The QuattroPole is a network of Cities in the Greater Region, spread across 3 countries and with a total population of 530,000 inhabitants. The name of this network reveals the partnership's metropolitan ambitions. The objective is, first of all, to position this relatively dispersed urban agglomeration on the chessboard of the main European metropolitan centres and, secondly, to raise the awareness of stakeholders and citizens of the joint future of these geographically so-close cities.
The Center for Inter American and Border Studies (CIBS) has established itself as a benchmark in the field of border studies by capitalising on the expertise on its own border territory. As well as often being high-profile, this territory presents some important challenges in terms of governance, demography and migration, as well as access to education and healthcare, employment and economic development. To meet these challenges the centre has developed an interdisciplinary approach specific to the territory studied, and a high level of expertise.
Located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the interdisciplinary Centre for International Border Research deals with border reconfiguration and conflict transformation at various levels. The academic staff involved comes from anthropology, geography, political science and sociology. The network represents an opportunity for scholars worldwide to network and exchange research outputs on borders. It does so by a wide range of activities: organization/supporting seminars and conferences, running a visiting fellowship programme, publishing working papers, hosting a well-documented multi-media resource platform. The website provides free access to a large extent of the network. The website documents mainly activities that ran in the 2000s and early 2010s.
In “Europe as borderlands” Balibar first outlines the theoretical connections between borders, political spaces, and citizenship. In the second part, Balibar rethinks the notions of (de)territorialization in an attempt of analyzing the “’material constitution’ of Europe [and] the emergence of the ‘European citizen’ as a new historic figure” (p. 202). All topics are united in part three, where Balibar outlines his ideas of the new, cosmopolitcal or transnational citizen and their role in the borderland model of Europe.
This article examines the concept of boundaries, by putting an emphasis on the utility of the concept for the study of relational processes. Literatures on collective and social identity; ethnic/racial, class, gender/sex inequality; knowledge, professions and science; as well as national identities, communities and spatial boundaries are discussed. The similarity of processes that are at work across different social worlds and locations as well as in a range of institutions are highlighted. Finally possible development paths for the future elaboration of the concept are proposed.
This book examines the histories, the inequalities, as well as the “Othering” that persists in many borderlands. The author declares that her “normative intent is to move toward greater binational equalities in interdependent states with emphasis on wages and GDPs, but with the latter discounted for environmental damage, and the long-term security threat whether we live in borderlands or the mainstream” (p. 236 f.). By proposing film suggestions, weblinks to maps and other visual graphics, a comprehensive and interdisciplinary bibliography in every chapter, as well as short notes on research, observations, and case studies, this book offers a broad perspective on borders and borderlands.
The EUBORDERSCAPES project analyzed the conceptual changes in the study of borders that have taken place in the past decades. The project focused on the social significance and subjectivities of state borders. “Objective” categories of state territoriality were critically interrogating. Parallel to the study of conceptual change, the main research question was “how [do] different and often contested conceptualisations of state borders (in terms of their political, social, cultural and symbolic significance) resonate in concrete contexts at the level of everyday life”.
Saarland sees itself as a bridge between Germany and France. Due to historical developments, there is already a great deal of expertise on France, which is to be expanded further.
The France Strategy is designed as a comprehensive and civil society project. In close cooperation with Lorraine, it pursues an internal strategy (strengthening French competence within the country) and an external and communication strategy (marketing Saarland’s French competence externally, i.e. to France and Germany). Even if French competence is the focal point, the France Strategy is essentially a multilingual strategy.
The France Strategy has so far been complemented by two “Feuille de route” (roadmaps), which list milestones.
The edited collection offers a practical-theoretical perspective. It is assumed that “spaces and identities emerge from social practices” (p. 9). A reconstruction of media, institutional and everyday cultural practices in border regions is carried out on the basis of various research projects. Luxembourg and the neighboring regions in Belgium, Germany and France form the empirical research context for the individual contributions. Analytically, a distinction is made between three intertwined “border practices” “(1) the establishment of borders as differentiation or self-/foreign regulation to the outside; (2) the crossing of borders as an affirmative and/or subversive act with transformation potential; and (3) the expansion of borders as an ‘in between’ of manifold relations and intersections” (p. 10).
