TRANSFORMATION OF BORDER COMMUNITIES: FROM A RESISTANCE IDENTITY TO A RESILIENCE IDENTITY

Abstract

Background. Research on border territories exposed to adverse conditions, including those in the Chernihiv region, has gained particular importance in the context of ongoing military threats and the challenges of post-war reconstruction. These communities are highly vulnerable to external pressures, experiencing continuous socio-cultural challenges and security risks. At the same time, they have simultaneously become spaces where new identities and forms of societal resilience emerge, reshaping their socio-cultural landscape. Understanding these processes is essential both scientifically and practically, as borderlands often serve as the frontline of local mobilisation and adaptation during crises, enabling their evolution from peripheral areas into spaces of resistance.

Methods. Given the broader international scholarship on socio-cultural challenges, resistance identities, resilience communities, and socio-cultural transformation (a field that extends beyond the scope of this article), this study employs a triangulated methodological approach. It integrates classical, qualitative, and digital methods of human geography. These include cartographic and statistical analyses and fieldwork (classical methods), in-depth interviews, focus groups, and discourse analysis (qualitative methods), as well as social network analysis and digital ethnography (digital methods). By using these methods in combination, or selectively depending on the research focus, it is possible to reconstruct the lived experiences of borderland residents and trace the emerging socio-cultural orientations within these communities.

Results. A review of Ukrainian and international literature was conducted, examining the borderland as a discursive concept, socio-cultural transformations in both border and broader contexts, and the role of adverse conditions in shaping these processes. The study identifies key pre-war socio-cultural challenges and their driving factors, the specific characteristics of the 2014–2022 period, and the critical shifts that occurred after 2022. Findings show that the earlier identification ambiguity within border communities has been gradually transforming into a resistance identity. This development strengthens societal resilience, underpins the emergence of resilience communities, and drives socio-cultural change. Resilience communities are conceptualised as new socio-cultural formations that ensure continuity in borderland development under unfavourable conditions. They fulfil consolidating, integrating, adaptive, and restorative functions, influencing both the condition of border communities themselves and potentially the wider regional context.

Conclusions. The border communities of the Chernihiv region are undergoing a complex socio-cultural transformation: from long-standing challenges of peripherality and demographic decline to mobilisation, consolidation, and the formation of resilience communities during wartime and, subsequently, in the post-war period. Resistance identity plays a central role in enhancing societal resilience, while resilience communities provide the structural foundation for the functioning of society during war and for the recovery and long-term development of border territories afterwards. The results obtained are significant for human-geographical research and may form the basis for practical recommendations in regional policy and local governance.