EUBORDERSCAPES, financed though the EU’s 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, is an international research project that tracks and interprets conceptual change in the study of borders. It is a large-scale project led by s dirigé par J.W. Scott from the University of Eastern Finland (Joennsu) and the consortium includes 22 partner institutions from 17 different states, including several non-EU countries, with a total budget of 6,9 Million Euros.
The EUBORDERSCAPES project studies conceptual change in relation to fundamental social, economic, cultural and geopolitical transformations that have taken place in the past decades. In addition, major paradigmatic shifts in scientific debate, and in the social sciences in particular, will also be considered. State borders are the frame of reference, rather than ethnographic/anthropological boundaries. However, this approach emphasises the social significance and subjectivities of state borders while critically interrogating “objective” categories of state territoriality and international relations. The research proposed here will, furthermore, not only be focused at the more general, at times highly abstract, level of conceptual change. This approach will also allow us to compare and contrast how different and often contested conceptualisations of state borders (in terms of their political, social, cultural and symbolic significance) resonate in concrete contexts at the level of everyday life.
Pacte has been very much involved in the following Work-Packages:
- WP 1 (Conceptual Change and the State of the Debate), with an active participation in the writing of the State of the Art report http://www.euborderscapes.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/EUBORDERSCAPES_State_of_Debate_Report_1.pdf
WP 4 (Europeanisation: European Integration and Conceptual Change): This involves a critical investigation of bordering processes in terms of how official policies, political debates as well as media representations and more informal local “place-making” practices have contributed to European interpretations of national borders . Work will include uncovering divergences and convergences in various modes of European border representations (political language, media, academic, cultural). What do these convergences and divergences indicate about images of Europe in terms of openness and closedness (e.g. as reflections of transnational tendencies and tensions and anxieties about identity)?
WP 10 (Border-Crossing and Cultural Production): explores forms of cross-border “cultural production” within the overall perspective of bordering. This WP consolidates local perspectives in regard to how culturally produced representations have contributed to cross-border interpretations of state borders as well as challenge official meanings, symbolisms and functions attached to state borders. It analyses cultural and literary works in ways that frame national and European border issues (e.g. citizenship, cultural identities, inclusion, exclusion, cooperation across borders) and contextualise them in terms of historical and changing contemporary relationships. More specifically, this WP will demonstrate how artistic expression and the media address borders and border crossings (migrants, people living at borders, etc.) and their impact for everyday life in Europe (e.g, cultural tensions, cultural hybridisation). This WP is most clearly linked to WP 9 (Intersectionality).
