Border Studies Europe Conference 2016

The Europe Conference 2016 of the Association for Borderlands Studies was organised from 4-7 October 2016 by the University of Luxembourg in conjunction with the UniGR-Center for Border Studies. The overall theme "Differences and discontinuities in a 'Europe without borders'" was already chosen in 2014, but since then it has lost none of its topicality: political and social events of the last few years have put the idea of a Europe without borders out of the picture and have led to a renaissance of the Border. And this does not always only mean territorial borders, but also, and above all, invisible borders, which operate as economic, social or cultural differences and discontinuities.

The significance of non-territorial borders was dealt with in particular by the two keynote speakers (Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof from the University of Southampton), who also emphasised the important role played by academics in examining societal phenomena.

During the four-day conference, the approximately 100 attendees discussed borders, differences and discontinuities in their different manifestations at 18 different sessions, whose work was structured around four key themes: Mobility and Multilocality, Multilingualism and Diversity, Growth and Sustainability, Instability and Change. In addition, the programme included four excursions, which took conference attendees, under the guidance of experts, out into the Luxembourg-Belgian, Luxembourg-German and German-French border regions. A special highlight was the conference dinner which took place during a boat cruise in the three-border area around the famous Luxembourg village of Schengen.

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