Borders are once again facing a new visibility and attention. This development in society and politics was the focus of the international conference "Border Renaissance" on February 4 and 5, 2022. The event of border scholars from the Greater Region, who collaborate in the UniGR-Center for Border Studies, focused on the new importance of borders in European border regions and on a global level.
The multifaceted conference program with 100 scientific lectures, which was elaborated by the Saarland University, stringently followed the aim of the event. The coordinating university professor, Dr. Astrid Fellner, explains: Border knowledge is not only increasingly in demand, the field of border studies has also been restructured in recent years. According to Fellner, the conference wanted to bring together the competences of territorial, cultural, linguistic border studies and make their latest innovations useful for the urgent questions of our time.
Expertise in times of resurgent borders
The importance of border studies in times of resurgent borders was also emphasized by Michael Jäckel (University of Trier). As acting president of the "University of the Greater Region – UniGR" association, he welcomed the 200 international participants and underlined the work of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies. The scientific cooperation is not only a role model for the cross-border higher education area, but also makes an important contribution to the European project.
The Luxembourg Foreign Minister, Jean Asselborn, who was a guest speaker at the conference, made a similar statement. Especially in times of terrorist attacks, massive migration movements and ongoing pandemic, he expects important impulses from border research for policy-making. In addition to international politics, this primarily concerns regional political cooperation in the Greater Region, which experienced a stress test with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Border closures resulting from the spread of the coronavirus were discussed at length in a high-level roundtable discussion. Roland Theis, Saarland's State Secretary for Europe and Plenipotentiary for European Affairs, and Heinrich Kreft, former German Ambassador to Luxembourg, were the protagonists who reported on border management at the time. The experiences made in the Greater Region were discussed and classified with Grégory Hamez (Université de Lorraine) and Joanna Kurowska-Pysz (WSB University Dabrowa Górnicza). As a result, regional political cooperation has emerged stronger from the crisis, with measures for better coordinated cooperation taking effect in the Greater Region today.
Cooperation and scientific debate strengthened
The renowned border scholar Victor Konrad (Carleton University) framed the conference topic from a scientific point of view. The guest speaker, who joined from Canada, discussed "Border Renaissance" critically and classified the term philosophically as well as in terms of science policy. He supported the firm establishment of "Border Renaissance" in interdisciplinary border studies, if this would lead to an increase in knowledge about the functioning of borders. Accordingly, he argued for a comprehensive perspective on borders that is oriented toward entanglements in society and politics.
The working groups of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies also dealt with current developments and their consequences for research. During the conference, they presented their research results to the participants from 25 countries and initiated future collaborations.