This volume brings together contributions from the symposium "Cross-border Representations" (held September 16 and 17, 2010 at Mulhouse University Institute of Technology, University of Upper Alsace, UHA). It contains analysis of the practices, identities, forms of governance, and policy in cross-border territories such as the Greater Region, the PAMINA area, the border regions between France and Geneva, France and Spain, and other French border territories including Brazil and Africa. With twenty contributions, the book offers insights from politicians, historians, geographers, researchers in the field of information science, sociologists, and linguists.
The state development program is a cross-departmental and intersectoral spatial framework that underpins the development of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The State Development Program (LEP IV) is titled “Recognizing Challenges – Acting Sustainably – Shaping the Future.” The program, which came into force in 2008, deals with issues such as public services and the development of spaces. In particular, it deals with the challenges of demographic change and globalization.
This text focusses on the daily practices, perceptions, and ideas constructed around and in regard to border areas, and the institutions installed on this scale. In order to harness the breadth and complexity of representations associated with the border, three types of so-called "entries" are proposed: an entry via practices, an entry via discourse, and an entry via artifacts.
In this scientific study, the authors take a comparative approach to the analysis of border areas in the French territory. The methodological and technical concerns implicated in such analysis are discussed. The third part of the study focusses on the advantages of taking a medium-scale approach. The study draws on a large number of maps and graphic representations. Finally, the authors put forward a typology of border areas.
There is an extensive growth in the number of international borders. At the same time goods, people and ideas are more mobile than ever before. A Companion to Border Studies brings together viewpoints on these developments by preeminent border scholars from the fields of anthropology, geography, history, development studies, political science and sociology. Case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, are presented. A comprehensive analysis of key characteristics of frontiers and borders, including topics such as security, cross-border cooperation, and controls, population displacements and migration, transnationalism and hybridity is provided.
The articles in this edited collection deal with the conditions and obstacles of the cross-border flow of information. The question is also raised as to why the development of a European media public sphere has been a difficult undertaking. The investigations are mainly concerned with the Greater Region. It is clear that media production is still largely national in character. Above all, the concept of the “journalistic field” (Bourdieu) is used to contribute to an expanded understanding of European media phenomena.
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.
Saarland’s France Strategy will be discussed in the light of different professional contexts and with the consideration of large regional, national, European and global processes. The contributions are based on a public lecture series in which cross-border realities of life, measures, cooperation and multilingualism in the border region were discussed. The German-French cooperation and the importance of the France Strategy in various fields of action will be discussed, as well as the existing opportunities and challenges, but also possible contributions from academics and society to use the potentials of the border region will be examined from different scientific perspectives.
