Transborder Café: The Vaccine’s Political Effects

Like a hard pull on the handbrake, the restrictions put in place during the recent pandemic brought all but a stop to cross-border mobility and freedom of movement. These measures have caused an upheaval for almost everything: from the everyday lives of individuals, to the appearance of our neighbourhoods, and how we think about travel and tourism. They also continue to have a stark effect on larger topics such as governmental strategy and international relations and politics.

While corona tests have now become so commonplace that they are something we can add to a shopping list, the world continues to face a common global challenge within the inner workings of the multinational cooperation system: a global health crisis still requires global health cooperation. At the same time borders in many places have gone from being open to becoming strictly controlled, and the previous liberal market values have been set aside in favour of protectionism, with the result of more internal and closed nation states.

In our northern communities, regional cooperation with our neighbours in Russia comes under strain when international vaccine policies only add to existing challenges related to freedom of expression, the economy, and military rearmament on both sides of the border. While some of us dream of reopening tourist shops, traveling, shopping, and living according to “the old normal” again, others predict lasting changes and a less open, less prosperous world with increasingly reduced freedom.

Mobility in spite of boundaries is what gives our border areas their character, and their feeling of centrality. What are the consequences if the borders, in practice, remain closed, and turn our border areas into peripheries once again? What effect has the pandemic and international vaccine politics had for the North and the relationship across the Norwegian-Russian Border.

To end the debate, the duet “Struny Struny” will take the stage in Kirkenes. It is a new project by Ekaterina Efremova (guitar and vocals) and Irina Volokoslavskaya (kantele). The duet performs its own songs based on 20th-century poems,  creating a unique blend of guitar and kantele.

Online Stream: