Border Experiences in Europe. Everyday Life - Working Life - Communication – Languages

Border Region

Europe, Grande Région, France, Espagne, Allemagne, Pologne, Luxembourg, Belgique

Language(s)

Anglais

Type

Note on a scientific book publication

Main Category

Employment – Education – Economy

Governance – Power – Cooperation

Language – Culture – Identity

Introduction

The book provides insights into life realities in Europe where borders are (made) relevant. The authors address everyday cultural border experiences in the context of migration and mobility forms as well as language contact situations.

Summary

For a decade now, borders in Europe have been back on the political agenda. Border research has responded and is breaking new ground in thinking about and exploring borders. This book follows this development and strengthens a perspective that is interested in life realities and that focuses on the everyday cultural experience of borders. The authors reconstruct such experiences in the context of different forms of migration and mobility as well as language contact situations. In this way, they empirically identify everyday cultural usage or appropriation strategies of borders as vastly different experiences of the border. The readers of this volume will gain insights into current developments in border research and the life realities in Europe where borders are (made) relevant.

Content

This English-language edited volume is an emanation of the "Differences and discontinuities in a Europe without borders" European conference (2016) organised by the Association for Borderlands Studies and was edited by Christian Wille and Birte Nienaber in January 2020. The volume contains twelve contributions from social cultural scientists, which after two short introductory texts, are divided between two topics, "Border Experiences: Everyday Life and Working Life" and "Border Experiences: Communication and Languages". The chapters deal with the powerful social effects of borders, especially in the context of international migration, cross-border residential migration, travel, cross-border commuting and other everyday mobility as well as language contact situations.

The articles are framed by an overarching approach, which using the notion of "border experiences" focuses on the role and powerful effects of borders in everyday cultural life realities. This approach is not aimed at the border as an ontological, linear object at the edge of a territory, but at the (spatially, temporally and socially floating) processes of (de)stabilisation of borders – and therefore at the ways society produces and handles them, how they are put into effect in and through social practices and discourses. The "border experiences" approach strengthens the perspective, role and therefore agency of those who "inhabit" the border, meaning those who are entangled in them and who with their (bodily and sensory) experiences or generation of meaning in and through everyday practices, narratives, representations or objects continuously (re-)produce them. It is an approach that focuses on "border(lands) residents" and their border experience in order to better understand the modes of action and function, but, above all, the ways in which borders are appropriated.

The concept is not just a complementary view on the border through the eyes of the "affected person"; rather, border experiences are developed through the border. The approach implemented involves following the border in its performative arenas: to where the border takes place as everyday cultural (re-)production. These include moments of representation or meaning production coded in practices, discourses or objects and in which borders are (made) relevant. Border experiences also imply multiple understandings of border, which excludes neither marginalized nor privileged actors. The concept refers to the entirety of the actors, who are active in border (de)stabilisation and are able to take account of the fact that borders (can) work differently on different actors.

The publication contains the following articles:

Christian Wille, Birte Nienaber: Borders and border experiences
Carsten Yndigegn: The Europe without borders discourse and splitting European identities
Ignacy Jóźwiak: Cross-border links at the boundaries of the European Union: an ethnography of mobility, work, and citizenship in uncertain times
Ariela House: Passports and mobility at Spain’s border with France, 1966–1978
Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth, Rachid Belkacem: The economic impact of cross-border work on the municipalities of residence: an example at the French–Luxembourgish border
Christian Wille, Ursula Roos: Cross-border everyday lives on the Luxembourg border? An empirical approach: the example of cross-border commuters and residential migrants
Elisabeth Boesen: Moving from nation into region. Experiences and memories of cross-border dwelling in the Greater Region SaarLorLux
Dominik Gerst: Epistemic border struggles: exposing, legitimizing, and diversifying border knowledge at a security conference
Corinne Martin: Digital media practices as digital border experiences among French cross-border commuters in Luxembourg
Florian Dost, Konstanze Jungbluth, Nicole Richter: Betweenness and the emergence of order
Erika Kalocsányiová: Researching forced migrants’ trajectories: encounters with multilingualism
Xosé-Afonso Álvarez Pérez: Border experiences along the Portugal/Spain border: a contribution from language documentation

Conclusions

The approach outlined in the book is applied in case studies taken from the fields of everyday life and working life as well as communication and language. The author's approach can be summed up in three investigative perspectives. Firstly, it is a question of to what extent borders are (re-)produced in and through practices, discourses or objects. In addition, awareness of the everyday cultural sites of borders should be raised. The range of such sites is diverse, ranging from (cross-border) recreational practices, shopping and information practices, to those related to (cross-border) employment or relocation, to border control practices or language contact situations. Secondly, it asks what social logics are embedded in such (re-)production processes. Questioning from this perspective addresses the creation of meaning of everyday cultural border (re)productions, which can also be discussed as "border knowledge" or "border culture". Especially with regard to border regions, the aim should be to better understand the (strategic) use of the border and the local appropriations of the border in and through everyday practices. At the same time, the aim is to uncover the structures of meaning that are constitutive for borders in representations or projections Several authors comment on this, such as Dominik Gerst using the example of a political event on security issues, Elisabeth Boesen through "moving stories" by residential migrants, Corinne Martin with the media practices of cross-border workers, and Xosé-Afonso Álvarez Pérez with border residents And thirdly, this volume asks which effects of the (dis)continuity originate from borders and to what extent they are (made) effective for actors at or on the borders. However, the potential spaces opening up through borders or border crossings have also been worked out, which, for example, Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth and Rachid Belkacem in this volume understand as a "resource", Corinne
Martin as a “reservoir of cultural resources” or Dost, Konstanze Jungbluth and Nicole Richter as "liminal spaces" marked by in-betweenness.

Key Messages

The turn towards everyday cultural life realities as arenas of societal production and handling of borders, as the authors treat it, must be understood as an approach complementary to a geopolitical perspective. It allows Border Studies, especially from cultural points of view, to counter over-simplified understandings of borders.

Lead

Christian Wille, Birte Nienaber

Author of the entry

Christian

WILLE

Contributions

Christian Wille, Birte Nienaber
Carsten Yndigegn
Ignacy Jóźwiak
Ariela House
Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth, Rachid Belkacem
Christian Wille, Ursula Roos
Elisabeth Boesen
Dominik Gerst
Corinne Martin
Florian Dost, Konstanze Jungbluth, Nicole Richter
Erika Kalocsányiová
Xosé-Afonso Álvarez Pérez

Links

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845295671

Keywords