Immer unter Verdacht? – Identitätszuschreibungen im Kontext des Kleinhandels an der Außengrenze der Europäischen Union

Abstract

Abstract. The harmonized, uniform Schengen border regime that secures the "Area of Freedom, Security and Justice" has led to remarkable changes of conditions for border crossing in Eastern Europe. Morover, its assemblage of documents, procedures, techniques, locations etc. of control and surveillance controls and governs the identities of travellers. The article analyses how small-scales traders at the Polish-Belarusian border, the Polish-Ukrainian border and the Romanian-Ukrainian border who operate on the edges of the legal and the formal (and even beyond) are being confronted with these new ascriptions of identities, the ways they feel being governed by the new border and their reactions to. The fieldwork focuses a period shortly after the Schengen border was shifted towards Eastern Europe in 2007.