"Catching the China-Europe Express: the uneven local geography of the Belt and Road Initiative in Małaszewicze, Poland"
This work focuses on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure development strategy announced by the Chinese government in 2013. Thus far, the BRI has been analysed primarily through a geopolitical, political economic, cultural, and environmental lens, with strong attention paid to the role of nation-states and their institutions. Instead, I intend to contribute to the growing literature that perceives BRI as an inherently urban and local project. To unravel its contradictions, I focus on the particular locality on the BRI map: the village of Małaszewicze. Located in Eastern Poland, just a few kilometres from the Poland/Belarus border, Małaszewicze is the site of one Europe’s most important logistical hubs. An entry point to the European Union, and a connection between European-gauge and Soviet-gauge railway systems, Małaszewicze is an obligatory stop for many freight trains linking up Europe and China, dubbed the China-Europe Express. Relying on interviews with local actors, ethnographic observations, and photography as research method, I look at how BRI materialises “on the ground”. I explore what local interests it represents and opposes, who advances and contests it, how it relates to local economy and urban development. More conceptually, I reflect what lessons can Małaszewicze offer for the critical debates on transport and logistics, as well as for the discussions regarding the link between transport and coloniality/modernity.
Wojciech Kębłowski is a critical urban geographer working on transport and alternatives to capitalism. He is based at VUB and ULB, holding the position of FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellow. He is currently involved in two research projects: LiFT (funded by FNR and FWO, on mobility transitions related to public transport fares) and PUTSPACE (funded by HERA, on publicness of public transport).
Wojciech’s work focuses on two main themes. First, he is interested in brining critical social theory and decolonial theory to transport geography. He studies the political economy and governance of “sustainable” transport policies, transport in/formality, and publicness of public transport. He is particularly curious about practices of fare evasion and control, and the policy of fare abolition, otherwise known as fare-free public transport.
Second, he studies diverse alternatives to the capitalist mode of producing urban space and society. These include practices inspired by the notion of circular economy and degrowth, and various examples of citizen participation, for instance the policy of participatory budgeting. He explores how, why and for whom these “alternatives” emerge, and how they are transferred and “mobilised” between urban contexts.
Wojciech’s research has involved fieldwork in diverse cities in Western Europe (Aubagne, Brussels, Luxembourg, Helsinki, Madrid), Eastern Europe (Sopot, Wrocław, Tallinn), China (Chengdu) and Cuba (Santiago).