Cross-Border Review 2017

The ‘Cross-Border Review 2017’ is the fourth edition of the yearbook published by CESCI, European Institute of Cross-border Studies. The basic research object of the Yearbook is the phenomenon and question of borders and the process of boundary changes. Articles of the Cross-Border Review assure insightful and critical discussion regarding border issues in various regional and local contexts.

Our Yearbook looks at different topics and issues, like the process of Europeanization; effects of globalization within the domain of border studies; refugee crises and the ethnic dimension of borders; establishment and formulation of new border narratives; cross-border shopping tourism in the socialist Yugoslavia; case study of western and eastern borders of Poland; connectivity vs. disconnectivity, the impact of the EU’s border policy on the regions; migration and state policies in the post-war Mozambique and in the post-apartheid South Africa; macro regional strategy of the EU and European grouping of territorial cooperation. Moreover, the Review contains one commentary about interdependence, as well as two reviews on some of the latest releases from the thematic field of borders.

The ‘Cross-Border Review 2017’ is primarily recommended for the academic community, for students of geography and political sciences, and for those readers who are interested in questions of politics, regional policy, borders, fences, de-boundarization, mental mapping, border permeability and cross-border-cooperation and interaction.

The editor-in-chief was James W. Scott (Professor of Regional and Border Studies, University of Eastern Finland). The Review is published in English.

Contents

• James W. Scott: Introductory Note from the Editor

ARTICLES

• James W. Scott: Globalisation and the Study of Borders
• Jussi P. Laine: The Ethics of Bordering: A Critical Reading of the Refugee ‘Crisis’
• Teodor Gyelnik: Double-Speed Europe: A New Round of Border Frames within European Integration
• Polona Sitar: Cross-Border Shopping Tourism in Socialist Yugoslavia: Gender, Socialist Economy and Reconfiguration of Borders
• Martin Barthel: Connectivity vs. Disconnectivity – the Influence of EU Border policies on Regions. A Case Study of Poland’s Western and Eastern Borders
• Fulgêncio Lucas Seda: Migration Perspectives within Southern Africa: Challenges for State Policies on Migration Management in Post-war Mozambique and Post-apartheid South Africa
• Virpi Kaisto: From European Union to everyday neighborhood in border studies? A conceptual analysis
• Hiroshi Tanaka: EU Architectures of Cross-Border Regions: EU Macro Regional Strategy and European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation

COMMENTARY

• James W. Scott: Interdependence – an Obsolete Concept?

REVIEWS

• Hynek Böhm and Emil Drápela – Cross-border cooperation as a reconciliation tool: Example from the East Czech-Polish borders. Regional & Federal Studies, Vol. 27. Issue 3, pp. 305-319. (Teodor Gyelnik)
• Jarosław Jańczak (2017): Town Twinning in Europe. Understanding Manifestations and Strategies. Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol. 32. Issue 4, pp. 477-495. (Teodor Gyelnik)

Introductory Note from the Editor

2017 was another eventful year for Europe and the world in general. Despite positive economic indicators and widespread growth, a sense of destabilisation, insecurity and fear continues to dominate political debates. Environmentally speaking, it was a record year for extremes, calamities and weather-inflicted damage. Reviewing 2017, it can only be confirmed that the networked nature of human security challenges requires greater cross-border cooperation and dialogue – as well as stronger commitments towards global governance mechanisms.

Recent events in Europe and elsewhere therefore reveal a need to rethink the research and policy-oriented goals of border studies. There is also a need to link current scholarly work with new perspectives on borders in order to promote a greater sense of interdisciplinarity and cross-cultural collaboration. To respond to this challenge, this Yearbook showcases the role of borders and cross-border interaction in the context of global challenges and transformation processes.

Crossing disciplinary borders demands new conceptualizations, theories, and methodologies that may help researchers to think about old problems (such as exclusion, inequality and power asymmetry) from novel perspectives. By engaging with borders as sites of encounter, reconciliation, and change, as well as sites of cultural dialogue and social development, we invite interdisciplinary thinking into realms of possibility. While the dividing nature of borders is a frequent fact of life in everyday situations, border research can also unveil connections, interactions, and overlapping social spaces across borders.

This edition of CESCI’s Yearbook therefore provides a number of cross-cutting perspectives on processes of border-making and on border politics from diverse angles. It is basically divided into three sections that deal with the following: 1) theorizing borders and border-making, 2) cross-cultural perspectives on cross-border interaction, and 3) conceptualizations of European Union policies as they relate to different forms of territorial relations. The collection is perhaps more theoretical and philosophical than past Yearbooks but we are confident that the different issues covered here will be of general interest to followers of border studies.

While the various essays and other contributions included in the 2017 Yearbook provide a variety of perspectives from different parts of Europe, as well as an excellent article on border politics and migration in Southern Africa, one common thread throughout is the relationship between border-making and globalization. Globalization has in fact had an immense impact on border studies. One of the most important of these impacts has been a shift from a dominant concern with formal state frontiers and ethno-cultural areas to the investigation of border-making in diverse socio-spatial contexts and geographical scales. This has also encouraged a shift to multifacted processes of border-making and their social consequences.

Globalization has also contributed to the breaking down of separations between discrete disciplinary approaches within border research. As a research field, border studies now encompass a wide range of disciplines besides social geography: political science, sociology, anthropology, history, international law as well as the humanities – notably art, media studies and philosophy. Going beyond exclusively state-centred and territorial paradigms, the present state of debate emphasizes that borders are not given, they emerge through socio-political and cultural border-making or bordering that takes place within society. Engagement with globalization has induced border studies research to take seriously the interrelatedness of all previous thinking about the investigation and interpreting of borders. In the contemporary practice of border studies, literature and art tell us as much about borders, borderlands and border crossings as do ethnographic or historical investigations. It is precisely the disruptive force of globalization – whether real or imagined – that drives home the main argument of border studies: that borders are in a constant process of confirmation, contestation, transformation and re-confirmation.

James W. Scott