Abstracts

Borderlands as laboratories: testing our understanding of resistance and resilience

Senior Researcher Karin Dean, School of Humanities, Tallinn University.

 The presentation foregrounds borderlands as theoretical and empirical laboratories for testing and advancing the meanings and practices of the closely related concepts of resistance and resilience. More specifically, it calls for the inclusion of post-colonial border spaces to accommodate the plurality of forms and meanings of resistance and resilience, in order to avoid essentializing these notions or universalizing their causes and framings.

1. Cross-border resilience and wildfire risk management: the case of Czech-Saxony Switzerland

Lukas Novotny, Professor (Associate), Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem (CZE).

Climate change increases the threat of wildfires across central Europe. Since they often affect more than one region, fighting these fires needs better cross-border management and information sharing. This paper will present the results of qualitative research conducted in Czech-Saxony Switzerland. Here, a large-scale fire broke out on 23 July 2022 and affected more than 1600 ha of the national park area. It was the largest forest fire in the modern history of Bohemia and Saxony. Theoretically the presentation will be framed with the concept of regional resilience. Here the concept is applied in a cross-border context to formally define cross-border regional resilience in wildfire, to address the issues of: 1) how resilient are cross-border regions against wildfires and 2) how robust are cross-border cooperation networks against failures in cross-border connectivity. The conclusion will provide answers to questions related to the problems of cross-border cooperation in the field of wildfire risk management and will suggest practical improvements in legal and administrative aspects of risk management in border areas. The empirical material shows that transboundary cooperation in this area has shortcomings, particularly in the area of transboundary nature protection management and also in municipal cooperation.

Bio: Lukas Novotny is Professor (Associate) at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem (CZE). His research fields are border studies, political sociology and regional development. He is particularly interested in contribution of political and geographical factor to regional development and urban politics.  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8115-6386

 

2. Dark Sky Islands as a Planetary Network of Resilience

Dominique van de Klundert, YUFE Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Rijeka and UEF

Given the tension between the importance of natural darkness for more-than-human wellbeing and the pervasiveness of artificial light at night, light pollution has been deemed a ‘wicked problem’ requiring socio-technological solutions grounded in alternative worldviews, such as the shift towards ‘planetary’ conceptualisations of heritage. A major locus for such change is designated Dark Sky Communities, which balance urbanism with attention to quality outdoor lighting and education regarding the significance of dark skies. The valorisation of all official Dark Sky places is a locally driven process, and significantly, the majority of Dark Sky Communities in Europe are island-based. Islands are variously referred to as windows, observatories, sensors, laboratories, or the world in miniature, ‘canaries in the coal mine’ of global change. However, the relational turn positions islands in terms of assemblages, interstitial or border zones, fluxes and flows, mobilities and networks, encompassing colonial, material, cultural, political, social, oceanic and atmospheric forces. In this way, ‘thinking with the archipelago’ is essential in the context of the Anthropocene, suggesting potentialities for the governance of complex systems and implicating island communities in narratives of resilience and adaptation between diversity and standardisation, imagined and tangible space, nature and culture, and local and global scales.

Bio: Dominique van de Klundert is a postdoctoral researcher from Aotearoa New Zealand, working between UEF and the University of Rijeka courtesy of the YUFE programme. Her doctoral research developed a media archaeology-informed ‘stereographic’ methodology for de/colonising visual heritage research. Her current project investigates the ways in which eco-discourse around designated international ‘dark sky’ communities combating light pollution in Europe and the UK suggests a resurgence of the notion of  ‘planetary’ heritage integrated with more-than-human wellbeing.

 

3. Responding to a communication disaster: An Analysis of a Language-Aware Encounter

Alicja Fajfer, Project Researcher, UEF

This presentation analyses a one-time therapy session with one bilingual and one monolingual client, in which the therapist also plays the role of interpreter. The data come from a publicly available recording. Given the nature of therapeutic work, the therapist’s office should be a language-aware environment by default. Drawing from Conversation Analysis, I will focus on how the linguistic insecurity of the monolingual client is mitigated. Although the group agrees on ground rules, the interaction reveals the difficulties of ensuring an ideal language-aware encounter. Although it seems promising in the beginning, the interaction soon ruptures, as the monolingual participant finds themselves excluded. The rupture in communication requires adjusting the interpreting practice from treating the recipient as completely monolingual, passive and separated from the source language message to engaging them to interact with the source language and co-create the interpretation. Despite being relatively short, the therapy session offers versatile material to evaluate the success of language-aware practices. As the participants actively try to make their conversation inclusive, one may extract tips from their strategies and guidelines for also addressing linguistic asymmetry elsewhere. When interpreters allow clients to co-produce the target text, they create empowering multilingual encounters.

Bio: Alicja Fajfer holds a doctoral degree in cultural studies. Her main research interest is language in a social context of multicultural encounters. This presentation is a side project which reflects her secondary interest in film studies.

 

4. Russian Grassroots Environmental Communication on Contested Territories

Teemu Oivo, Postdoctoral Researcher, UEF and Olga Dovbysh, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki

The definition of environmental problems often entails tacit, sometimes acknowledged and at other times banal discursive knowledge about responsibilities and ownership of territories. This co-authored study examines how transboundary environmental problems are addressed in Russian grassroots environmental communications. This involves broader issues of environmental communication under politically repressive conditions, as well as the discursive production of territorialities and borders in unconventional contexts.

Environmentalists in authoritarian states often seek to operate mindfully and carefully, avoiding issues that are deemed too ‘political’ or otherwise sensitive, as these could provoke an unwanted response from repressive authorities. For over ten years, the topics of territory and borders have become increasingly sensitive for those in Russia wishing to avoid trouble with the authorities. However, this has not obviously prevented people from discussing issues on these regions. Our study focuses on grassroots environmental communications, particularly eight eco-Telegram channels that generally depoliticise their content. We examine how representations of environmental issues in the Arctic and Crimea from February 2022 to February 2024 have produced environmental knowledge about their territoriality.

Bio: Dr. Teemu Oivo has specialised in the discursive belonging related to Russianness, as well as in information dissemination and the social consumption of information in Russian and transnational Finnish-Russian media spaces. His postdoctoral research at the University of Eastern Finland addresses digital borders. Additionally, Oivo is involved in the Academy of Finland project ‘Transnational Death’ and serves as a visiting researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki. Teemu Oivo will participate in the conference with this co-authored paper.

5. Writing Resilience and Redemption in Contemporary Autobiography

Lena Englund, Senior Researcher, UEF

The resilient redemption narrative surrounds us in literature, media, and politics. Coming from a disadvantaged background and rising to unexpected heights is a common narrative, along with overcoming abuse, addiction, poverty, illness, or other significant challenges and traumas. This paper examines resilience in personal narratives that often present trajectories of redemption, with particular focus on the relationship between resilience and redemption and the ways in which they are narrated in autobiographical texts. Redemption requires adversity and survival demands resilience. The particular social, political, and historical contexts of each text are central for the experiences recounted. Resilience emerges not only as simple endurance in the face of hardship and suffering but as a counterforce, however fragmented, to oppressive personal and collective pasts. The redemption arc centres on finding ways to redeem the past and move towards a more promising future, going from personal experiences to the collective, encompassing society at large. Redemption can even be seen as part of the process of making life narratable, indicating that redemption is not only a feature of autobiographical accounts but an inherent, indispensable part of them.

Bio: Lena Englund examines life writing in multiple contexts and has published extensively on African diasporic writing and migration narratives. She also takes an interest in medical humanities and celebrity studies. Her latest book Storying Contemporary Migration: Representation, Aspirations, Advocacy is published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2024.

 

6. Existential support in the University Community

Anu Pauliina Morikawa, PhD Student, UEF

In this research, I will examine support for existential well-being in the university community. Recent research recognizes that students’ well-being has been under strain due to the covid pandemic and other factors. Support is needed, but what kind? I focus on existential well-being support and existential resilience. A particular interest is how to support existential well-being among students and how to promote the development and strengthening of existential resilience. In this qualitative study, I collect data through interviews at Finnish universities. I will ask whether students have experience about conversations with a professional and whether these discussions have dealt with existential issues and are these topics like grief, anxiety, or something else. Also, I will ask what kind of challenges they recognize and how important do they think it is for students to talk to someone (professional) about these issues? The student perspective is necessary in its timeliness. I will transcribe the research data for the interviews into written form and the analysis focuses on the textual materials. As a method I use Template Analysis (TeA). I go through the student interviews and the main themes of this template emerge from the interviews.

Bio: Anu Morikawa is PhD student from University of Eastern Finland. She is Master of Theology (University of Helsinki). Before her reseach career, she worked as a university chaplain in Aalto University. After listening to the concerns of the university community, she decided to start investigating the issue further. Existential well-being was chosen as the research topic. In her doctoral thesis, she focuses on support for existential well-being, which she examines from the perspectives of students, university staff and university chaplains. She is member of Existential Wellbeing Research Group in Philosophical Faculty, University of Eastern Finland.

 

7. The silent struggle: Crisis of meaning among older adults

Nader Abazari, Postdoctoral Researcher, UEF; Jonna Ojalammi, Postdoctoral Researcher, UEF; Jessie Dezutter, Associate Professor, KU Leuven, Belgium; Suvi-Maria Saarelainen, Associate Professor, UEF

A crisis of meaning (COM) is characterized by the perception that one’s life is frustratingly empty, devoid of purpose, and lacking in meaning. Particularly, COM may be triggered and influenced by major life events such as the loss of loved ones, contracting a serious illness, divorce, job loss, and experiences close to death. Considering the numerous wicked problems that accompany aging, this study aimed to investigate the prevalence of COM and explore its potential risk factors. Using a cross-sectional design, 338 participants (mean age = 80.22 years, SD = 6.32) completed a sociodemographic checklist and the Finnish version of the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life (MerTa) questionnaire. The overall COM prevalence was 27.21%. Gender analysis showed higher rates among women (28.5%) than men (24.78%). Notably, regional analysis revealed a higher prevalence in Southern Finland (29.12%) compared to Eastern Finland (15.46%). These findings underscore the importance of social connections and education in mitigating COM among older adults, highlighting the need for targeted interventions that address geographical and cultural differences within aging populations. Raising public awareness is also crucial, encouraging older adults, families, and caregivers to recognize COM as a significant intangible concern.

Bio: Nader Abazari is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland, where he focuses on enhancing well-being. Jonna Ojalammi, also a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Theology, University of Eastern Finland, investigates meaning making and the sense of purpose in life among older adults and during times of crisis. Jessie Dezutter, an associate professor at KU Leuven, Belgium, specializes in the intersection of positive psychology, existential psychology, and gerontology, aiming to advance understanding and improve well-being across these domains. Suvi-Maria Saarelainen, an associate professor at the University of Eastern Finland, conducts research on how meaning is experienced during life transitions, the role of spirituality, and the integration of gerontechnology in elderly care.

8. Resilience as Panacea? A Critical Assessment of EU policies

Tania Bazzani, Researcher, University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany and Claudia Maria Hofmann, Professor, European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

Promoting resilience is becoming an increasingly important part of EU policy, given the massive current and future challenges facing societies and individuals. The institutions, the single market, the legal system – they all need to become more resilient and therefore more crisis-proof. Sometimes, but more rarely, policies also focus on individual resilience. Our paper aims to examine what legal and policy measures are being taken at EU level to promote resilience and to critically assess the concept of resilience used therein. It will be argued that the current EU legal and political measures are far from being inclusive and do not do justice to the goal of “leaving no one behind”. In fact, processes of exclusion are already emerging or being perpetuated, for example concerning economically inactive EU citizens, EU citizens in precarious employment, asylum seekers and refugees. In this respect, the European Council’s Strategic Agenda 2024-2029 and the European Commission’s new Political Guidelines only partially provide ways to address such problems. Considering inclusion as an indispensable element of law and policy to promote both societal and individual resilience, through the prism of the European Pillar of Social Rights, we will make some suggestions for a more inclusive approach.

Bio: Dr. Tania Bazzani works as a researcher at the Chair of Public Law and European Social Law with a Focus on Interdisciplinary Social Law Research at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. She has the Italian first and second legal state exam and a doctorate in labour law (University of Verona). Her research interests concern European and comparative labour and social law, with a particular focus on two main fields: (i) the transformation of the world of work (see for example the recent report for the EU Commission on telework); (ii) the European employment policy (in this area, she wrote several publications and her monograph).

Prof. Dr. Claudia Maria Hofmann works as a Professor of Public Law and European Social Law with a Focus on Interdisciplinary Social Law Research at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. She holds two German law degrees (first and second legal state exam) and a doctorate in law (University of Kassel). With completing her habilitation (post-doctoral degree) at the University of Regensburg, Hofmann received the venia legendi for public law, international and European law, social law, sociology of law and comparative law. Her research interests focus on questions at the interface between the “law in the books” and the legal reality. In this context, she has, for example, published work on the national influence of international social standards in South Africa, legal responses to social inequality in international, European and German law or questions concerning the guarantee of socio-economic rights for asylum seekers and refugees in Germany.

 

9. Resilience within the system  ̶  perspectives of migration officials and stakeholders in the Baltic asylum landscape

Teele Jänes, Doctoral Researcher, UEF

The field of asylum remains complex and challenging due to unstable migratory situations and legislative amendments. Regulated by international agreements and closely connected to fundamental rights legislation, asylum decision-making is also affected by national policies and institutional environments. Current doctoral study is looking into the core of asylum decision-making, unveiling the officials’ own considerations and perspectives in the refugee status determination proceedings. It investigates assessments of applications based on religion, one of the five asylum grounds. Questions regarding the immigration authorities’ competence in religious matters and their ability to assess the authenticity of personal beliefs and practices continue to be relevant, fuelling an ongoing academic debate. This research is joining these discussions, bringing new information from the asylum departments, courts and other stakeholders in the Baltic States. Current study highlights the often concealed social world of the officials, as they reflect on their information-gathering and discretionary decision-making practices. In addition, the emerging training needs in the region are identified. The research reveals the various challenges that grassroots officials encounter daily as they navigate international legislation, fundamental rights agreements, national immigration policies, and unpredictable migratory situations.

Bio: Teele Jänes is a doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research concerns religion-based asylum claims in the Baltic States. As a former Estonian asylum official she has professional experience in resettlement/relocation procedures and asylum decision-making. For the past five years Teele worked at the Police and Border Guard College of the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences as a Frontex National Training Coordinator. He areas of expertise include the asylum procedures, training and fundamental rights in border management.

 

10. Navigating Border Confrontations through Schengen Visa Application Companies: Processes and Consequences

Mert Cangönül, PhD Candidate, Koç University (Turkey) and the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Schengen consulates gradually assigned border practices to these companies to respond to the increasing demand for visa applications since the 2000s. Positioned at the edge of state and market boundaries, VACs became an inextricable part of the Schengen system. However, agencies of these private actors’ border practices are still underexplored. This paper addresses the borderwork of Schengen visa application companies (VACs) in Türkiye. Focusing on the everyday practices of 5 VACs in Türkiye, I study this phenomenon from the perspective of border confrontations: How do call centres, VIP services, and front desks of these companies navigate the challenges posed by visa applicants and consulates? I argue that VACs, constituted by the “oligopolistic structure of the visa market”(Sánchez-Barrueco, 2018) and “monopoly over the legitimate means of movement” of the states(Torpey, 2018) (re-)produce ambivalence in the Schengen visa regime. This ambivalence plays a vital role in obscuring the state from legal border processes, which raise issues of transparency and accountability, delegate tedious borderwork to the companies’ underpaid workers and transform border confrontations of visa applicants into a free-for-all. Thus, the paper discusses how and at what cost Schengen makes itself resilient.

Bio: Mert Cangönül, PhD Candidate in Political Science and International Relations, Koç University (Turkey) and the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

 

11. Poetic resilience in Dorothea Grünzweig’s poetry collection Plötzlich alles da (2020)

Alexandra Simon-López, University Lecturer, UEF

Dorothea Grünzweig’s poetry collection Plötzlich alles da (2020) offers three interwoven narratives which focus on loss, locus amoenus and locus terribilis. It is the topos ‘resilience’ that unites these three narratives as they are verses against forgetting, against death. A last resistance against an unstoppable end, both for humans, but mostly importantly for the animal world. These often-angry verses that are directed with all their strength against environmental destruction and the historical memory loss with reference to Nazi war crimes and atrocities in Finland, are symbols of poetic resilience within a cataclysmic social system.  This presentation is dedicated to the different aspects of ‘resilience’ present in Grünzweig’s latest poetry collection and will focus on three questions: To what extent can poetic resilience become part of a culture of remembrance, both on an individual and societal level? Which poetic means are used to express this resilience in the three narratives? And where can the poet’s own social resilience as a German migrant living in Finland be located?

Bio: Alexandra Simon-López, University Lecturer, Head of German, School of Humanities, UEF. Her primary fields of research are transculturality, imagology, German writers abroad, German film and television, the European Avant-Garde, and the Apocalypse in cultural productions.

12. Transcarpathia – Borderland Resilience in Times of Conflict

James W. Scott, Professor, UEF

As an emblematic European borderland, the Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia is a product of long-term historical processes and particularly of 20th Century de- and reterritorialisations of multinational European empires. While the “borderlandness” of the region can be understood in several different ways, the approach elaborated here focuses on geopolitical contexts, ethnopolitical dynamics and their impacts on Transcarpathia’s Hungarian national minority. Analysis will focus attention primarily on Hungarian kin-state relations that have shifted decisively from a cooperation and development approach to one which is characterised by identity politics and an antagonistic stance towards Ukrainian nation-building. Tensions have been heightened by Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. This ongoing conflict can in fact be characterised as a war against borderlands. Transcarpathia’s relation to the rest of Ukraine in general is a target of Hungarian and Russian ethnopolitical agendas that involve the instrumentalization of the borderland context in order to suggest Transcarpathia‘s non-Ukrainianness. Following Putin’s logic, Transcarpathia should be divided up among neighbouring states – the implication is that there is a need for regions to unambiguously belong to an appropriate national space. Hungarian-Ukrainians have been negotiating a tense “betweenness” of national belonging but maintain a strong regional identity. Ultimately, Transcarpathia‘s resilience as a multicultural region and cooperation bridge between Ukraine and the EU will depend on the long-term consequences of the present conflict and the future trajectories of Hungary’s regional ethnopolitics.

Bio: James W. Scott, Professor in Border Studies, Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland.

 

13. A Linguistic anthropological approach to ‘border’

Larisa Leisiö, Professor, UEF

When we consider the word ‘border’ in various languages, it becomes apparent that it represents a concrete entity, as it refers to a specific line on political maps. However, ‘border’ is also an abstract noun because it must be conceptualized in people’s minds and results from negotiation between at least two parties before it becomes recognized. Within Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1982), the frame of ‘border’ includes elements such as ‘territory’, ‘power’, (two) ‘distinct social groups’, ‘legislation’, ‘border guards’, ‘sharing’, ‘non-overlap’.

In many cases the social groups involved speak different languages. The complex cognitive structure of ‘border’ suggests that the word for this concept, in any language, does not belong to the basic vocabulary of humankind but is rather the outcome of a competitive selection among various candidate lexemes. To illustrate, in English, despite the presence of other candidates like ‘edge,’ ‘frontier,’ ‘boundary,’ and ‘barrier,’ the noun ‘border,’ derived from the French bordure, was the winner (OED).

In my presentation, I will focus on the Finnish word raja ‘border’ and its equivalents in both areally and genetically related languages, exploring their etymologies in relation to their historical backgrounds.

Bio: Larisa Leisiö is the professor of Russian language at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research interests include language contact, Samoyedic languages, and non-standard varieties of Russian, including colloquial Russian, Russian in contact with Finno-Ugric languages, and language use in media. In addition to Slavic linguistics, Leisiö is a specialist in Samoyedic (Uralic) languages, particularly Nganasan. She has conducted fieldwork with Forest Finns in Sweden, Russians in Finland, Inari Sámi, Estonian Old Believers, and Northern Samoyeds in Siberia, including Nganasans, Forest Enets, Forest Nenets, and Tundra Nenets.

 

14. “When He Comes, He Will Be Like an Englishman”: Space, Spy Fiction, and Englishness in Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight

Dirk van Rens, Doctoral Researcher, UEF

This paper examines the appropriation of the spy fiction genre in Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight (2018) by means of a spatial approach. By adopting and at times subverting spy fiction tropes, Ondaatje’s novel voices a postcolonial critique of British geopolitical power and restrictive conceptualisations of Englishness. Warlight exploits the overlap between postwar and Brexit discourses on the “b/ordering” (Van Houtum et al. 2005) of Britain, enabling its critique to pertain to both contexts. The novel adheres to spy fiction depictions of London as a centre of geopolitical power but questions the morality of exertions of this power. The Suffolk countryside functions as a means for the novel to address and challenge the notion of Englishness and the spy as its embodiment. The text exposes supposedly quintessential elements of Englishness as constructs and in so doing critiques restrictive views on Englishness and the b/ordering of Britain. Warlight’s focalisation on a spy protagonist who feels most at home in Other spaces champions the value of acknowledging and relishing the heterogeneity central to Britain’s make-up.

Bio: Dirk van Rens is a Doctoral Researcher in anglophone literature at the University of Eastern Finland. His dissertation centres on the negotiation of the traumas of slavery and its legacies in contemporary Afro-Atlantic fiction. Van Rens’s research interests include literary trauma studies, memory, mobility, and spatiality in postmodern and postcolonial fiction. His work has appeared in English Studies (2023).