1.4.3 Studying the Role of Border Regions in Overcoming Economic, Social and Epidemiological Risks
Ivan Peshkov
Project Leader
Project period
2020-2025
Context of Research Project within a Subject of Human Capital
A wide variety of models of border territories management in the world with a sharp increase in the mobility of capital and labor requires highlighting the problems of border territories as a special space associated simultaneously with security policy and economic development policy. The specifics of the border territories in this perspective have a global dimension: the creation of a bizarre mosaic of development boundaries, bastion borders and even wall borders.
The crisis state of the border territories of Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan is a challenge for the study of human potential, forcing attention to two related groups of tasks. First of all, it is to stop pre-modernization and dead-end models of cross-border development, which resulted not only in a sharp reduction in the possibilities of realizing human potential, but also the destruction of the foundations of life (infrastructure, medicine, education). The second group of tasks is the search for development models capable of ensuring the development of human potential in the region, combining state policy, market and opportunities for cross-border economic and cultural activities.
The research project Studying the Role of Border Regions in Overcoming Economic, Social and Epidemiological Risks will present general problems of border research and possibilities of their application in regional contexts of Russian border regions. Studying the role of border regions in overcoming economic, social and epidemiological risks and the possible potential of transforming border regions from "survival space" into "development space" is of particular relevance. The noticeable asymmetry between the success of Chinese border urbanism and the limited success of creating bases for cross-border development in Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia requires the development of new approaches and taking into account international experience of cross-border development. Drastic changes in the system of open borders require conceptual preparation for a new period of systemic restrictions on openness and mobility
Project Aim
Conducting a comprehensive analysis of the accumulated experience of border research in order to study the development potential of the border regions of Russia, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan
Project Objectives:
- Introducing the meta-discipline ‘Border Studies’ into the teaching and scientific activities of the consortium
- Conducting a comprehensive analysis of the experience of cross-border development, taking into account the factors of ‘successes’ and ‘failures’
- Preparing for radical changes in the forms of cross-border development associated with new epidemiological risks and directly related to them stopping international mobility and the priority of security
Key Findings
2020
The program of the regular seminar Development of Border Regions: Opportunities, Challenges and Risks has been developed. An examination of the institutional and structural constraints of the cross-border development of the eastern regions of the Russian Federation has been prepared
2021
A comparative analysis of the Russian-Chinese border with the borders of the United States/Mexico, India/Nepal/China, Mongolia/China has been carried out in order to develop new approaches to radically strengthen the practices of securitization of borders and their impact on cross-border exchange and the life of border regions
Conferences
Workshops for young researchers Exploring Borders (Moscow, Russia, December 21, 2021)
Seminar (with the involvement of international participants) Development of Border Regions: Opportunities, Challenges and Risks (Moscow, Russia, December 22, 2021)