| Abstract [eng] |
The reality of various social actors is getting more complex due to an emerging crisis phenomenon – a polycrisis, i.e. a contemporary world coping simultaneously with multiple and intersecting crises triggering ontological security. In February 2022, a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Poland, still struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic, experienced a massive intake of people fleeing Ukraine – Poland’s neighbor. The main of this dissertation was to analyze the role of community resilience and individual risk perception in Polish border region communities’ response to crisis and uncertainty caused by Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. Conceptual framework integrated research concepts such as community, community resilience, risk perception and riskscapes as well as theories such as relational risk theory. A case study methodology was employed, including in-depth interviews with volunteers, community members and municipalities in geographically vulnerable Polish border region communities, directly affected by humanitarian and refugee crisis, in the proximity of the borders with two countries at war, namely Suwałki (the Suwałki Gap) with Russia, and Biecz (Little Kraków) with Ukraine. Results revealed a pattern of a response to crisis and uncertainty which, in times of a crisis, is triggered by agency, while agency is activated by the way the risks are perceived. A paradox was observed that community resilience – the pattern of response, is both universal and strongly contextualized, specifically in the historical (memoryscape) and geographical context (riskscape). Both emerge as significant community resilience dimensions which affect the agency and motivation to take action in response to a crisis. |
