Theories – Concepts – Terms

Working Paper Vol. 20

Visuel
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Abstract

Despite the increased discourse on the complexity of borders, there are hardly any references in the academic debate as to what exactly complex borders mean or complexity-oriented border research. This paper starts here and discusses the promising relationship between complexity thinking and border research. To this end, it explains what is currently qualified as complex in border research and what understanding of complexity can be found there. The core ideas of complexity thinking are then presented and linked to the ordering and ordered principle of the border. Building on this, border research approaches and methodologies are identified that can be considered enablers of the complexity perspective and, thus, as starting points for complexity-oriented border research.

Working Paper Vol. 19

Visuel
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Abstract

San Diego’s central neighborhoods are in the midst of a municipally and privately led redevelopment phase, which is gradually progressing from one neighborhood to the other and slowly transforming lower-income communities into ‘trendy’ places for affluent populations. This is particularly the case in the neighborhood of North Park, which has been redeveloped in the last decades and has recently begun to expand eastward across two inner-city highways into the large Hispanic and Asian American community of Mid-City. Particularly along the large commercial streets that link the two communities, previously produced and habituated differences are currently re-negotiated – socially and functionally but also economically, symbolically, and architecturally –, which provokes the emergence of a (temporal) hybrid in-between zone that is simultaneously part of the one and the other neighborhood. These changes are tied to municipal and private redevelopment efforts and are of significant everyday relevance for the residents of North Park and Mid-City alike. However, these processes have not yet undergone in-depth analysis. Our paper addresses this gap by developing a theoretical framework of multi-dimensional b/ordering processes, which takes account of the multi-faceted complexity of this transitional and temporal borderland. On the basis of this framework, empirical results from a mixed-method research study (qualitative interviews and participatory observations among others), conducted between 2019 and 2022, will be used to trace how San Diego’s progressing redevelopment trend furthers the multi-dimensional shift, perforation, and re-negotiation of boundaries and thus the emergence of a hybrid urban borderland between North Park and Mid-City.

UniGR-CBS Working Paper Vol. 17

Visuel
Working Paper Vol. 17
Abstract

In the 21st century, cooperative cross-border projects in many peripheral areas of EU member states have steadily gained in importance; but, as the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated, they can by no means be taken for granted. Borderland cooperation involves many actors, and complex as well as varied background conditions. Funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (project key 01UC2104), the network project ‘Linking Borderlands: Dynamics of Cross-Border Peripheries’ undertakes a comparative analysis of two borderland regions, one in south-western, one in eastern Germany: the so-called Greater Region on the borders of Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg, and the Brandenburg-Lubuskie Region straddling the German-Polish border. The Working Paper outlines the background to EU borderland cooperation and sketches some central lines of development taken by border studies, before presenting its five constituent perspectives.

Thematic issue Borders in Perspective Vol. 8

Visuel
Thematic issue Borders in Perspective Vol. 8
Abstract

While the materialities and functionalities of borders have changed drastically in recent decades, the ordering principle of the border persists. At the same time, the selective character of borders is emerging with a clarity that has hardly been seen in Europe before. This is the point of departure for the issue papers, which discuss the observation that borders do not have the same significance for all people. For this purpose, the authors work with the concept of multivalence, which assumes that borders have social valences or relevances that differ regarding certain groups of people. The thematic issue with case studies of governance, flight, reporting, film, and literature shows multiple valences of borders, which stand for inequalities and refer to powerful cultural orders.

Miniature
Summary

Lille, Strasbourg and Basel are powerful cities situated close to national borders.  Fuelled by economic, political and symbolic functions, their influence creates regions that are both metropolitan and cross-border. Thanks to interviews, cartographic work and textual analyses, this thesis looks at how cross-border metropolitan regions are constructed. This emerges as a process whereby the local actors have to mobilise together and with the European Union to negotiate with the States. This European scale recomposition generates areas subject to tensions where the cross-border conurbation is also part of other, larger regions.

Miniature
Summary

The symbolic role of national borders for cross-border regionalisation remains little-known. In order to broaden our understanding of the meaning-making capacity of borders, this paper looks at what happens when the border is apparently not the object of a symbolisation strategy. The case of Greater Geneva appears particularly informative as this cross-border cooperation seeks to develop an integrated urban agglomeration marked by the ‘erasure’ of the Franco-Swiss border. Rather than an absence of symbolisation, the border is recoded as a ‘planned obsolescence’ through its ‘invisibilization’ in the Genevan borderscape. However, the dissonance between this recoding by cross-border cooperation elites and existing popular imaginations weakens the cooperation project. To the extent that borders are powerful symbols which are intended to stimulate emotions and empathy, the ability to mobilize their meaning-making capacity is at the heart of symbolisation politics, as much for the proponents of open borders and cross-border cooperation as for the reactionary forces that emphasize national interests and ontological insecurity.

Miniature
Summary

‘The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s)’ sets into relation U.S. imperial and Indigenous conceptions of territoriality as articulated in U.S. legal texts and Indigenous life writing in the 19th century. It analyzes the ways in which U.S. legal texts as “legal fictions” narratively press to affirm the United States’ territorial sovereignty and coherence in spite of its reliance on a variety of imperial practices that flexibly disconnect and (re)connect U.S. sovereignty, jurisdiction and territory.

At the same time, the book acknowledges Indigenous life writing as legal texts in their own right and with full juridical force, which aim to highlight the heterogeneity of U.S. national territory both from their individual perspectives and in conversation with these legal fictions. Through this, the book’s analysis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the coloniality of U.S. legal fictions, while highlighting territoriality as a key concept in the fashioning of the narrative of U.S. imperialism.

Miniature
Summary

In essence, the report concludes there are two different ways: the first is to give Limburg (or Dutch border provinces in general) a specific role in the application of existing multi- or bilateral instruments at the Benelux or EU level. This could include a vital role related to the EU instrument under debate (cross-border mechanism).

The second option would be the establishment of a specific national legal instrument that would provide the Province of Limburg (or all border provinces) with innovative tools to adapt Dutch legislation in the context of border obstacles.

Miniature
Summary

This article proposes a systematic analysis of the Interreg IV A projects related to cross-border territorial development which were conducted along Europe's internal borders between 2007 and 2013. It reveals the diversity of the initiatives and shows that they can be separated into different categories according to whether they aim to (1) create or improve networks between actors, (2) produce territorial observations, (3) develop strategies or, finally, (4) produce tangible for the public at cross-border level.

Miniature
Summary

This Critical Dictionary on Borders, Cross-Border Cooperation and European Integration takes up the challenge to answer these questions. It is the first encyclopedia, which combines two so far not well-interconnected interdisciplinary research fields, i.e. Border Studies and European Studies. Organized in an alphabetical order, it contains 209 articles written by 124 authors from different countries and scientific disciplines, which are accompanied by 66 maps. The articles deal with theory, terminology, concepts, actors, themes and spaces of cross-border cooperation at European borders and in borderlands of and around the European Union (EU).

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