BORDERSENSITIVE investigates the impacts of changing geopolitics. Drawing on critical border studies, it develops the conceptual framework of border sensitivity by integrating the notions of sensitivity and borderscapes to analyse the multilayered nature of bordering. Focusing on Finnish and Estonian borderlands affected by Russia's aggression, it examines how rebordering, securitisation, and nationalist discourses reshape perceptions, identities and agency related to borders. The project combines qualitative methods of e.g. document analysis and ethnographic approaches, including visual, sensory and network ethnography. The hypothesis is that intersecting, sometimes contradictory, perspectives across spatial scales to sensitivity are at the core of how borders are imagined, constructed and experienced. The findings offer policy-relevant insights for societal resilience to live with the border during geopolitical tension. The research is conducted at the University of Eastern Finland.

2026

2030