So near yet so far: blocked networks,global links and multiple exclusion in the German–Polish borderlands

Abstract The building blocks of global society are conventionally thought of in terms of ‘flows’, ‘scapes’, ‘key nodes’, and ‘global cities’, to name a few. We rarely consider borders and border regions. However, state borders provide a crucial component of a globalizing society in transition. Exhibiting a structural ambivalence, borders can be seedbeds of cosmopolitanism, sites of cultural closure, or often both simultaneously. To understand cross‐border interaction we have to engage with a complex configuration of global and sub‐global dynamics. In this article I argue that borders are revealing analytical tools that must be included in any grounded theory of global change. I draw on fieldwork conducted in the German‐Polish border region, mostly in the German‐Polish twin city Guben/Gubin. Here we are confronted with the simultaneous processes of globalization, European integration and post‐socialist transformation.