit the terrain and dominate the land and its inhabitants, if used to gain or consolidate power. And so, maps have also become a tool for exercising control over territories, a way of marking and legitimizing borders, separating “our own” from “others.”

Migration maps serve a similar function; they often include arrows that are to show numbers and directions in which migrants are moving (usually in an exaggerated scale). They associate with military strategic planning and arouse fear of being invaded by those “from the outside.” Such an image carries the risk of dehumanizing and depoliticizing migration processes and decisions: we do not know who is migrating and why, what distances they have covered and how complicated their journey has been. The diversity of experiences of people on the move is lost.

So how can we map migrations without falling into these potholes?

We can use counter-mapping, a method that primarily aims to show control mechanisms, institutional policy, violence, and the impact it has on migrants. It is not bound so strongly by scale and geography; it leaves room for showing the agency and resistance of people on the move. By emphasizing the experience of migration, it can be used to create a more complex and nuanced picture.

Counter-mapping originated from discussions on engaging research in favour of social change. According to this trend, collectively created knowledge should be useful for a social movement or a group participating in the process and help to better understand the situation or disseminate the reflections they developed. At the same time it should contribute to creating a narrative which is different from the official one. The map presented here was created in this spirit, in cooperation with researchers and activists involved in the activities on the Polish-Belarusian border, who document the processes happening there and provide humanitarian support to people on the move. The project combines already existing reflections and research related to the border space.

What is there on the map?

The material created in the counter-mapping process cannot, above all, be another control tool, revealing migration routes or resistance strategies. It could harm people on the move and prejudice their efforts to achieve a better, safe and dignified life. It must skilfully navigate around the challenges of visibility: showing manifestations of violence and resistance in order to serve an educational or advocacy function and strategically refrain from revealing sensitive information. This is why the map presented here does not reflect the real geography of Podlaskie. It includes significant “typical” spaces and objects that are actually located in the border area; however, their exact location and configuration has been changed. The distorted geography allows to show all the important elements of the landscape without endangering the people on the move and the continuity of activist support.

The map contains 20 places and objects that are a pretext to tell a story about what the border space is and what is happening within it. It also shows us the material elements that influence travel, activism and control strategies.

Sources and inspirations

The presented map has been inspired directly by the ethnographic walk led by Inga Hajdarowicz and Natalia Judzińska from March 2023 in the border area. Regular visits that often involve researchers, students, and activists, are one of the ways to present data and research results. They also mobilize alliances and give an opportunity to observe changes in the border landscape and behaviour of the uniformed services.

The reflections took the form of a map with its descriptions. They are based on the literature in the field of critical border studies, numerous papers published on the Researchers on the Border website and NGOs’ reports, i.a. The We Are Monitoring Association. They are also a record of research and activist experiences of the authors engaged at the Polish-Belarusian border.

The presented map is a voice in the discussion on the humanitarian crisis that has been going on at the border. It attempts to participate in creating a counter-narrative and forming the memory of past and present events. Thereby, it adds to the growing list of studies on the relationship between space and violence. In addition to the previously mentioned sources, it is worth mentioning the project “Zone of hidden violence” by Border Emergency Collective and Szymon Ruczyński’s animation “There are people in the forest” (Original title: “W lesie są ludzie” - translator’s note).

Of course, the map presents only a fragment of the border reality from the perspective of the people involved in the project. People on the move were not directly involved in the process of its preparation. Involving people with migration experience would require planning a completely different, long-term action that would be sensitive to their well-being. However, this does not mean that the voice of the very entities and subjects of the crisis does not appear in the project. Yes, it does - though it is mediated by the authors. It is because we assume that people from Poland (the country that perpetrates violence and violates human rights) are primarily responsible for informing about the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Their first-hand knowledge, engagement and meetings with people on the move, allow for this discussion about creating border space to happen.