Geographia Polonica (2026) vol. 99, iss. 1
Fluctuating passenger railway offers between Poland and Ukraine (1991-2025) against the background of rebordering and debordering processes
Geographia Polonica (2026) vol. 99, iss. 1, pp. 55-74 | 
Full text
doi: https://doi.org/10.7163/GPol.0317
Abstract
The paper aims mostly at a qualitative analysis of the passenger railway connections between Poland and Ukraine offered since the collapse of the USSR. To this end, a four-item periodisation was proposed, based on breakthrough changes in this offer that were referred to a set of selected categories from the scope of border(lands) studies, mainly corelates of the concepts of debordering and rebordering. The analysis was based on railway schedules, expert materials, statistics of the Border Guard and the author’s own field observations. Historically, the paper finds that there have been cycles (periods) of debordering and reborderingon the studied area, driven by ups and downs in both nations’ mutual interest (shopping, smuggling, labour and war migration); as for the presence, it showcases that intensification of the train links between both states can be observed only at the national level, totally ignoring the borderland dimension. Consequently,the Polish-Ukrainian direction, as compared with Poland’s remaining neighbourhoods, is quite advanced as forlong-distance connections (macro level) and totally undeveloped as for local-regional ones (mezzo level).
Keywords: Poland, Ukraine, railway connections, neighbourhood, (re/de)bordering
[marcin.debicki@uwr.edu.pl], Institute of Sociology University of Wrocław Koszarowa 3/20, 51-149 Wrocław: Poland
