Europe

The temptation to abolish borders corresponds to a desire to kill off a myth, but it neglects the fact that the border, with its four functions of translation, regulation, differentiation and relationship, is a living notion in society. The rediscovery by Brazil of its land borders, like the problems that are arising on this question in the States of what used to be Eastern Europe, show that the relationship function can only be exercised in an active, stable and non-conflictual way if the other functions are fulfilled. A border is the measure of pluralism against the dangers of chaos; it serves as much to "express" order as it does disorder.

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”.

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).

In this anthology, the authors examine how cross-border regions emerge and what characterizes them. The practices of institutional participants and border area residents in the fields of the labor market, economy, political cooperation, media, everyday life and culture will be analyzed and discussed.

This book summarizes the articles presented in the cross-border research workshops of 2008-2009 organized by the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme of the University of Lorraine in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg. The researchers from different disciplines, such as political science, information or communication studies, history, geography and sociology, came together to exchange ideas about the different approaches to the research object of the border. The questions that form the basis of the empirical investigations deal with the stability, persistence, and traces of the border; representations of territories and borders as well as the dynamics of transcultural and cross-border exchanges.

The three main subjects of study are (1) the border areas visited (political dispositives and social perceptions), (2) media construction and information practices at the level of the Greater Region and (3) the impact of cultural events on transnational representations. The sources used are biographies, questionnaires, surveys and discourse analyses.

The anthology “European Borderlands,” edited by Elisabeth Boesen and Gregor Schnuer, contains an introduction and 11 chapters of content. It deals with everyday practices in European border regions that support social development and cultural identity. Changes in border regions are considered from a historical, sociological, economic, geographical, literary, anthropological or political perspective. The selected case studies are mainly located in border regions between Germany and its neighbouring countries, but also between Belgium and France, Estonia and Finland or Hungary and Slovakia. They show the diversity of border demarcations, which contradict a “borderless Europe” through border narratives.