Cross-border population mobility is at the heart of cross-border cooperation, serving as a vital factor in the resilience of border regions by ensuring the development of cross-border socio-economic ties and guaranteeing access to labor markets, education, healthcare, and social services. At the same time, it is one of the critical drivers of economic integration. As a complex socio-economic phenomenon, this mobility encompasses various forms of movement, from traditional labor, educational, or business trips in the Ukrainian-Polish borderland to forced humanitarian migrations. However, contemporary crisis challenges, primarily the war, have fundamentally altered the scale, functions, and nature of these processes. The article examines the structural and spatial changes and the transformations of cross-border mobility dominants in the Ukrainian-Polish borderland under the impact of long-term crisis challenges. The research is based on statistical data regarding border crossings between Ukraine and Poland and cross-border expenditure for the 2014-2024 period. Structural, comparative, spatial, and dynamic analysis methods were applied to evaluate shifts in the intensity, frequency, geography, purposes, and economic effects of these flows, as well as the emerging asymmetry of financial flows and the spending structures among citizens of both countries. The article shows that under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and military challenges, cross-border mobility has lost its predominantly local, commercial, and consumer-oriented nature. It also substantiates the transition from local and short-term forms of cross-border mobility to spatially wider and longer-lasting movements manifested in the contraction of commuting mobility among borderland residents, the expansion of movement geography, and the growing role of Ukraine’s remote regions in shaping cross-border flows. The authors prove that due to previously established cross-border networks, the nature of border movement has transformed into a core adaptive mechanism for ensuring the resilience of the quality of life amid intensifying security, socio-economic, and humanitarian risks. Finally, the research reveals the exaptive nature of community resilience and emphasizes the critical role of cross-border mobility in the socio-economic adaptation of the population to global and regional crisis transformations. 

cross-border mobility, dominants of cross-border cooperation, resilience, quality of life of the population, Ukrainian-Polish borderland, local border traffic