The Longwy cross-border area provides a fertile ground for discussing theories on the transformation of social issues into spatial issues, from the past domination of the steel industry and the brutality of the changes that have occurred over a thirty-year period to the sharp increase in cross-border working. Various representations of the notion of the cross-border rub shoulders here. The discourses of the institutions propose readings that are more and more focused on going beyond borders and moving further and further away from contradictory social relations. Yet researchers are reasserting the fact that it is social relations that define a territory, which, in return, inscribes them in its territory. But they do not agree on whether or not the class struggle has disappeared.
In “Europe as borderlands” Balibar first outlines the theoretical connections between borders, political spaces, and citizenship. In the second part, Balibar rethinks the notions of (de)territorialization in an attempt of analyzing the “’material constitution’ of Europe [and] the emergence of the ‘European citizen’ as a new historic figure” (p. 202). All topics are united in part three, where Balibar outlines his ideas of the new, cosmopolitcal or transnational citizen and their role in the borderland model of Europe.
We, most of the time, look on border as simple artefacts on the ground serving a variety of practical reasons and that can be classified according to the purposes (political, social, economic, etc.) they serve and how they serve them. If they are necessary for all sorts of reasons, borders are also inherently problematic. Instead of adopting a rigid position about them, we need to consider them as movable structures that have advantages and disadvantages. Borders should define ‘dwelling’ rather than national spaces and motivate political responsibility for pursuit of a ‘decent life’ as not restricted to any particular state.
This academic journal article discusses the two major dueling schools of thought on the significance of borders in contemporary politics and society, namely those who see an increasingly « borderless world » and those who see new meaning and contexts to studying borders. Here, borders are not only considered as phenomena located at the edges of territories, but rather everywhere in between in societal practices and discourses. In particular, Paasi explains the importance of theory in border studies and develops new conceptual perspectives in order to understand the persistence of bounded territorial spaces.
The special issue on “Regional Worlds,” edited by Martin Jones and Anssi Paasi, combines various current theoretical perspectives on the region and accompanies this with empirical examples from Europe, Africa, and North America. The issue attempts to address the still-current significance of the region in geography and breaks down old dichotomous conceptualizations of “region” as either territorial or relational, in order to unite the conceptualizations. The authors point out that regions are constructed according to various disciplinary perspectives on different scales (sub-national, national, supranational, cross-border). They contextualize regions in connection with globalization, border regions, agency/advocacy, social construction, and historical processes of development and change.
