Robert Parkin was a Departmental Lecturer in social anthropology in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford from 2002 to 2017.

Studying the German-Polish ethnic relations, this book analyses the people and region through their respective borderlands, migration, official cooperation and unofficial suspicions across the border. The main conclusion is that, while officialdom is generally keen to develop cross-border ties, which ordinary people do take advantage of, these tend to be much more sceptical of the potential impact to their lives in what remains an economically depressed area despite cross-border cooperation having been possible for several decades.