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Accepted Paper:
Urban development, power asymmetries and coloniality at the “gateway to Europe”: weaving Eastern Poland into the Belt and Road
Wojciech Kębłowski
(Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
This paper explores the BRI in Eastern Poland as an infrastructural, urban, and colonial project, explored in the transhipment “dry” port located at Poland's and the EU's border with Belarus.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the materialisation the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Eastern Poland as an infrastructural, urban, and colonial project. It focuses on the particular place on the BRI map: the transhipment “dry” port located near the village of Małaszewicze, a few kilometres from the European Union (EU) border with Belarus. Many local and national actors identify Małaszewicze as strategic hub where China-Europe freight trains are required to change gauge between the European and Russian track. The paper unravels, first, how geopolitical interests embedded in the BRI materialise in a concrete infrastructural project of “the gateway to Europe”. Second, inspired by the growing “urban” literature on the BRI, the impact of port on local communities and institutions is analysed, mapping their competing interests and claims. Crucially, despite the narrative of cooperation and mutual benefit, the fragile connection with China’s financial and symbolic capital exacerbates competition with other “gateways” to the EU, and reveals power asymmetries among the actors involved. Third, the paper considers a decolonial critique of the Małaszewicze port. Located in one of the EU’s poorest and “least developed” regions, supposedly suffering from an important “infrastructure gap”, Małaszewicze is narrated as a sign of future modernity and prosperity — without considering the unevenness of the development it heralds. These questions are explored through interviews with local officials, entrepreneurs and inhabitants; analysis of official documents and news articles; and photography as research method.