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).
In Europe at the beginning of the year 2020, due to the Covid19 epidemic, numerous national borders were abruptly closed. These closures, the first of their kind, referred to as "covidfencing" in this article, were a serious setback for many cross-border workers. This episode has demonstrated the deterritorialisation of numerous activities in Europe, which are no longer tied to one territory, but to several, and the dependency of these activities on borders.
This dissertation examines the influence of two EU policies, the European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) and the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T), which are meant to develop cross-border transport within the EU. It shows that the two EU policies support cross-border transport at different levels. Both policies need to be more interlinked in order to complement each other more effectively. They influence the political and planning documents at the various national administrative levels and their practical implementation in a differentiated manner. The final implementation of the EU policy objectives and the cross-border transport initiatives is strongly influenced by the different initial positions in the member states.
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.
