The cooperation project, at the crossroads of geographical and historical border studies, aims to provide a better understanding of the specificity of imperial border regimes, their logics and functioning in contrasting them to national bordering practices. This explicit look at history is intended to lend reflexive depth to current discussions on the return of imperial borders.
The comparative research project from Saarland University and the University of Wrocław aims to examine differences and similarities between a German-Polish border region and a German-French border region in light of different European development paths. The researchers are looking at the experiences of the recent pandemic in the Euroregion Pro Europa Viadrina on the German-Polish border and in the Eurodistrict SaarMoselle on the French-German border. Their research focuses on the resilience strategies implemented in the two European regions as a result of border closures and other significant restrictions.
This is a PhD project that is being conducted as part of a doctoral studies programme at the University of Luxembourg (2020-2024). The project aims at analyzing how, where, and for what affected people wait in the light of possibly being detained and/or deported in the context of the European ‘deportation regime’. Drawing from Critical Migration Studies and Border Studies, a central focus lies on examining local situations and migrant experiences in Luxembourg and the Greater Region.
The three-year project focuses on the Greater Region SaarLorLux+ and the Brandenburg/Lebus region as zones of contact and transition at national borders. The border closures and increased controls in the course of the pandemic have made clear, especially in border regions, how closely the European Union is already interconnected at its territorial interfaces.
Border research is forging new ways of thinking and analysing borders. The book release (2020) is following up this development and promotes a perspective that focuses on the everyday experience of borders.
The members of the Association of Teachers of History and Geography (Association des Professeurs d’Histoire et de Géographie) regularly holds plenary sessions as part of a thematic conference. In 2019 the association held its conference from 23 to 25 October in Metz and Nancy and worked on the theme "Lorraine, land of fronts and borders" (La Lorraine, un territoire de fronts et de frontières). The UniGR-Center for Border Studies (UniGR-CBS) was involved in the planning of the programme in several ways.
Border research has undergone profound changes in the last few decades, which has altered the preoccupation with national borders as unchallenged phenomena. This reorientation is based on constructivist approaches and queries the processes of establishing, relativising, shifting or overcoming borders.
This book series launched by Astrid M. Fellner, Florian Weber (Saarland University) and Olaf Kühne (University of Tübingen) is aimed at border researchers in the spatial, cultural and social science fields wishing to publish both theoretical-conceptual and empirically oriented work.
Since 2015, migration towards and within Europe has challenged the adequacy of the legal design of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and called into question the overall process of harmonisation of national asylum systems. Based on the acknowledgement that harmonisation is not a fixed term, as it rather incorporates different meanings and practices (e.g. approximation towards minimum standards, policy convergence, etc.), CEASEVAL carries out a multidisciplinary and comprehensive evaluation of the CEAS in terms of its framework and implementation, with the aim of understanding what type of harmonisation and solidarity are possible and necessary.
How do cross-border regions come about and what characterises them? The 19 contributors to this collection examine the social experience of the EU's internal borders through the example of the SaarLorLux Greater Region. They discuss the practices of institutional actors and inhabitants of border regions in a number of areas: the economy, the job market, political cooperation as well as everyday life, the media and culture. The collection contains 16 contributions in French and German by 19 authors from Germany, France and Luxembourg.
Cross-border areas are often presented as "laboratories of European integration". Beyond the speeches and the symbols, what actual meaning lies beneath the notion of the "cross-border region"? Based on work done for a PhD, this monograph sets out the challenges in the construction of cross-border governance. The analysis largely focuses on the Greater Region.
The Governance and Sustainability Lab takes up the challenge of exploring policies and governance mechanisms to cope with socio-ecological change and to steer development towards sustainability. As an interdisciplinary team, we employ multifaceted perspectives on sustainability, resource management and governance and steering processes in local borderscapes as well as in cities of the global North and South.
This is a PhD project that is being conducted as part of a dual doctoral studies programme at the Universities of Trier and Luxembourg (2017-2021). The topic is contemporary state borders, which are conceptualised from the perspective of sociological practice theory and analysed through the example of a case of cross-border cooperation in Europe. The key issues considered are how borders can be understood as practices and according to what practical logic borders are drawn up.
The France Strategy, presented by the government of the Saarland in 2014, is an ambitious project related to the EU Cohesion Policy. The scholars within this research project analyse the cross-border cooperation in the Saarland Moselle region with a focus on the coordination and implementation of the France strategy.
GR-Atlas is an interactive, interdisciplinary, thematic atlas of the “Greater Region SaarLorLux,” which comprises the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Belgian region Wallonia, the former French region Lorraine as well as the German federal states Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate.
Karina Pallagst from the TU Kaiserslautern initiated and led the working group "Border Futures" from 2014 to 2016 together with Andrea Hartz from agl Hartz ⋅ Saad ⋅ Wendl within the framework of the Akademie für Raum- und Landesplanung (ARL). The working group analysed the practice of cross-border cooperation in the Hesse/Rhineland-Palatinate/Saarland region and published its results in Open Access.
