Freedom of mobility is a right that not all Europeans enjoy, according to Karolina Szmagalska-Follis, a social anthropologist originally from Warsaw.She was one of the speakers during the Integration and Identities in Europe forum in Dublin last week.
Dr Szmagalska-Follis, who has been working at NUI Maynooth since January, admits being obsessed with the idea of borders and frontiers, and the Polish woman has been focusing on the Polish-Ukrainian border.
For Ukraine, her western neighbour’s accession to the EU in 2004 meant changes in the way the border was being crossed. Poland has introduced visas for Ukrainians, which is a huge hindrance, especially for people living near the divide.
During her lecture, Dr Szmagalska-Follis referred to her experience of having lived in a communist country, cut off from rest of the continent by the Iron Curtain so sufficiently that “people hardly believed that there was any other part of Europe behind it”.
The curtain’s fall brought the hope of travel without the necessity to explain why. But dreams of a united Europe have been overshadowed by a fear of mass emigration from non-EU European neighbours.
“The reality is that the pragmatic politics of building a united Europe evolved also into constructing tight and secure borders for it,” said Dr Szmagalska-Follis.
“A particularly long section of this boundary divides Poland from Ukraine. The governments of both countries try to find a more friendly policy on this border crossing. But the feeling of injustice and inequality remains.”
