Mobility injustice and agency: confronting border asymmetries in cross-border commuting under COVID-19 re-bordering policies

The immobility crisis resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the unequal impact of national re-bordering policies on Eastern European border regions, emphasizing their marginalization due to uneven economic development and institutional fragility. This paper aims at understanding the dual vulnerabilities experienced by cross-border commuters in Europe, focusing on the structural inequalities and border asymmetries between core and peripheral regions. The Covid-19 pandemic serves as a case study to examine how existing structural inequalities and institutional vulnerabilities between core and peripheral regions manifest in European border areas. Based on semi-structured expert and commuter interviews from various European border regions—particularly those between Germany and Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Poland—the research demonstrates how the intersection of border asymmetries and institutional weaknesses deepened mobility injustices. Thematic analysis of the interviews shows that both structural factors and sudden policy changes, such as covidfencing and re- and de-bordering practices, worsened the precarious conditions faced by commuters, particularly in the Polish-German border region. The findings show that individual and territorial responses to rapid policy changes during the pandemic have also led to the emergence of new risks.