Critical Dictionary on Borders, Cross-Border Cooperation and European Integration

Taking into account a multi-scale perspective from the local to the global, the Critical Dictionary follows a combined historical-geographical approach. It fills a gap in the scientific literature on Border- and European Studies and pursues three main objectives: First, it establishes a link between the two (as of yet) still relatively unconnected disciplines. Second, it provides an interdisciplinary tool for students, researchers, and practitioners, through an overview of theory, terms, forms, actors, and tools of territorial cooperation in Europe. Third, it challenges the traditional top-down approach to European integration by taking into account not only European Union (EU) institutions and Member States, but the links that these institutions and actors have to the multitude of local and regional initiatives, which have thus far fed into the process of European integration. It is therefore a first step towards a new decentralized, territorialized approach to European integration; one that looks at integration as a mosaic of bottom-up processes identified by starting from the local and regional level of Europe’s borderlands. The book is organized by means of key words classified in alphabetical order. For the conceptual section, the authors were asked to analyse each term according to a fixed scheme, which includes an explication of the notion, connected terms, issues, and bibliographical references (among others). The geographical section consists of articles on border spaces in the EU and companion maps, which together present an analysis of the borders as a whole by distinguishing between the constructions of the cross-border territory, the representations of the border and the general history and governance of cross-border cooperation. For the authors of this collective publication, the focus has always been on the fact that we are dealing with a “critical” dictionary, which means that there is no request for uniform thinking. Quite on the contrary, we invited them to give their subjective analysis of a given term or area to further stimulate interdisciplinary research and discussion. All articles have also been subject of a peer-review system ensuring scientific discussion and quality checks before publication. The Critical Dictionary is part of four Jean Monnet activities supported by the EU Erasmus+ program for the period 2016-2023: two Jean Monnet projects on EU border regions, a Jean Monnet network (Frontem) and the Franco-German Jean Monnet excellence Center (University of Strasbourg), as well as the Jean Monnet Chair of Bernard Reitel on borders and European integration (University d’Artois)