C4: Cross-Border Trade between Conflict and Cooperation (Workshop – together with C1)

Lena Pieper MA, Dr. Sabine von Löwis and Dr. Julia Langbein (ZOiS)

Lines of conflict, like in the Donbas before the extended Russian war since February 2022, cut through economic clusters of different types, supply networks collapse and new ones emerge. Markets and retail trade are often an expression of individual strategies to survive economically and open up spaces for mediation. At the same time, they are vulnerable to corruption and shadow economies.

Therefore, the workshop examines how economic structures and relationships reorganize at the individual level and relates to project C3: How do these activities affect the attitudes of the individual actors towards the conflict? How important are they for conflict mediation?

The Political Economy of Unrecognised Statehood