Cross-Border Review

Yearbook 2019

Editor-in-Chief:

Dr. hab. James W. Scott

Professor of Regional and Border Studies

University of Eastern Finland

Editor-in-Chief

Dr. hab. James Scott, Professor of Regional and Border Studies University of Eastern Finland, Karelian Institute

Editorial board

Martin Barthel, University of Eastern Finland, Karelian Institute

Prof. Henk van Houtum, Department of Geography, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Dr. hab. Jarosław Jańczak, Lehrstuhl Europa-Studien, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Germany

Dr. Jussi Laine, University of Eastern Finland, Karelian Institute

Prof. Iwona Sagan, Department of Economic Geography, University of Gdańsk, Poland

Dr. Christophe Sohn, Luxembourg Institute for Socio-Economic Research, Luxembourg

Dr. hab. Tamás Tóth, Szent István University, Gödöllő, Hungary

Authors

Prof. Goran Bandov, Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy, Zagreb, Croatia, bandov@diplomacija.hr

Dr. Anna Casaglia, University of Trento, Italy, anna.cagalia@unitn.it

Dr. Bruno Antonio Erdeljac Cunha, Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy, Zagreb, Croatia, cunha@diplomacija.hr

Dr. Alicia Español, University of Seville, Spain, aliciaespanol@gmail.com

Dr. Teodor Gyelnik, CESCI Budapest, Hungary, teodor.gyelnik@cesci-et.eu

Dr. Krisztina Keresztély, Comparative Research Network, Berlin, Germany,

kerkrisz@gmx.com

Prof. Victor Konrad, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, victor.konrad@carleton.ca

Dr. Jussi Laine, Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland,

Jussi.laine@uef.fi

Gyula Ocskay, CESCI Budapest, Hungary, gyula.osckay@cesci-net.eu

Dr. Alevtyna Sanchenko, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev,

alla.sanchenko@gmail.com

Dr. hab. James W. Scott, Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, james.scott@uef.fi

Dr. Michal Šindelář, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, 426760@mail.muni.cz

Hayley Trowbridge, People’s Voice Media, Salford, UK,

hayley@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

CONTENTS

JAMES W SCOTT: Developing Research Perspectives on Borders, Cultural Dialogue and Cooperation

Articles

ANNA CASAGLIA: On Border-Making and Politics of Borders

JUSSI LAINE: Observations on Borders as Social Fact and Ethical Problems

VICTOR KONRAD: Relating Borders to ‘Belongingness’: Some Observational Evidence

JAMES W SCOTT: Urban Borders, Urban Neighbourhoods and a Cognitive Approach

ALICIA ESPAÑOL: Everyday Psychological Boundaries: Evidence from the Ceuta-Tétuan Borderland

KRISZTINA KERESZTÉLY, HAYLEY TROWBRIDGE: Voicitys: Living with Diversity in European Cities

GORAN BANDOV, BRUNO ANTONIO ERDELJAC CUNHA: Portuguese-Africans: in Practice a True ethnicity

Research Notes

ALLA SANCHENKO: Current Institutional and Legal Framework for Ukraine’s Participation in Cross-border Cooperation

MICHAL ŠINDELÁŘ: The Pomoraví/Weinviertel/Zahorie Euroregion

Book reviews

Andreas Faludi (2018): The Poverty of Territorialism: a Neo-Medieval View of Europe and European Planning, Edward Elgar Publishing. (TEODOR GYELNIK)

Eduardo Medeiros (ed) (2018): European Territorial Cooperation. Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Process and Impacts of Cross-Border and Transnational Cooperation in Europe. Springer. Cham. (GYULA OCSKAY)

Developing Research Perspectives on Borders, Cultural Dialogue and Cooperation

Editorial note

James W. Scott

The 2019 edition of the CESCI yearbook diverges from previous formats in that it brings together different research and policy perspectives regarding the role of socio-political and cultural borders within processes of social interaction. The reason for inviting these specific contributions is due to their individual contributions to the multifocal and multilocal investigation of borders.

Border studies have indeed progressed remarkably in the past three decades and it is becoming clear that it is not only borders themselves but also complex processes of border-making at various levels that condition social reality. They also indicate a need to link current scholarly work with new perspectives on borders in order to promote a greater sense of interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinary collaboration. As the contributions to this Yearbook indicate, the centrality of state-oriented and ethno-territorial pespectives is giving way to a multiperspectival focus on social relations. In the essays that follow, different examples will be elaborated that indicate how borders are produced as interactions between social agents, institutions and structuring environments.

Through the investigation of borders, we realize that there can be no hegemonic dominance of any specific social theory, whether critical or not, in the understanding of space and its social significance. And whereas space is abstract and absolute, we now understand that it is borders that make space intelligible, for example as everyday social places. Borders not only have different meanings for different actors but are also manifestations of power relations in society at different scales. By the same token, the present state of border studies indicates that processes associated with globalization have deeply changed the power of borders, modifying the dialectical relation between their fixed institutional nature and constantly changing, fluid processes of bordering within and between societies.

What is the main message here? This edition of the Yearbook focuses on borders as creators and markers of socio-spatial difference. Borders are not inherently problematic, they can also be a resource for dialogue, cooperation and development. Moreover, we can state that it is not the boundary itself that creates dilemmas, it is rather the potential for exclusion that is problematic and, sadly, the exlcusionary reflex is embedded deep in society. This reflex is driven by fear, opportunism, a lack of knowledge about the world and a desire to maintain existing hierarchies of privilege and power. Only gradual openings of horizons, greater knowledge of others that reduces ‘otherness’ and the expansion of borders to include, among others, new ideas, new perspectives, new people and their histories will allow us to de-securitize our minds and everyday lives.

Indeed, our urgent need of multifocal and multilocal border research is highighted by recent events around the globe and the interlinked nature of neo-nationalism, populism, xenophobia and border violence. These events underscore the scientific and wider social relevance of border studies and the fact that many „old” questions regarding the how and why of border-making remain unanswered. As this Yearbook indicates, more intensive dialogue between the humanities and social sciences appears essential. At the same time, and as the various contributions indicate, border studies is not limited to abstract conceptualisations of social reality; narratives, representations and all forms of cultural expression potentially tell important stories about borders and their impacts. Borders also invite down-to-earth debate regarding ethical questions associated with political, social and cultural borders. One important target of these deliberations are ‘bordering dilemmas’ within the context of globalization – a situation in which exclusion is often seen as result of creating or maintaining inclusive and open societies.

The 2019 yearbook explores how border studies can reflect social science research ‘that matters’ in terms of social development and intercultural dialogue. The individual contributions represent a rather wide variety of potentital scientifc as well as policy-oriented perspectives on borders that might be the subject of futher development. Crossing disciplinary borders demands new conceptualizations, theories, and methodologies that may help researchers to think about problems such as exclusion and political xenophobia from novel perspectives. One the other hand, an engagement with borders as sites of encounter, reconciliation, and change, as well as cultural dialogue and social development, could invite interdisciplinary thinking into realms of possibility. While the dividing nature of borders is often emphasized in order to obscure the reality of common pasts, as is the case in Europe (e.g. the Mediterranean region, East vs. West) and in the Americas (as exemplified by border communities), interdisciplinary approaches can unveil connections, interactions, and overlapping social spaces across borders.

Overview of the volume

Anna Casaglia begins discussion on research perspectives by focusing on the politics of borders which she interprets as products of specific relations between power and space. She proposes an understanding of borders as technologies for the articulation of various controls and the management of flows that are always in a tension between inclusion and exclusion. That this conceptualisation of border significance and impact has inevitable ethical consequences is confirmed by Jussi Laine, who in his chapter reflects on ethical dilemmas of border-making. Laine pursues the question of how to balance calls for freedom of movement and migration against the right to freedom of association and the boundedness of community. Assigning a relative weight to either of these border-related freedoms is problematic as it begs the questions as to whose rights – or wrongs – matter the most. It is this conundrum Laine seeks to unravel by addressing arguments used to support these two apparently mutually exclusive ways of thinking.

Discussion continues with Victor Konrad’s exploration of borders and ‘belongingness’ which offers a theoretical framework based on the concept of mereotopology, presented here as a nexus between borders, territory, and belonging. Evidence regarding components and qualities of belongingness as they relate to borders is provided from different regional settings. Another conceptual approach with similar features is elaborated by James Scott who relates borders and border-making to cognition and sense-making. These examples he develops in his essay derive from changing urban neighbourhood contexts and the everyday geographies they involve. Alicia Español also investigates the cognitive and psychological nature of border-making based on a case study of the Spanish-Moroccan borderland and the cities of Ceuta and Tétuan. Her aim is to understand the ways in which people experience and live with border-crossings in everyday life and, in this way, understand the impact of bordering practices in situations of asymmetry of power, demarcation, and differentiation.

With the essay of Krisztina Keresztély and Hayley Trowbridge our focus shifts to issues of social borders and diversity. The authors describe at some length and detail the experiences of the VOICITYS project which investigated relationships between urban diversity and social dialogue. The project’s concrete aims were to improve social integration through breaking down barriers to conviviality in European neighbourhoods characterized by ethnic and cultural diversity. The project targeted: 1) sustainable communication and integration between different social groups and 2) deepening dialogue between policy-makers, stakeholders and citizens as a means of promoting more efficient diversity management. Questions of diversity and social borders are then elaborated in a more specific case by Goran Brandov and Bruno Cunha who present a study of Portuguese Africans. As the authors argue, Portuguese Africans represent an ethnicity in its own right that has achieved considerable social and cultural expression and a degree of ‘politicization’ though embryonic forms of collective action. Brandov and Cunha pursue questions regarding the relative positionalities of old and new Portuguese Africans vis-à-vis ‘mainstream’ society. Their hybrid identity of double cultural reference has kept them at the margins but there are signs of change are emerging.

The Yearbook closes with research notes and book reviews that relate more directly to the phenomenon of cross-border cooperation. Alle Sanchenko reviews the current status of formal frameworks conditioning Ukraine’s participation in cross-border Cooperation. At first glance, much progress has been made in drafting appropriate legislation. However, she also points to the serious multilevel coordination challenges that remain. Sanchenko suggests that the EGTC (European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation) instrument could serve as an important tool for improving cooperation providing appropriate legal, normative and regulatory acts are prepared and expertise followed. In his study of the Pomoraví Euroregion, Michal Šindelář concludes that despite structure cooperation mechanisms, obstacles to deeper cross-border cooperation prevail. In addition to the language barrier, there is a shortage of key actors able to generate cooperation momentum and stimulate communication. Moreover, few benefits accrue to member municipalities of the Euroregion. Interest remains low despite funding opportunities, and there is no development strategy. This begs a question of Euroregion relevance other city networks show that cross-border cooperation is possible without such an institution.

Finally, Teodor Gyelnik and Gyula Ocskay review two recent books that investigate different aspects of cross-border cooperation. European Territorial Cooperation. Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Process and Impacts of Cross-Border and Transnational Cooperation in Europe, edited by Eduardo Medeiros. The book offers a highly detailed and varied assessment of 30 years of experience with European Territorial Cooperation. The contributors are recognised experts, representing policy-oriented and academic research in the study of Territorial Cooperation and borders more generally. The second book, The Poverty of Territorialism. A Neo-Medieval View of Europe and European Planning was authored by the recognised planning scholar Andreas Faludi. In this book Faludi advocates a post-national perspective: planning has progressed in ways that lay bare the limitations of state-centred notions of democracy and territoriality. According to Faludi, a new border transcending political paradigm is needed in order to develop planning in terms of a global governance approach to society and space.

On Border-Making and Politics of Borders

Anna Casaglia

Introduction

The politics of borders entails their political constitution and their effect on politics and relations between and across states and among people. In discussing a research agenda for this topic, it is useful to think of the border as a political device – a mutable, adaptable and malleable technology that is used to pursue specific goals. In the last fifteen years a remarkable amount of literature has pointed to borders’ non-linearity, their mobility and the ways in which they increasingly pervade the everyday aspects of people’s lives (Balibar 2009; Vaughan-Williams 2009; Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015). It has become widely accepted that ‘borders are a complicated social phenomenon related to the fundamental basis of the organisation of society and human psychology’ (Kolossov 2005: 606).

The conceptualization of the border has evolved, with the development of an increasingly critical understanding of its nature and relationship with territory, states, scales and politics. The nation state is still recognized as an important political reference with regard to power configuration. Questions of power and its spatial deployment are inextricably linked to bordering processes, and they are therefore essential to understand their continuous reconfiguration, functions and effects, and the continuing importance of the state. As Jones notes, ‘the global scale of border violence demonstrates that the state remains the dominant container of political power in the world’ (Jones 2016: 67). At the same time political dynamics, power relations and struggles are no longer contained only by national borders, given the impact of processes of denationalization (Sassen 2006) and rescaling, and the role the transnational fluxes of global capital play.

Borders scholarship now widely accepts that ‘instead of being mere neutral lines, borders are important institutions and ideological symbols that are used by various bodies and institutions in the perpetual process of reproducing territorial power’ (Paasi 2009: 213). They are markers of different and various layers of power relations in which tensions between border reinforcement and border opening (Mezzadra and Nielsen 2013) continuously occur. An important task of border research is to analyse the way in which borders simultaneously perform several functions of demarcation and territorialization (Balibar 2002), and how they do this.

Following these premises, this chapter adds to the existing border research agenda by focusing, from the perspective of critical geography, on borders as the result of specific relations between power and space. It proposes an understanding of borders as technologies for the articulation of various controls and managements of flows which are always in a tension between inclusion and exclusion. Attention is also paid to borders as sites of struggle in different localities and involving various actors. Moreover, the article focuses on the increasing embodiment of borders as devices of control by those who cross or attempt to cross them, considering the body as ‘the most elementary space’ (Balibar and De Genova 2018: 752) where border technology applies.

Overall, I will present a critical overview of how politics articulates at and connects with borders, and of the actors involved in processes occurring along the different power relations taking shape at and around them. Within this framework it proposes a border studies agenda that is oriented towards the understanding of borders as technologies for the reproduction of inequality.

The article opens with a critical review of the literature on border politics, highlighting the existence of a substantial body of theoretical reasoning on the topic that is not always balanced by empirical work and research. Keeping in mind that ‘it is the management of the border regime which is of greater importance today’ (Newman 2003: 18), it continues with an examination of bordering processes and their meaning in relation to territorial power configurations, especially with regards to asymmetries shaping different and uneven accesses to mobility. It then focuses on present borders and bordering processes as the result of specific relations between power and space, pointing to their role and functions. The chapter thus proposes an intersectional approach to border research to understand borders as technologies for the reproduction of inequalities and as sites of struggle. Throughout the discussion, and following these premises, it presents possible empirical research directions and suggestions for developing interdisciplinary border studies.

The state of the art in the literature on border politics

Border studies literature increasingly emphasizes an understanding of borders as processes rather than static and fixed lines dividing territories. Since John Agnew’s critique’s seminal ‘territorial trap’ contribution concerning the geopolitical imaginary (Agnew 2003), borders’ definition as lines defining the sovereign power of territorial nation states and the concept of the territorial state itself have come under scrutiny.

An avoidance of taking the shape and spatial configuration of the state and borders for granted is not to deny their importance for understanding the contemporary world. Nor is it to underestimate processes of re-territorialization. Whatever the nature of the relationship, ‘the marriage between territories and borders is impregnated with societal power, so that it continues to be crucial to reflect on how these elements come together in the practice of territoriality’ (Paasi 2009: 216). Instead of being considered a feature of the modern world’s political and territorial configuration, the state and its borders need to be understood as the result of specific historical contingencies (ibid.). This change in the approach to borders affords an opportunity to examine them not merely as objects of study but as sites of investigation (Parker et al. 2009), and to recognize their fluid and changing nature, increasing sophistication and the complexity of bordering processes (Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015; Casaglia and Laine 2017), which cause them to operate what has been defined as differential inclusion (De Genova 2002; Andrijasevic 2009; Mezzadra and Neilson 2013).

This line of inquiry has afforded the scope for an interdisciplinary endeavour in border studies to grasp the level of people’s everyday experience: the way in which the border is recognized as everywhere (Balibar 2002), affecting and conditioning people’s lives in sites and situations that may be far removed from the boundary dividing two nation states. This implies an overcoming of the idea of the border as a ‘line in the sand’ (Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012) and, instead, an examination of the ways in which the ‘borderwork’ (Mumford 2012) operates in people’s daily experience. The border is better described as a discursive landscape composed by a normative dimension and everyday experience.

In his theoretical framing of borders and power, published in 2003, David Newman points to the fact that a research agenda for border studies needs to introduce ‘the basic question of “borders for whom?”. Who benefits and who loses from enclosing, or being enclosed by, others. This, in turn, raises questions of power relations’ (Newman 2003: 22). Over the years the literature has increasingly focused on questions of power in relation to borders and bordering processes, and several books focusing specifically on border politics have been published (Vaughan-Williams 2009; Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015; Squire 2015; Staudt 2018; Longo 2018). The scope and aims of this theoretical and analytical endeavour are diverse and heterogeneous, but it is interesting to note the general effort to understand and give sense to the growing importance of bordering processes in contemporary societies and to the intrinsically political nature of border management policies, regulations, measures and regimes. More generally, the main questions motivating the prolific theoretical production on border politics concern ‘how borders work and for whom’: how do they function, how do they affect people’s lives, what do they enable and who benefits from them?

The work of Vaughan-Williams, in particular, lays the foundations of an understanding of the role borders play in political life (Vaughan-Williams 2009: 4). He specifically seeks to plug this gap in much of the literature on border studies, not only from the discipline of International Relations but also from those of anthropology, political geography and sociology. The invitation is to understand the current framing of the concept of the border of the state, and how this defines the interrelationship of violence, territory and power. To better understand where borders are and what they do in contemporary geopolitical imaginaries entails a highlighting of everyday aspects of bordering and their biopolitical character. In his final remarks Vaughan-Williams invites border scholars to pursue an ‘incessant identification and perpetual deconstruction of the multiple practices of inside/outside in order to interrogate what is enabled by, and who benefits from, diverse border politics’ (ibid., 170). With a different aim the ‘borderities’ neologism Amilhat Szary and Giraut (2015) propose applies the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to territorial limits. This proves useful when we seek to overcome the rigidity of the relationship of territory, state and borders, helping to reveal the power relations which originate at the border and that are articulated around it. Following this perspective, borders appear to be the result of specific relationships between power and space, and bordering becomes the process in which these relationships may be observed. Borderities are themselves technologies of power as dispositifs of control that can filter, in an increasingly sophisticated way, different kinds of goods and people.

Other contributions draw from case study research to inquire into the diversity and ambiguous positioning of various border-related actors and politics. Squire (2015) critically engages with humanitarianism, an increasingly important feature of border management, as a struggle over the human, by proposing a ‘more-than-human’ understanding of border dynamics, involving material and social forces. This allows her to underline how ‘bordering practices involve exclusionary processes of subject formation’ (ibid., 22) and, referring to Fassin, to reason on border politics as ‘politics of life’. Technology and the evolution of border security are another essential element of the politics of borders, and Longo’s book gives a rich account of the transformation of borders, borderlands and related issues of sovereignty which becomes not only territorial but also spatial, because security practices are performed in different locations that are often beyond state territory. An examination of technologies of security and biometrics reveals that this understanding of border politics also points to the emergence of the ‘pixelated subject’ (ibid., 224), substituting the individual in the relationship with the state and questioning the meaning of citizenship.

The lesson of these recent contributions is that we need to address the transformations occurring at borders in a sophisticated way, not merely to revise the concept of state border but rather to understand and account for new bordering practices that, through the advancement of technology and the diffusion of control and security, affect people’s everyday lives, the very meaning of ‘human’ and ‘life’, and the nexus between territory, violence and power. The following sections elaborate on these considerations and show the potential of an intersectional approach applied to border studies, while illustrating some of the possible, and urgent, research developments arising when borders are examined as sites of investigation for the understanding of global inequality and the struggle for rights and justice.

Bordering Processes and Configurations of Power

If we understand borders as the result of a specific and inevitably evolving relationship between space and power, a border research agenda must apply a constant monitoring of the political meaning of border configuration and bordering processes.

Indeed, examining border politics also requires us to consider the actors involved in bordering processes, whether they are producers or subjects of control, allowed or forbidden to cross, or reaffirm or question the border. Any border management and border regime intended to regulate the flows of goods and people across borders implies the application of rules and regulations that affect people’s lives, their mobility, their relationship with space and their acceptance of certain degrees of control over their data and bodies.

This understanding of borders as devices for control complicates and enriches their connection with issues of power related to space. Pointing to borders’ filtering ability also leads us to their most interesting paradox: the generalized acceptance of the very different relationships people can have with them. The uneven effects of bordering practices on people are scarcely questioned and mostly taken for granted. However, there is nothing natural or given about the unequal opportunities of mobility related to the possession of a certain passport. If we agree on the imagined nature of the nation state, we must also reflect on the artificial validity of its managing institutions, such as the passport and visa systems. The mechanism of global mobility is unbalanced, unsustainable, classist and racist.

The differential inclusion and related exclusion which the different border regimes at work constitute creates a hierarchy of mobility patterns. This results in forms of inequality in terms of possibility of movement and access to space which directly connect with different and uneven positioning in terms of citizenship and human rights, freedom, dignity, health, access to resources and in many cases the basic protection of life itself. Borders’ asymmetry reflects the economic inequalities of the global world, in which access to Western countries is controlled and filtered to secure privilege and maintain the asymmetry itself. These geographies of uneven development and power, which must be at the core of any geographical knowledge (Harvey 2001: 226), are not as clear and linear as they used to be. Instead, ‘space and power are related today in asymmetric and rather unpredictable ways on all spatial scales’ (Paasi 2009: 216). These global power relations have been defined as neo-colonial, because they reproduce the classic colonial conditions of oppression, albeit in a renewed configuration of sovereignty that does not imply traditional imperialistic features and sovereign territorial control. Nevertheless, the new colonial power is a direct consequence of former colonial relations, because it relies on the result of the land exploitation, political instability and economic dependence which characterize the former colonies of the European empires.

A new and important feature of such power relations concerns the control of people’s mobility as a means of maintaining and reproducing inequality. Indeed, border studies scholarship in the last decade has dedicated much research to migration, a direct consequence of the importance this phenomenon has assumed all over the world and of the implication of changing border regimes. In such theorizations the violence of borders and the injustice of their management are core elements for reflection. The ‘global migration crisis’, on which the political and public opinion of Western countries has focused since 2013, has made the world acknowledge the ‘hundreds dying in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean; thousands of refugees climbing over newly erected barbed-wired fences in Hungary; thousands more living in camps in Calais, France …; and ships full of Rohingya refugees being pushed back out to sea in Southeast Asia’ (Jones 2016: 3).

Displacement – due to war, famine, poverty, the environmental consequences of global warming, discrimination, political persecution and other impulses – has been growing in various parts of the Global South and is creating a situation of crisis which northern and western countries are unable to face properly. The direct consequences thus far of the increasing number of people on the move searching for better lives have been the tightening of borders’ surveillance and visa regimes – already in place as a reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks – the creation of camps or other forms of containment for migrants and refugees, the institution or revision of policies to deal with asylum seeking, and the increasing externalisation of border management and migration control to prevent people from leaving their countries of origin or transit.

The increasing sophistication of border regimes in practices, technologies and policies results in a level of personalization of filtering that implies the use of biometrics and other forms of control. In many cases this directly involves the bodies of people on the move. Several scholars have analysed how the increasing penetration of security policies and practices in everyday life has reached the level of the individual and allowed various forms of profiling (Longo 2018) and the embodiment of borders (Salter 2006; Amoore 2006). Technological advances in security make bodies not simply the direct target of control – for example, through biometric recognition systems – but also devices of control diffusion (Popescu 2015). These technological advances increasingly involve the control and disciplining of bodies by both collecting and storing biometric data and individualizing procedures related to the issuing of visas and allowing border crossings.

In this respect a second paradox related to border control concerns the amount of data people are willing to give in exchange for easier border crossings. The typical example concerns the frequent flyer or ‘trusted traveller’, whose biometrics and personal data are registered at airports and other ports of entry to make the crossing procedure quicker and smoother. The price to pay for efficiency is the transfer of personal information including fingerprints and bank account and credit card numbers in a society where personal data is increasingly commercially valuable. Besides, money is actually paid to join special programmes for expedited customs processing, which exposes the fact that the ability to afford certain travel standards in addition to a powerful passport buys an easy border crossing experience.

Borders as technologies for the production and reproduction of inequalities

The same trusted traveller and easy inclusion reasoning can be projected onto exclusionary uses of control, especially in relation to visa regimes. In addition to the high costs of visa procedures, under the European Union’s Visa Information System (VIS), for example, certain ‘third country nationals’ are subject to security practices which imply a selective sorting of people, depending on their nationality. The list of countries whose nationals require a visa reveals a bias against poor and politically and financially unstable countries, and war-torn areas, as Bigo and Guild (2005: 236) point out. VIS not only clearly discriminates against different nationalities, it also considers the potential ‘risk’ of individual applicants both in relation to their criminal records and their socio-economic situation. Applicants’ economic situation – evidenced by bank statements, property certificates and employment status in accordance with the European Commission Handbook for processing Visa applications – is one of the elements considered in assessing the risk of irregular immigration they represent (Glouftsios 2017: 193).

The combination of passport nationality and economic condition is the first and easiest hint we have of the way in which the border crossing experience depends strictly on both ascribed and acquired characteristics, and is ultimately an intrinsically subjective experience. At a formal level these two elements are of great importance, and this begins to reveal the intersectional character of the border experience.

However, the combination of these two characteristics is not linear, because their weight and balance vary in the extent to which they afford the possibility of moving easily. In most cases money is indeed a powerful element in determining a person’s possibility of crossing borders regardless of nationality, and recent investigations into the selling of citizenship to foreign investors[1] prove how far this mechanism can extend. This means the mobility inequality and power relations borders reinforce are not strictly related to nationality but rather depend on a combination of privileges/disadvantages which varies for each individual. An intersectional approach thus proves useful in examining the global system of privilege and oppression in relation to border management, because it allows us to underline the interwoven nature of different oppressive categories rather than merely summarizing their effects (Crenshaw, 1989) and to recognize the different weights they exercise in different situations, cases and moments.

1http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20190118_04112699, last accessed 6 March 2019).

The literature on migration and border management highlights how different bodies undergo different experiences with borders and their violence, often indicating how the border control and asylum systems reassert heteronormative power over women and LGBTQI+ people, affecting their freedom to move to or stay in their intended destination country and in what circumstances (Ferreira 2018). As Fassin (2001) has brilliantly conceptualized, in the ‘biopolitics of otherness’ migrants’ bodies are the sites where the violence of border management is inscribed and, for the same reason, where resistance can express itself. Andrijasevic attempts to bridge feminist and queer studies with critical border theory by examining the geographies of exclusion which the regulation of sexualities produces in relation to the sex trafficking, asylum and economic migration (Andrijasevic 2009) which produce nuanced and very diverse experiences of mobility.

Stressing this issue of differentiation and variability of the migratory experience further, we can point to the fact that even the legal statuses of people on the move are not fixed, which ‘suggests that immigration regulations do not operate as mechanisms of straightforward inclusion or exclusion, but rather produce differentiation and stratification of legal statuses and subjectivities’ (ibid., 398). The transformation of borders and citizenship results in the overcoming of the simple dichotomy of inclusion/exclusion, which no longer accounts for the variety of different positioning with respect to individual characteristics and the possibility of the differential inclusion (De Genova 2002) which creates figures of subjugated ‘illegal’ migrants always susceptible to deportation (De Genova 2013). Drawing on the concept of differential inclusion, we can also reason in terms of differential mobility patterns on the basis of nationality, class, race, gender and sexuality to more accurately describe the current reality of unequal global mobility (Luibhéid 2002). These forms of inequality and oppression related to border management have a strong connection with issues of violence of and at the border, with processes of victimization – and subsequent abjectification – of the figure of the migrant, and with the recognition of agency in relation to the representation of migrants, and more specifically of certain categories of migrant such as migrant women or LGBTQI+ people. As Butler (2004: 140) suggests, it is crucial to critically analyse representations as one of the main domains in which the practices of humanization and dehumanization are recurrently produced. Subjects deprived of the possibility of self-representation are more likely to be excluded from the privilege of humanization in representations made by others (ibid.).

The intersectional approach in the analysis of borders and bordering processes can be powerful and effective, because ‘[intersectionality] offers an important potential tool for feminist geography to understand the intimate connections between the production of space and systematic productions of power’ (Valentine 2007: 19). We can see a reciprocal positive influence between border studies and the intersectional approach, because this encounter generates awareness of the co-implication of space and identity, and the significance of space in processes of subject formation. It is important to develop geographical thinking about the relationship of multiple oppressive categories and underline the high contingency and situated accomplishment of identity construction.

The Actors: Agency, Conflict, Violence and Struggle

The present configuration of border management the previous sections outline creates specific personal and political positioning with regard to people and their relationship with borders. Saskia Sassen suggests that the general opinion and policies concerning immigration ‘place exclusive responsibility for the immigration process on the individual and hence make the individual the site for the exercise of the state authority’ (Sassen 1999: 17). This approach focuses on individuals’ responsibility instead of pointing to the structures of economic, geopolitical, and neo-colonial power relations as primary causes of people’s mobility.

Similarly, the Western migration narrative operates a systematic reductionism by categorizing migrants as either victims or criminals, and therefore as people who must either be saved or rejected. This process reinforces the association between migrants and danger, and the idea that no matter the category to which they belong they are unable to care for themselves and either deserve our help or are subject to deportation. The problem of defining migrants by degrees of vulnerability and considering them as victims (of the conflicts they escape, trafficking and the violence they encounter on the journey) results in their representation as deprived of their agency, especially in relation to the choices they make in their migration project, during the journey and in all its negotiations.

Actors are political subjects who participate in the definition of the frontier and giving it meaning (Brambilla). The border is a space of conflict that entails both violence and creativity, and where different requirements, such as the need for mobility and the imperative of control, come into conflict.

The border’s political essence and its nature as the result of power relations taking shape spatially make it a site of contestation. Strategies and tactics of resistance and resilience can create the possibility of a re-politicization of borders and the recognition of migrant subjects as political subjectivities. As Brambilla (2017) observes, the concept of the biopolitics of otherness which Fassin develops also allows us to see forms of resistance and opposition to the violence of the border. Besides the violent aspects of border management, which must be underlined, ‘borders are widely recognized in fact to be spaces of encounter, interaction and exchange, where despite official prohibitions, officious policing and sanctimonious exaltations of the state’s sovereign prerogative to exclude everything is possible’ (De Genova 2013: 1185).

Research should focus on the agency of people in the shaping of the border as a conflictual and highly political space by critically examining the tactics migrants adopt, humanitarian interventions as possibilities for the re-politicization of borders and the representation of migrants as subaltern subjects. The complexity of bordering processes implies that the term ‘border’ no longer refers simply to the physical boundary itself but increasingly also encompasses its various representations (Sidaway 2011; Brambilla 2015; Casaglia and Laine 2017) and the representations of actors involved in bordering processes and practices.

Concerning representation, attention also needs to be paid to mapping and the creative use of participative and critical counter-mapping. A re-discussion of the representation of world and contemporary border-related phenomena would be useful in affecting people’s imaginaries connected with mobility, especially considering the representation of borders as ‘lines in the sand’ that are taken for granted. As several authors show (Mogel and Bhagat 2007; Bueno Lacy and van Houtum 2015; van Houtum and Bueno Lacy 2019), the cartographic representation of the border is a work of art that contributes to maintaining and reinforcing the nineteenth-century idea of the nation state and supports an idea of territory as a political technology (Elden 2010). Every map of the world shows a grid defining different sovereignty operating on territory, and such a visualization greatly influences our daily perception, imagination and representation of reality.

Accordingly, the cartographic representation of people’s cross-border mobility is permeated with this static and traditional vision of territory as compartmentalized into nation states. Whether they show migration to Europe (as well as to the US or other Western countries) or other forms of mobility across borders, maps generally display unidirectional fluxes crossing a fixed line, whose established rules trespassing beyond implies an act of transgression. ‘The use of static border-geometry in the case of mapping of migration is not an anomaly but rather the dominant way of representation in the media, education, politics and even the academy’ (van Houtum 2012). The challenge here, and following Butler (1999), is to make knowledge more accessible without losing its complexity – without simplifying it by flattening its multi-layered richness into a two-dimensional representation. This effort should accompany both research and the dissemination of results, because it may be a powerful way to contrast the limiting categorization of forms of mobility and actors by demonstrating the phenomenon’s complexity and richness.

Questioning the political and rhetorical use of the ‘crisis’ metaphor may help to detect the emergency and exceptionality which have become ways of hiding the routinized use of violence to reproduce and validate injustice and asymmetry.

Conclusions

This contribution opened with the recognition that the importance for a border research concerned with its political aspects lies in questioning contemporary borders’ function and meaning, given that they are and have always been the result of contingency. We underlined the importance of highlighting the power relations which constitute and are shaped by border and mobility management, and making sense of power configurations with regard to bordering processes to understand borders as markers and makers of global inequality.

A survey of the recent literature devoted to border politics revealed an increasing interest in migration processes, whether through an analysis of border technologies, governmentality, institutional and non-institutional actorness, interrelationships amidst violence, territory or power. We believe that this effort should further move in the direction of highlighting and understanding borders as technologies that filter and differentiate in a way which reproduces asymmetries at different levels.

With this main aim the chapter focused on the intersectional character of these asymmetries and on the diverse ways in which borders affect people’s lives and bodies, while underlining their inherent violence. Moreover, pointing to the violence of borders also allowed a recognition of the forms of resistance or resilience by those challenging the control of mobility regime, non-institutional actors providing assistance to undocumented migrants and anyone attempting to produce and circulate the counter-narratives which operate on a daily basis. All such efforts seek to create new forms of life opposing the differential distribution of precarious conditions (Butler 2012) and processes of differential inclusion.

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Observations on Borders as Social Fact and Ethical Problems

Jussi Laine

Introduction

Cross-border cooperation and intercultural dialogue are inherently issues of transcending restrictive boundaries between states, societies, systems and people. Moreover, the European Union has been an active architect of a ‘post-Westphalian’ agenda to scale-down national particularisms and bordered thinking and has achieved some notable successes. Yet, skimming the research state of the art on, for example, cross-border cooperation (see Medeiros 2018), we find that border-transcending is by no means a straightforward process. Bordered thinking and even a re-bordering of European Union states maintain a hold on national policies at the same time that the INTERREG Community Initiative celebrates its 30th anniversary. As we ponder the apparent contradiction of the simultaneous elimination and reconstruction of borders, it is necessary to review ethical considerations than borders and border-making generate.

In fact, an ethical review of sorts is already underway within contemporary border studies. While the field has been engaged with questions of justifiable state borders and the ethical concerns related to their mere existence already for long, the aim here is broaden the discussion by bringing in a more holistic, and hopefully more balanced, perspective on the various, often competing, viewpoints. Paying attention to ethics is of importance not only for the sake of borders per se, but also because it is central to the evaluation of major changes to the global social, political, and economic order. What follows is not meant as the last word the subject of ethics of the borders, but it stands to explore the links between the two concepts and thus provide some sort of a way station on the road towards a richer debate which would, without pre-judgment, seek to bring clarity in the complexity of the topic.

Borders remain vitally important features of our political world. They continue to make divide the surface of the earth into blocks that are easier to manage and mark areas of governance and sovereignty. They amplify the innate human desire to demarcate physical space and protect not just one’s property, but also the sense of freedom. Indeed, most people do not question that countries should have clear borders and the right to control them (cf. Jones 2019). In this sense, national borders have been assigned with a high moral value. However, they undeniably carry considerable moral weight also in determining ethical responsibilities toward migrants, particularly displaced persons. Borders do not only divide physical space, but they used increasingly to sort people according to the degree of their belonging to certain ethnic, cultural, political, and social groups. Who gets to decide the criteria based on which such sorting is made, is the question we need to address, as it is here where the ethical question become the most blatant.

Ethics of and across borders have been extensively theorised, yet it has proven difficult to arrive into any clear consensus about the outcome. In more public debate on the matter, rational assessments and analyses tend to get easily overshadowed by more emotional and passionate standpoints. Different stands are commonly pitted against one another in a simplistic manner (such as in whether border should be open or closed), whereby the complexity of not just border as a construction, yet also of the various processes that transcend it get oversimplified and narrowed down. What has made the debate even more perplexing is that the various, related but different, questions tend to get easily fused into one. While I cannot claim to have the answers to these questions, my aim here is bring clarity and structure to the debate and advocate for a more holistic perspective for exploring the links between borders and ethics. By ethics here I mean the underlying system of moral values and the set of moral principles of conduct governing an individual or a group. These principles affect how people make decisions, lead their lives, and define what is good for them and the society they live in.

What I wish to underline here is that the questions about the ethics of borders is not the same as the question about the ethics of border policies, regimes, or of more informal bordering processes. We need to be clearer in our argumentation about the link between the persisting importance of territorial borders and the calls for increased border enforcement and cutting off asylum. These do not instinctively imply one another, but the underlying reasoning behind the mere existence of borders is quite different from the reasoning used to support either their openness or closure. In short, the ethical inquiry into whether or not the world should be divided by territorial borders in the first place is grounded in different ontological premise than the moral reasoning behind the arguments for and against open borders; i.e. the ethics of border control and enforcement.

The question thus is how to balance the calls for the freedom of movement against the right to freedom of association and how much relative weight should be assigned to each? That is, whose rights – or wrongs – matter the most? It is this conundrum that I wish to unravel by addressing the arguments used to support these, which might appear as inherently, opposite stands. Such an inquiry into ethics, I believe, is now perhaps more topical than ever as due to various crises the number of forcibly displaced people has reached the highest level since World War II, yet it seems that, as Betts (2015) imply, states’ commitment to asylum has become increasingly conditional. Instead of solidarity, a number of governments, in Europe but also more worldwide, have opted for the end-of-pipe solution of closing their borders in an attempt to restrict the incoming or transiting movement of people (Laine 2018: 288), some succumbing to the knee-jerk reaction to build walls and fences undermining in so doing the moral, legal, philosophical, as well as economic accounts of limiting the movement of human beings at borders (Jones 2019).

Territorial borders remain amongst the most fundamental features of our political world occupying a strong, often unquestioned ontological position in understandings of international relations. The present discussion assumes, however, a premise that the crediting the prevalence of borders to mere sovereignty motives is both inadequate and misleading. Rather, the symbolic power borders continue to be immense, and that may have more to do with questions of belonging and identity than sovereignty and self-determination. This has been well illustrated by the recent, often deeply emotional if not ideological, debate on immigration, which has had little to do with borders or migrants themselves, but has rather epitomised apprehensions about disparities of wealth, peace, and political freedom across the world. Not everyone is free to work, live, move or even visit wherever they please. “Immigration is, literally, the poor man knocking on the rich man’s door”, Finne (2018) maintains “and the enforcement of borders is slamming the door shut”.

Ethics of Territorial Borders

“Borders are to distinct countries”, Hanson (2016) explains, “what fences are to neighbors: means of demarcating that something on one side is different from what lies on the other side, a reflection of the singularity of one entity in comparison with another.” From this, he deducts, a world without boundaries is a fantasy. Indeed, borders continue to play as fundamental role for many. “We’re a sovereign country”, stated U.S. Senator for Florida, Marco Rubio, in a Fox News interview in 2013 and continued by explaining that “every sovereign country in the world has a right to protect its borders and who has access to the country. Every country does that. Why would we be expected not to do that?” Rubio’s statement reverberated Thomas Jefferson famous dictum that “a country with no border is not a country” and is illustrative of the way how the states’ right to control their borders; i.e. entry and settlement of non-citizens in their sovereign territories, is still often taken as granted and widely considered as legitimate aspect of the sovereign states’ self-determination as dictated by the modern international law.

Indeed, borders — and the fights to keep them — as old as agricultural civilization (Hanson 2016). What is, however, the less discussed is that the desire to challenge these borders has also deep roots. Socrates considered himself not just an Athenian but instead “a citizen of the cosmos” (see e.g. Kang 2013: 54), even though by that he may have meant the Stoic doctrine of living in agreement with the right reason rather than simply considering himself as a resident of the something territorially broader thank Athens. Marx and Engels (1848) urged the “workers of the world, unite!” and in his science-fiction novel The Shape of Things to Come, H. G. Wells (1933) envisioned borders eventually disappearing as transnational polymaths enforced enlightened world governance – not to mention Kenichi Ohmae’s (1990) more recent ground-breaking bestseller The Borderless World, in which he claims that national borders are less relevant than ever before for new globally interlinked economy. These arguments have all had profound impacts in their specific contexts, yet many generalisations drawn from them have missed the mark.

The era that we living is characterised by the increasing complexity of the border concept. Borders have very different impact on and meaning for different processes, practices – and people. The unmaking of borders, as Western (2019) calls it, and the related dismantling and loosening of border regimes, removes obstacles and creates radical new possibilities and opportunities for some, whilst can be threatening to others. Despite the heightened globalisation and the array of transnational processes, the politics of the line endures, as Walker (2010) notes, and if anything, has become only more stringent. In the era of multiple ongoing crises, a strong nation-state is being offered as a medicine for chaos, and many are also ready to seize it. Much of the political and public debate has become rather partial, at times openly so, depicting borders in a black-and-while manner as either good or bad without acknowledging their multifacetedness. The reality is likely to be greyer, and looking at the situation from either of these stands alone seem insufficient from the beginning.

While it is difficult to support the increased securitization and discriminatory exploitations of borders (for a thorough discussion on the topic, see Jones 2019), together with the official regimes, regulations, policies that maintain them, it is almost equally difficult to agree with Nussbaum’s (2002) earlier somewhat naïve claim that borders would be morally irrelevant. Her work has however gained many followers (e.g. Anderson, Sharma and Wright 2012; Mitropoulos 2010; Walia 2013; King 2016), who have put forth far-reaching, yet appealing arguments. These devotees of the “no border” perspective take a radical attitude toward the state form and advocate for the elimination of borders “both in an epistemological sense and in a political sense,” in contrast to an open border politics that does not do away with the state, which would continue to subject people to categorizations (Mitropoulos 2010). Surely, the Westphalian system with its rigid understanding of borders is utterly flawed and often irrelevant in grasping the logics of various border transcending global processes of the contemporary era. It would, however, be a quite a jump to derive from this that a world without borders would somehow be a better solution and not come with defects of its own (cf. Heller, Pezzani and Stierl 2019: 58). Here, of course, we are not talking about the ethics of merely the territorial border per se, but also that of the entire international system.

Much of the academic examination in the respect has focused on the tensions between the deeply etched Westphalian notions of sovereignty and the universalist claims about humanity and human rights. While the former maintains that the states system remains as an order-generating structure allowing co-existence and diversity under conditions of anarchy and plurality, the latter puts forth an idea of an emerging ‘world society’ based on a cosmopolitan ethos and the recognition of a common feelings of humanity. But as the supporters of some form of cosmopolitan ethical schema mandating humanitarianism and those standing for the defence of sovereignty and the legitimate rights of the state both claim to be promoting higher ethical goals, such as order and justice (Williams 2006: 50-1), the apparent problem herein is how to choose the correct way to move forward? Would a world society be more just and the current system of unjust borders? Whose moral compass should we rely upon in leading us on the way towards a better works for all?

In contemplating these questions, I chose to take distance from the concept and practices of sovereignty that have commonly been put in the spotlight in inquiries into the status and roles of territorial borders. The aim here is not to offer a clear-cut answer, but to argue that rather than approaching the question from either of the sides only, a more pragmatic middle ground must be sought between the two fundamentally incompatible positions. The logic here is, building on Williams (2006), that it can enable better ways of thinking about bordering a social practice and the role that bordering plays in ethical thinking. The middle ground may also be the way forward, as it is exactly the call for a higher ethical purpose that makes it impossible to consider one without the other.

The open and no borders accounts have strong merits and appeal. The liberal state cannot, consistent with its liberalism, coercively prevent outsiders from entering into that state’s territory; i.e. exclude unwanted outsiders (Wilcox 2009). We cannot, however, escape the apparent fact that for many it is the very borders that come with an appeal and the state’s right to control migration seem to enjoy widespread acceptance. The most common, yet often indefensible, arguments to support this stand are premised in the alleged need to establish security, preserve culture, gain economic sustainability, safeguard the distribution of state benefits, secure political functioning and self- determination, freedom of (non)association and various interpretations of realism.

Blake (2014: 535) argues that states can indeed engage in the practice of exclusion, yet he stipulates that the specific policies and practices they develop, though, must respect the rights of all persons to have their human rights adequately protected. By his wording, “[s]tates may be allowed to exclude, but they cannot exclude very much” (Ibid. 535). A far stricter argument for the support of the freedom of (non)association logic stems from the idea of citizenism, to use Sailer’s (2006) term, which refutes the libertarian arguments about obligations to strangers and instead asserts that greater weight should be put on the rights, welfare and interests of current citizens than those outside their national borders, including immigrants as would-be citizens. To Sailer, citizenism is about both about the individual ethics of voters and about the responsibilities of elected representatives. His ideas build on the long argued moral responsibility – if not obligation – of a government to protect its own citizens and privilege the interest of those whom it governs, especially when security is concerned. The apparent problem with the argument, then, is that it may easily get extended to treating non-citizens as less ethically significant, as less deserving, and even denying them certain rights that would – and should – be regarded as universal and fundamental, rather than specific to a particular territory or citizenship.

Another traditional defence of territorial borders has been predicated to their contribution of order: borders play a role in dividing the world into smaller blocks that easier to manage. Unless space is understood as distinct and separate, the argumentation goes, the human desire to own and protect property and physical space becomes difficult. Borders make sovereignty possible and without that it would be difficult for the international society to generate rules live by (Bull 1977). For such a pluralist, order centred account of international society, territorial borders as an order-generating structures have ethical significance in themselves. Given the ethical diversity of human societies and the lack of any substantive consensus on the nature of justice, the order borders reinforce enable also different ethical schemas to operate in different parts of the world, allowing for diversity within the broad ethical traditions to reflect local interpretations and social structures (Williams 2006: 64). From this perspective, borders do not create difference – they reflect and maintain it. They cannot be takes as mere matters of economic necessity or military security, but more essentially as a means of ensuring the uniqueness of a one particular society and its ability go about its own ways to life without the interference from others. “Clearly delineated borders and their enforcement,” Hanson (2016) depicts, “won’t go away because they go to the heart of the human condition.”

Jackson (2000: 332-3) goes as far as to argue that the existing borders represent far greater international consensus that what has been able to be reached about ethics or justice, whereby they provide “a universally recognizable standard to live by.” While he acknowledges that borders may not be just or equitable, he sees that they come with “enormous practical advantage of being determinate and predictable” (Ibid). This sort of thinking has by now been criticized by many (see e.g. Jones 2019) and it also highlights the bias many studies tend to have towards nation-states as an unquestioned point of reference. In the past, borders and identities were rarely defined in terms of allegiances to territories, but rather to rulers and religions, and there is no reason to expect that the now commonplace birthright citizenship could not be challenged by other membership criteria. While the human tendency to group together has long history, the legacy of state-building and state consolidation have had a profound impact on our understandings of (“Western”, in particular) history, whereby the situation afore the (in)famous Westphalian revolution” tends to be downplayed as a subject of study. However, if the reasoning behind the persistence of territorial borders relies indeed merely on their pragmatic capacity to manage space and divide ownership, then should an alternative way for this be found, we could do away with the territorial borders.

The normative assault on the Westphalian system characteristically stems from the inequalities and injustices of the current international order (Williams 2006: 63; Walia 2013). Borders tend to be drawn and enforced by the powerful and not by the weak. The consequences of borders fall, however, the heaviest on those in more precarious positions, who often lack the money and/or influence to navigate around them. This makes the international system of political borders a manifestation of inequality, discrimination and social injustice (Kolossov and Scott 2013), whereby the price to pay for sustaining this crude order-generating structure is very high. While the Westphalian model seems to be etched in to our minds so deeply that coming up with a viable alternative may be a daunting task, the first step is to realise that borders do not simply exist as fixed, material (f)acts, but they are dynamic social constructions. That is to say that they are actively maintained by a multiplicity of bordering processes and practices, not only by the state. It is this realisation that urges us to re-orientate our ethical compass in order to recognise that it is indeed us human beings that are at the site of moral agency, and not the impersonal sovereign states.

Cosmopolitan Ethics and Common Humanity

Privileging the interest of those closest to you remains generally acceptable. It is, however, more questionable to what extent the mechanism for deciding not only who is in and who is out, but consequently also who matters and who does not, needs to be made based on territorially bound citizenship. The idea that a particular state is habited by a particular nation, whereby citizenship gets formally connected to a territorially bordered space, has been a powerful one (e.g. Marshall 1973), but has become increasingly difficult to defend, not only because of its pure inaccuracy but also due to its inherent logic of bordering of ethical responsibility. It seems quite understandable that an individual prioritizes the interests of those the closest to him/her, say, family members, relatives, and close friends, over those he/she is less family with. This bond – a membership, however, is clearly something more profound than what can be said about an arbitrary categorization such a citizenship. Where one happens be born is a morally arbitrary fact (Fine 2013: 257), yet it continues to have a huge impact on one’s mobility, access to opportunities as well as the enjoyment of basic freedoms.

Carens (2009; 2014) among others have sought to challenge the view that every state has the legal and moral right to exercise that right to exclude in pursuit of its own national interest and of the common good of the members of its community. In his view, borders should generally be open and people should be free to leave their country of origin and settle in another, subject only to the sorts of constraints that bind current citizens in their new country. Citizenship in Western democracies is the modern equivalent of feudal privilege – an inherited status that greatly enhances one’s life chances – and as such hard to justify with respect to a commitment to the equal moral worth of all human beings (Ibid. 556). What makes the territorial confines of ethical responsibility even more dubious is that nations are, following Anderson (1983: 6-7), socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. This is to say that in all likelihood we do not know most of our fellow citizens, but as Williams (2006: 70) notes we may be much more attached to citizens of other states and have a closer bond with them. As Sharma (2019: 82) argues, the national form of state power has thus embedded within it a set of discriminatory practices against nonnationals and the ideas of national belonging are proprietorial in character: national citizenship is modelled after private property rights. As private property owners do, national citizens assert the right to exclude nonnationals/noncitizens from the enjoyment of what the state recognizes as theirs, that is “[w]e feel that they should not have that which we believe is exclusively ours (Ibid., emphasis in the original).

At the other end, we have the cosmopolitan ideology that all human beings belong to a single community, based on a shared morality, positing people as citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation-state. While the universalist cosmopolitan ethic based on the principle of shared common humanity and idea of a universal social bonds reflected is certainly an attractive one, it comes a with array of challenges of its own. The greatest value of the cosmopolitan ethos is that seeks to tear down the barriers dividing people into those who matter and deserve and those who do not in emphasising that ethnic or national identities are never legitimate grounds for excluding people from their human dignity (see e.g. Hollenbach 2016; Huemer 2010; 2019; Sharma 2019); that is, human rights are rooted in the universal and equal dignity of all human beings – not just those belonging to particular nations, religions, or ethnicities.[1]

1 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 Dec. 1948), U.N.G.A. Res. 217 A (III).

Without a right to international freedom of movement, including a right to enter another state, the right to exit is virtually meaningless and worthless (Cole 2000). In the end, the basic interests and claims supporting freedom of movement within state borders as a human right are the same as those which support the case for likewise considering freedom of movement across state borders, there should be no morally relevant distinction between the two cases. If applying profoundly different standards to citizens and non-citizens in migration matters stands at odds with the liberal commitment to moral equality, then the self-proclaimed liberal democratic states’ pursuit of this practice evidently fails to live up to their own regulative commitments (Fine 2013: 257). What makes the situation challenging is that any analysis advocating on one particular universal human right, instead of approaching them a package, is prone to be a lopsided one. Can we justify and make the ethical claim, as an example, for the right to free movement (Article 13) without acknowledging, say, the right personal security (Article 3), right to nationality (Article 15) or the right of assembly and association (Article 20).

From a normative point of view, an authentically cosmopolitan ethos calls for recognition that while all persons share a common humanity, showing concrete respect for all requires also recognizing that every person has distinctive characteristics, including diverse bonds of kinship, culture, and shared citizenship (Hollenbach 2016: 152). Thus, respecting people as they are does not only call for respect for their common humanity, but also for the ways they differ from each other (Appiah 2006: xiv-xviii). One of the key differences between people is their undoubtedly their belongingness; i.e. the state of being an essential or important part of something meaningful, familiar and secure. Many prefer and find it psychologically comforting to belong to something more specific than an overarching human race. Recognising this makes Nussbausm’s (2002) famous claim that nationalities and national borders are morally irrelevant sound rather simplistic and naïve, as recognised also by herself later on (Nussbaum 2006). Whether or not, then, belonginess or even nationality need to be formally attached to a territorially bound space is another question we need take a serious look at.

It is this very question that we are faced with in contemplating on how to guarantee a democratic representation of all in a world society? Democracy, Whelan (1988: 28) argues, “requires that people be divided into peoples (each people hopefully enjoying its own democratic institutions), with each unit distinguishing between its own citizens – understood in a political sense as those eligible to exercise democratic political rights here – and others, who are regarded as aliens here, although (hopefully) citizens somewhere else.” This is to say that in order for democracies to function, there must be rule by the same people upon whom the rule is imposed; i.e. the people making the rules need to be bound by the outcome (Wellman 2008). Should people have the right to move and settle freely, whereby their belonging to a particular state would fluctuate, the self-determination would not occur as the ‘self’ that made the rule in the first place would seize to match with the ‘self’ which is bound by its application. What is unclear from Whelan’s argument is that even if we were to accept that democracy cannot function properly unless people are sorted into defined groups, why is the nation state the only option considered for the purpose?

The above considerations point toward the need to think about an alternative category of belonging or membership based on some kind of connection above and beyond mere shared sense of being human. The approach advanced here suggests that such category need not to be based on a sovereignty motives nor does it require territorial borders. It does however recognise that the value of ethical diversity on a global scale and the fundamental human need to be belong and be a part of something. Phycologists have found that belongingness requires lasting, positive and significant interpersonal relationships (Baumeister and Leary 1995), which suggests there to be limits as to how vast community can be considered as meaningful in this sense. Given that belonging means acceptance as a member or part, some has extended their search of belonging through excluding others – a logic that can be seen behind many arguments in the recent migration debate.

Apart from the political rights and obligations as suggested by the social contract theory, membership of the state brings with it, what Williams (1999: 469), has labelled as rights and duties of special beneficence, which establish special moral imperatives among members of a community, over and above any which may apply universally. The appeals for the state to be this community have typically relied on the ideas of patriotism, of ties resulting from a shared history, culture and sense of identity (Cohen 1986; Waltzer 1983), and nationalism (Mayal 1990). It has, however, become obvious that this kind of group based ‘we-feeling’ has been diversifying away from the state to include other types of group identities that deserve recognition from their ethical significance (Falk 2002). There is thus a need to broaden the argument away from a focus on citizenship of sovereign states as the overriding, indeed only, identity of importance to international politics to consider the implications for territorial borders of multiple community identities and multiple rights and duties of special beneficence (Williams 1999: 469). Belonging, be it citizenship or other type of a membership built upon an ethically significant relationship, does not need to be territorially bounded to be meaningful or to offer opportunities in life. Indeed, as Williams (2006: 72) puts it, even in cases where people may appeal to the idea of specific locations as being of vital significance to their identity, it is to this particular place, not the lines around it, that people are appealing.

Towards Unbounded Inclusiveness

Above, in have attempted to shed light on the discussion weather or not we need territorial borders. What I argue is that few territorial borders seem ethically defensible. This is not, however, to say that a borderless world would inevitably be more just. Drawing on Arendt’s (e.g. 1958; 1972) political thought, we must acknowledge that the fundamental human need to belong and to possess a sense of identity, necessitates people to be able to distinguish themselves somehow from the others; i.e. a membership becomes special, because it is separate. Looking at territorial borders as social practices (e.g. Paasi 1999) that are connected to but not exhausted by the practices of the state and sovereignty opens up some critical perspectives upon them and connects territorial borders to other kinds of borders. It also enables us to think more clearly whether or not territorial borders are ethically defensible in and of themselves, rather than as some instrumental adjunct of something else (Williams 2006: 81).

Some of the recent work with political geography has been valuable in challenging the taken-for-grantednesses of international politics in suggesting that the separation or connectedness does not indeed need to follow the territorial logics. The normative Cartesian view has been increasingly challenged by a number of academics (e.g. Popescu 2015; Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015), who postulate a world which functions according to networks, flows, hubs, and connecting nodes that are qualitatively different from the notion of space defined by territorial proximity and distance decay. The enduring gaze on the state-centric world view largely ignores the fact we have witnessed a changing geographical imagination that incorporates a more polyvalent perspective, and acknowledges the relational nature of space as well as the emergence of complementary forms of borders that depart from the norms of territorial linearity (Popescu 2015; 2017). The suggested spatial diffusion of the border transcends the Cartesian understandings of territory and makes the classic outside-inside border-based territorial distinction obsolete, because the spatial “outsiders” can be physically inside the flow belt as the dynamic spatial relations between actors are brought to the fore (Allen 2011; Amilhat-Szary and Giraut 2015; Bigo 2001). This is to say that people and places have become increasingly connected across space following a “portal-like logic” that folds them into each other, in contrast to the preceding socio-spatial interaction largely mediated via territorial proximity and distance decay (Popescu 2017: 4).

While we cannot shut our eyes to the persistence of territorial borders, this kind of approach is very much needed in accentuating that the state is hardly any longer the only actor in the international society, nor is the nation-state the only conception of space to be applied in explaining human interaction (Laine 2017). Territorial borders have not disappeared as once was commonly expected, but alongside them an array of complementary forms of borders have emerged that negate the geographical idea of territorial exceptionality, and it is there forms that might be better capable of explaining, managing or alleviating certain phenomena than what the rigid understanding of borders as lines on the map can. From the perspective of the ongoing inquiry, the question however remains: are relational borders more just than the territorial ones? While broadening our border perspective is utterly needed to better grasp the complex phenomena of the contemporary globalisation, the more topological understating of space and border do not make the ethical and moral questions obsolete. A network can be equally exclusive than a line. It also entails an in-group and an out-group.

A potential way forward might lie in moving away from the mere focus on form of organisation and take a look them in terms of their openness and inclusiveness. In order to recognise what motives the actions by both the states and individuals, we must look deeper into the underlying criteria based on which bordering is made; i.e. on which basis someone is considered as welcome and deserving while others are not (Laine 2018: 289). The ongoing debate suggests that identity and values play an important role here. Much of the resistance to immigrants, for example, seem to be based on the perception that they would destabilise accustomed, comfortable cultures – and our values. But are these values really territorially specific – unique to Europe, for example? The “European” values are in the end rather global in their nature. For example, all the UN member countries are committed to these. Could it be that Europe, and the West more broadly speaking, have made a big mistake in presenting the values we hold dear specifically as ours, in so doing not only excluding others but also creating space for the rest to reject the policies based on these values?

The othering of refugees can be seen as a related strategy to fight against paralyzing anxieties in search of stability – be it societal or identitary. Following Kierkegaard (1844/1944) and the works of Durkheim (e.g. 2003) Whom and what we fear, and how we express and act upon our fearing and anxiety, is in some quite important sense constitutive of who we are. Do we let it compromise our own core values to the extent that it begins to determine our behaviour? Having another set of norms for “us” and another for “them” is a prime example of unethical bordering that we must turn our attention to (Laine 2018: 297). Freedom of movement provides a particularly fitting example from this perspective. We open borders to some, while close them off to others. State borders continue to be the focus of narratives that see them as hard lines and defences against all kinds of ‘ills’ affecting the body of ‘national’ societies. The response has come in form of policies and other deterrent actions to stop migrants from crossing borders. While it tends to be the wealthy who build walls – whether concrete or on paper – to insulate themselves, the consequences of these actions fall heavily on those who lack the money and influence to navigate around them.

The international society, Wheeler (1996) once put it, has become a “global gangster”– the operatives of a kind of global protection racket for states that see huge numbers of human beings forced to live life characterised by poverty, disease, malnutrition, political repression, torture, warfare and a host of other privations. Given that many of these would be preventable, the ethical question in maintaining the status quo are imminent. The state’s authority over immigration is habitually coercively enforced, through the familiar apparatus of border control (Miller 2016), by which the states seek to keep out the various would-be entrants, acting – more than anything else – based on its own preferences. While we are still far from a universally recognised human right to immigrate, it is nevertheless necessary to reconsider the moral justifications behind the states’ claimed authority over the admission migrants. Indeed, as Fine (2013; see also Fine and Ypi 2016) explicates, exploring the grounds for the state’s alleged right to exclude is a vital task, because if we cannot find adequate justifications for this right then we need to re-evaluate the very backbone of current approaches to immigration policy.

Conclusions

This brief discussion has aimed to underline that the debate whether borders should be merely open or closed is a simplistic one, and that there is an apparent need to be clearer about the link between the persisting importance of borders and the calls for free movement of people. Borders are seldom either open or closed, and it is not easy to find examples of a linear development between these two ends of the spectrum in either direction. Based on the recent events, it rather seems more reasonable to argue what when borders are opened to some, they are closed off to others. It is this realisation that then urges to take look not only the ethics of territorial borders, but also that of the various practices of border-making and the politics of difference

My aim is not to advocate for a borderless world, but a world that would be more just. For all. A key realisation towards that end is the realisation that a commitment to equal moral worth requires also some sort of basic commitment to equal opportunity (Carens 2014). This does not, however, instinctively mean that borders would be inherently bad and should thus be treated as such. Even if all border would disappear that would not address all of the underlying injustices that make people want to move. Given all of their flaws, border continue to serve a purpose – various purposes, yet perhaps more than ever before these are likely to not be the same for us all. It is this realisation which needs further attention form us scholars.

As much of the recent both public and political debate suggests, high moral value continues to be assigned to national borders and state sovereignty. A respect for the self-determination of accountable states cannot however be detached from the realities of today’s interconnected world. Borders carry considerable moral weight in determining ethical responsibilities towards those who are not considered to belong, and our moral obligation to make border more permeable does not stem only from the merely humanitarian principle, but is also based on the fact that we are no longer simply part of isolated national communities; by virtue of our transnational interactions in today’s networked world, whereby developments even in distant areas may come with multiple bearings.

Under freedom of (non-)association, one has the right to unilaterally to eschew certain sorts of associations with, in this case, foreign-born people should one so feel like. However, as Huemer (2019: 46) specifies, this does not translate one having a right to demand that these people would have to avoid even very tenuous sorts of “associations” with one or not be in the same country as one, as that is far too tenuous of an “association” for one to claim it as an infringement on one’s freedom. Thus, there is a need design a system whereby diversity can find ways of co-existing on the basis of toleration. In order to do that, the exclusively territorial notions of jurisdiction and membership must be challenged and changed and a balance should be sought so that borders are porous enough to allow the fundamental rights of all to be met.

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Relating Borders to ‘Belongingness’: Some Observational Evidence

Victor Konrad

Introduction: Borders, Territory, Belongingness

A drive through the Basque Country, with its indecipherable place names and unique structures, visually confirms that the people speak an unconnected European language, and they retain a distinctive culture in a limited and bounded territory. Further exploration reveals a changing, multiply bounded territory based on aspects of tradition, livelihood, political affiliation and more, with bounded enclaves within the overall territory (Woodsworth 2008). Borders are evident, in part, because distinctive signs on all major thoroughfares proclaim that you are now in ‘Iskadi’ or Basque Country. Also, there is a ‘provincial’ boundary drawn by Spain around the Basque Autonomous Territory. Yet, this authorized border appears of less consequence than the borders perceived and constructed around the Basque Country by Basques themselves. For the Basques, borders evolve through the process of belonging, and the state of belongingness outlines their territory as well as their ‘common togetherness’ and ‘changing landscape of identities’ in a singular region (Bray 2004). The state of belongingness has multiple connectivities to places, environments, groups, ideologies and beliefs. Belongingness, for the Basques, may also be transitional, ambiguous and marginal, depending on who and where they are. These dimensions of multiple, transitional, ambiguous and marginal belongingness construct ‘living boundaries’ that enable the Basques to identify at once as a political, social, ethnic, and popular culture, and also embrace EU goals of cross-frontier cooperation and European integration (Bray 2004). The challenge is to develop an approach to examine and explain the multiple and mobile borders associated with belongingness in the Basque Country, and in other geographical contexts.

In order to understand how belonging engages with borders and territory, we must go beyond examinations of state-based belonging (Migdal 2004) to access the theory of relations of part to whole, and of part to part within the whole. This theory of ‘mereotopology’ derives from both classical and modern philosophical and logical studies and is applied, as it relates to our purposes, in cultural psychology. Research in both cultural psychology and philosophy supports a science of human liminal constructions, and explores the constant border crossing in the arena of human development (Marsico and Varzi 2016: 327). In border studies, mereotopology promises to help us understand the basis of individual and social becoming that leads to belonging in a territory, and the role of borders in the process of defining both territory and belongingness.

In this essay, I offer a theoretical framework for the study of borders and belonging. The initial step is to explore the promise of mereotopology as a theoretical base. The discussion that follows aims to situate borders, territory, and belonging in a theoretical framework that builds on this base. The discussion draws extensively on evidence of borders and belonging from field research conducted in the Salish Sea region of the North American Pacific coast, the borderlands of China, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, the Virgin Islands of the Caribbean, and the Basque Country introduced above. A central goal is to define the state of belonging, or belongingness, as it relates to borders. This goal is approached first by examining the components and qualities of belongingness, and then examining how these aspects engage with borders. The final section of the chapter evaluates what this study contributes to the political culture of bounding space and place, and suggests additional research directions in this promising engagement of border studies with philosophy and cultural psychology.

Theory of Mereotopology and Borders

Mereotopology is a theory of parts and boundaries. Topological means are used “in order to derive ontological laws pertaining to the boundaries and interiors of wholes, to relations of contact and connectedness, to the concepts of surface, point, neighbourhood, and so on” (Smith 1996: 287). Without venturing into the underlying mathematics, it is instructive to define some of these laws and their verbal explanation and implications. First, we must distinguish between boundaries in geography, geopolitics and other domains which reflect more or less arbitrary human demarcations, and boundaries which reflect physical discontinuities. Clearly, the latter are more accessible to theoretical formulation. For these, the laws are explicit: topologies consist of interior parts and boundaries (Smith 1996); a border distinguishes between inside and outside, or one side and the other side (Herbst 1976); there may be exterior and interior boundaries (Smith 1996); boundaries are only boundaries and they do not exist independent of the entities that they bound (Brentano 1988); and there are fiat and bona fide boundaries (Smith and Varzi 2000). Connection relations may occur as overlaps, abutments, equalities, tangents, and combinations of these (Cohn and Varzi 1998). However, some formulations are implausible. These include that a boundary of a region is never connected to its interior, every boundary is part of its own complement, and the interior of a region is always connected to its exterior (so boundaries make no difference) (Cohn and Varzi 1998). Natural axioms for classical mereology are ordering, composition, and decomposition (Cotnoir and Varzi 2018), and, consequently, in contemporary border studies, we view borders as ordered (Van Houtum, Kramsch and Zierhofer 2005), and predominantly in process (Ptak et al. 2019), between composition and decomposition (Stetter 2005), at multiple scales (Laine 2016), and in various states of resolution (Sun et al. 2011).

For human demarcations, many of the same laws apply as for physical discontinuities, although definition is not as rigorous and explicit when vagaries of human engagement enter the equation. Nevertheless, we may extend theoretical formulations of parts and boundaries by engaging with emerging conceptualizations of borders in cultural psychology. Herein, the connective thought of Achille Varzi and the theoretical and empirical contributions of Giuseppina Marsico are central to theorizing psychological and social borders, and how humans deal with boundaries and transitions in their lives (Marsico and Varzi 2016; Marsico 2016; Espanol, Marsico and Tateo 2019). The underlying premise is that “psychological phenomena take place at the border between person and environment”, and the central question becomes “how do humans deal with such transitions throughout the course of their lives?” (Marsico and Varzi 2016: 327). Components of cultural psychology and border theory that inform border studies include the concept of “non-cuttable” space in between, which is naturally fluid (Marsico 2011). In border studies, we call these spaces borderlands, and this conceptualization of borderlands has now entered the theory and vocabulary of cultural psychology (Marsico 2016). Borders in motion (Konrad 2015; Nail 2016) are theorized from individual and social perspectives as moving between the social spaces in boundary crossing and boundary crossing space (Marsico 2013). A temporal dimension of mereotopology is theorized as well because process and motion occur in time (Marsico 2015). It remains to align aspects of border theory in cultural psychology, where theory relates specifically to individuals, and social and political groups, with a more vague connection between humans and their environment in border studies theorization.

Whereas theories of the border, derived in sociological, political, economic, geographical, and anthropological border studies, are all predicated on a socially constructed border (Paasi 1996), the concept of the border, like the concept of territory, remains an abstraction, albeit created by humans but expressing beyond human characteristics. Abstractions, so useful for paring down and simplifying complex border phenomena and interactions, illuminate the essence of what it means to border and live with border constructions yet they are drained of cultural expression and feeling. Required are spacious and embracing concepts like identity (Prokkala 2009) to serve as meta-concepts or proxies for sets of related feelings about and representations of the meaning of borders. Whereas the interaction of identity and borders has seen substantial attention in the literature, borders and belonging remain to be assessed within a framework of emerging border theory drawing from the humanities and the social sciences. In border studies, where our theoretical focus is either on the spaces and places occupied by humans, or how the spaces and places impact humans, there is a need to engage more thoroughly with the way in which humans feel about borders and borderlands, and how these feelings manifest as actions, cultural production, creativity, and comfort, as well as pathologies of dislocation, estrangement and worse outcomes including death. A feeling that remains understudied, in both cultural psychology and in border studies, is the feeling of belonging, or more aptly the state of belongingness (Marsico and Varzi 2016; Konrad and Everitt 2011). Yet, borders and belonging are the focus of formative texts in border culture theory offered by writers in literature and the arts (Anzaldua 1989; Roberts and Stirrup 2013). How may border studies theory build on formative approaches in relating belonging and borders, to establish a framework to encompass the diverse and seemingly unconnected properties of belongingness?

Belongingness and Borders

The state and situation of belonging at the border is expressed in multiple human reactions that appear to be too diffuse and tied to individual relations with the border environment to allow understanding, much less theorization of how belongingness at borders emerges, evolves and changes in other ways. Yet, there are some consistencies of belonging in border space, and these may allow us to formulate theory. If we accept the premise that borders make space intelligible, while they also disrupt and modify space at or near the border, it follows that humans will either adjust to these circumstances, in varying degrees, or they will not. Belonging in bordered space is then either expressed as belonging in one side of the space, belonging on the other side, or belonging in various degrees on both sides of the border. So far, this characterization aligns with mereotopological constants and findings of cultural psychology wherein all of these states of belonging at the border may be theorized. The shared, split or attenuated belonging may then be articulated as plural, and expressed as well as a variety of transitional, liminal, alternating, marginal, ambiguous, and hybrid forms. Each of these articulations needs to be evaluated with regard to its role in constituting belongingness at the border, and any possible linkages and relationships require examination.

I begin with liminality because Anzaldua’s (1989) theorization of liminal space or ‘nepantlera’ is an early assessment of belongingness in border studies, and the basis for much successive thought about belonging in border space. For Anzaldua, liminal space generates unsettling understandings of home and belongingness, and is associated with places of isolation and exile. Here, there are deep excavations of wounds that maintain and proliferate divisions between self and other, and sites of interrogation into complicity with oppression. Belonging at the border may then extend to the limits of belonging at all, as it mixes ‘mediums’ and ‘selves’ and creates potentially new spaces of belonging (Bhattacharya and Payne 2016). In the new spaces of belonging, belongingness may transition from a hyphenated sense of belongingness, or a sense of marginality, to a deeper ‘rootedness’ over time, and a sense of ‘knowing’ the border (Vandervalk 2019). Belongingness, in some instances, is enhanced with the potential for alternating narratives of identity at the border (Minesashvili 2016). The ambiguity produced generates both liberation and transgression in bordered space (Hudson 2012). Counter-intuitively, creating ambiguity may in fact also create unique feelings of belonging in an in-between space. This is transnational space.

Globalization has changed deeply the power of borders by modifying the dialectical relation between their fixed institutional nature and the constantly changing and fluid processes of bordering within and between societies (Newman 2003). Also, globalization has extended transnational space, and increased the importance of creating belongingness in this space. Currently, crossing borders has empowered new modes and forms of belongingness, and the border itself has emerged as a site of belonging in a shifting transnational context. On the one hand, racialization has confined belongingness of Canadian women of colour, and isolated their sense of home (Chapra and Chatterjee 2009). On the other hand, Philippino seafarers have evolved distinct ways of belongingness ashore and abroad, and an overall extended sense of belongingness (Acejo 2012). On ship, they work within a hierarchy of intercultural relationships and occupational seafaring culture to sustain advanced inclusion. On land, they value social and economic status and community affiliations that allow them to remain integrated ashore. Other transnational social spaces of belonging also exhibit two poles of belonging. Turkish-German transnational social space is a construct of ‘stitching’ across borders to enable belongingness in two distinct yet connected sites (Bilecen et al. 2015). Throughout the European Union, transnational social integration, and concurrently EU belongingness, remains a work in progress (Rippl et al. 2009). At the edges of the EU, revitalized borders between Russia and Latvia, for example, instill a renewed sense of belongingness constituted through memory and mobility (Lulle 2016). Yet, borders also move across people as evidenced in the narratives of belonging among Crimean youth after the Russian annexation in 2014 (Zeveleva and Bludova 2019). Belongingness in the context of borders has evolved in globalization, yet, the fundamental link between the border and belonging remains articulated in space on one side of the border or the other, or in the constantly shifting and expanding spaces in-between. Belongingness in globalization may be more plural, transitional, ambiguous, and hybridized, but it remains anchored as always by home and group affiliation.

A theoretical framing of borders and belongingness begins with the understanding that, as a psychological phenomenon, belongingness takes place at the border between person and environment. When this border is also the border between peoples and environments, belongingness is confronted, and it must be affirmed on either one side or the other of the border, or in a space in between. If the affirmation of belongingness is in the space in-between, a bundle of possibilities is engaged. Belongingness may transition or it may remain ambiguous; belongingness may become liminal or hybridized; belongingness may be marginalized and sublimated; and, belongingness may become alternating in order to adjust to plural demands. All of these possibilities are theoretically supported in mereotopological reasoning. The following discussion is aimed at providing empirical substantiation in several geographical contexts and offering a basis for further theorization.

Cascadia, the Salish Sea, and the Construction of Indigenous, Ecological Territory and Belonging

In 2009, I lived in Bellingham WA for six months and worked on several research projects with the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University. I was familiar with the cross-border region, having spent significant lengths of time over forty years both as a researcher and visitor at institutions on both sides of the international boundary. During the years of my familiarity with the cross-border region, it has been referred to as the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific Coast, Cascadia, and, most recently as the Salish Sea. Most of these names seek to identify and substantiate cross-border affinity rather than enhance national narratives and delineate state boundaries. In this sense, the names are part of a strategy by interests in government agencies, NGOs, private business, education, and border communities to identify commonality across the border, and, significantly, to bolster a feeling of belonging in a region where the international boundary is of lesser importance than mutual respect for environment and natural resources, a distinctive ‘Northwest’ lifestyle, and, more recently, acknowledgement of Indigenous legacy and perseverance. The border, and the borderlands, rather than serve as a space of division and transition, actually receded to form a zone for bonding, even in the security conscious period subsequent to the events of 9/11 (Konrad 2010). The following discussion offers a brief overview of how belongingness has formed in this cross-border region.

The recent literature of this region, whether in natural science, the humanities or social sciences, overwhelmingly refers to the region as the Salish Sea and emphasizes the ‘nature’ of borders (Wadewitz 2012). The Salish Sea designation accomplishes a scientifically-based ecosystem, drainage basin, and fluid boundary context, and is now used extensively throughout the sciences to identify the region and with the region (Harley 2011). Also, the Salish Sea designation enables alignment of Indigenous cultures in the basin with resource governance priorities (Norman 2012; Wadewitz 2006). Although some critics of the re-naming of the region question whether the Salish Sea really de-colonizes the map, and they assert that this ‘toponymic politics’ invents a new map, and essentially re-bounds the space (Tucker and Rose-Redwood 2015), the Salish Sea appears to have become the consensus designation that most people can identify with due to its readily identifiable natural edges, its internal consistency, and the uncomplicated sense of belonging that it portrays.

This was not achieved by previous designations of the cross-border region. The ‘Northwest’ and ‘Pacific Northwest’ were nebulous; the ‘Pacific Coast’ was ambiguous; the ‘West Coast’ was Canadian; the ‘Northwest Coast’ was American. True, there was a cross-border culture denoted by many of these names such as the ‘Northwest Sound’ for the formative popular music of the cross-border region (Gill 1993). Yet, not until the emergence of the term ‘Cascadia’, did a name receive broad acceptance and also kindle the imagination of a vast constituency, and become accepted by Americans and Canadians throughout the international region (Alper 1996; Sparke 2000). Cascadia was not a state, yet Cascadia offered an economic promise and it was ‘more than a state of mind’ (Sparke 2002). Cascadia was reconstructed as a bi-national space and acknowledged by its residents (Cold-Ravnkilde et al. 2004) and branded despite the conflicting conceptualizations (Smith 2008). In the end, Cascadia did not persevere, and the term is used rarely today except in institutions and businesses that adopted and codified the name. A major contributing factor, according to respondents in interviews conducted in the region in 2009-2010, was that people felt that you could not belong to an idea without a definitive and accepted (and bounded) entity. Belongingness, even in bordered contexts, requires a recognized and acknowledged spatial context.

The more geographically definitive construct of the Salish Sea basin delimits and describes the cross-border region (CBC News 2010). The archaeological record confirms a cultural continuity to support the designation, and related Indigenous peoples occupy enclaves in the basin extending across sea and land. Their belonging is not in question. For other residents, the concept of the Salish Sea may have less resonance and allegiance, although, in general, they are not necessarily opposed to the concept. It portrays a physical reality. The question remains, however, whether this is sufficient to develop a sense of belonging among non-Indigenous people in the cross-border region? For ecologically-minded and committed residents this may be sufficient to insure a sense of belonging, and consequently an alignment with the Salish Sea ideal. Yet, for most of the millions of inhabitants of the Lower Fraser Valley region and the Seattle Metropolitan area, belonging is linked to community and scaled to regional, national and transnational levels through well-defined affiliations. These affiliations are defined clearly in the border communities dependent on cross-border shopping such as White Rock and Abbotsford in British Columbia, and Blaine, Bellingham and Lynden in Washington State. Here, the International Mobility and Transportation Corridor project (IMTC 2009), represents stakeholders on both sides of the border to expedite border crossing and develop a sense of bi-national belonging. Although regulations such as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) (US, DHS 2011) require passports as identification, and reassert national identities and diminish transnational identities, even those codified through dual-citizenship between the US and Canada, alternative and convenient identification such as the Enhanced Drivers License (EDL) enables expedited crossing (Canada, Public Safety 2008). In these ‘post-9/11’ borderlands, minority groups--East-Indian berry farmers and the Fraser Valley Dutch community among them--have encountered both challenges to sustaining cross-border interaction and opportunities for identity construction and enhanced belonging. For the Fraser Valley Dutch, a downturn in cross-border interaction, including fewer cross-border marriages and the loss of the ‘GMC’—gas, milk, and cheese—trade, is now countered with the Washington town of Lynden’s success in intercepting Vancouver-bound cruise ship travelers with a Dutch-themed display of architecture, food and other aspects of Dutch culture, and Canadians bound south for shopping and the casinos (Konrad 2010: 19-24). Belongingness at the border is always in a state of becoming and reaffirmation. In this cross-border region, the stark line of the 49th parallel boundary masks a complex pattern of multi-scalar belonging underneath and beyond national pronouncements.

Ethnic Border Keepers, Managers and Entrepreneurs in Kokang on China’s Border with Myanmar

“In February, 2015, armed conflict returned to the isolated Kokang border region. Nestled next to China but in Myanmar, the region had experienced relative calm since incidents in 2009, when the Kokang authority (Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army or MNDAA) clashed with the Myanmar Armed Forces. In 2009, the MNDAA resisted pressure to transform into a paramilitary border guard reporting to the Myanmar Army, in part due to involvement in the drug trade. Pheung Kya-shin/Jiasheng Peng, the MNDAA leader associated with this trade, was ousted and exiled, and uneasy calm prevailed until he returned and fighting resumed on February 9 and 10, 2015, at Laukkai/Laogai and other localities in the heart of Kokang region. During the first eight months of 2015, more than 200 people died and hundreds were wounded, and, on occasion, the conflict spilled over the border with China. Under pressure, ostensibly from China, the MNDAA declared a ceasefire on June 11, 2015, but fighting resumed within a week. In the broader context of Myanmar President Thein Sein’s efforts to complete a ceasefire with armed ethnic groups around the country, and launch effectively Myanmar’s fledgling democracy to gain international recognition and access, Kokang remained a ‘wedge’ in the peace talks: too close to China and not close enough to the rest of Myanmar” (Hu and Konrad 2018: 147). Four years later, the conflict has declined, yet it is not resolved, and thousands of refugees from Kokang remain in camps, mainly in Myanmar, whereas adjacent China is still under strict military occupation.

The people of Kokang are largely ethnic Han Chinese who trace their origins to the Yang Clan, a ‘military house’ of Ming loyalists who left Nanjing in the mid-17th century to migrate to Yunnan, and then in the 18th century to move further into the Shan State of eastern Burma. Here, they consolidated a single polity on approximately 10,000 square kilometres of land bounded north and west by the Salween River, and south by the Nam Ting/Nanting tributary. An informal eastern boundary with China was acknowledged at the height of land east of the Salween River valley although Chinese historical maps of Yunnan place the boundary along the Salween River. A feudal state emerged and was named Kokang by Yang You Gen at the end of the 18th century. In 1840, Kokang’s leader was recognized with hereditary rights as a vassal of the Qing Dynasty. A small state associated with China was validated in the distant and culturally diverse north eastern highlands of Burma (Yang 1997). Kokang was both a part of the ethnically plural central highlands of Southeast Asia, and an outlier of Han China. This borderland situation both substantiates Kokang’s inclusion in the “the largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states” (Scott 2009: ix), and, also, questions James C. Scott’s controversial assertion that the “marches of mainland Southeast Asia” were a “world of peripheries”, “nonstate spaces”, and “zone of no sovereignty” (Scott 2009: 3, 13, 60). Kokang was at once a space of refuge “living in the shadow of states” (Scott 2009: x) and a proactive interlocutor between states, societies and cultures. Indeed, it was, and is, a Han ‘transition’ between China and upland Myanmar.

This borderland characterization is offered as a useful and explanatory conceptualization for interpreting not only historical but also contemporary Kokang which evolved out of British Burma since 1885. The Chinese exclave continued to link and identify with adjacent China throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. It has become a space between exception and integration (Hu and Konrad 2018), and within, and adjacent to this space, belongingness is asserted through connection with China and distinction from Myanmar. Whereas Kokang belongs to the state of Myanmar, the people of Kokang ‘belong’ in China as well as in their Kokang homeland. Insights about this belongingness have emerged from an extensive study of the Kokang crisis, and the border dynamics of the region based on 458 questionnaires, including 239 of refugees from Kokang and 219 of Chinese citizens resident in the communities across the border from Kokang. More extensive semi-structured interviews were conducted among 40 of the respondents to obtain detailed narratives of the views and experiences of the Kokang and their Chinese cousins surrounding the crisis. Full details of the research design, interview ethics and protocols followed, and information gained from the questionnaires and interviews are found in Hu and Konrad (2018). The following assessments relate specifically to belongingness among the Kokang.

The economic growth that emerged in Kokang after 2000 was due to a major Chinese influx into a receptive borderland where language, social norms, and cultural practices were all familiar. By 2010, the main town Laukkai/Laogai had grown to a population of 25,000 of which 90 percent were Kokang Chinese. Laogai led the remote region from obscurity to prosperity and to advanced relationships with other ethnic minorities in north eastern Mynamar (Clapp 2015). Laogai was now a modern border town with most shops, restaurants, hotels and other business interests operated by Chinese immigrants providing services for a largely Kokang Chinese population. The town was a space of exception within Kokang which itself was a space of exception within Myanmar, where the wealth and well being reflected in this modern ‘Chinese’ border town was much sought after by other minorities along the border with China (Kyu 2016). Kokang Chinese, particularly those living in Laogai, developed a heightened sense of belonging in, or at least with, China.

When hostilities raged in 2015, most of the refugees from Kokang, and particularly from Laogai, elected to flee across the border to China. These refugees fell into four distinct categories as they arrived in China: people who walked across the border as part of their routine as cattle herders and service workers in China (they moved into huts along the road or refugee camps); refugees with relatives in China who now live with kinfolk; modestly wealthy refugees who could afford to rent or share rental accommodation; and, the wealthy Kokang who bought property and relocated to this property. Belongingness was tenuous for the first group although they were regular border crossers, and now, four years later, most have been forced out of refugee camps and temporary shelters and returned to Kokang. The second and third groups have either stayed in China or moved back to Kokang depending on personal circumstances, and adjusted to belonging on one side of the border or the other. The final group--wealthy refugees-- extended their transnational status, and live in either or both Kokang and adjacent China depending on the political situation and economic opportunities. They have expanded belongingness. Although all Kokang feel and experience the liminality of their being, the degree of belongingness in the cross-border region, that is belonging on both sides of the boundary, does not occur equally in all social and wealth classes.

Borders and ‘Belongers’ in the Virgin Islands of the Caribbean

The Virgin Islands consist of an archipelago of close and accessible islands bisected by a maritime boundary between the British Virgin Islands (BVI or commonly the Virgin Islands) and the US Virgin Islands (USVI or also commonly the Virgin Islands, and occasionally the Virgin Islands of the United States). On the immediate US side of the boundary are St Thomas and St John and several small islands. The front line of islands in the BVI consists of Jost Van Dyke, Tortola, Norman Island, and other Sister Islands. This border has been in place since 1917 when Denmark relinquished its colonial control to the United States, whereas the United Kingdom maintained its control of the BVI.

In the colonial era, most of the Virgin Islands were a part of the sugar economy controlled by European nations. Black slave populations provided the labor and remained the constant population as islands were traded in international settlements and the sugar economy was replaced in the 20th century by tourism as the major industry. Today, all of the Virgin Islands are dependent on vacation visitors and cruise ship tourism, residents from abroad, and the service industries related to the tourist trade. Whereas the USVI offers more shopping and services, the BVI provides a more colonial atmosphere. Many longtime residents are well connected across the border, with family residing in the BVI and USVI, inter-island business interests, and regular travel across the border.

Border narratives collected from residents of the British Virgin Islands are evaluated against institutional discourses about security, integration, and identity in order to enable a detailed understanding of belongingness in the BVI, and more broadly within the Virgin Islands. The respondents in the study included community representatives, public officials, long-time residents, homeowners and business operators, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, and the Governor. Semi-structured interviews ranging from one-half hour to two hours in length suggest that the people living in the border region balance their belonging to the cross-border region and to their respective nation-states in notions of regionalism (theorized in transnational terms) and nationalism (Konrad and Everitt 2011: 290). Complex notions of belonging have in fact been codified, “most notably in the status of the overseas British ‘belonger’ that extends beyond legal classification of citizenship to a specific nation” (Konrad and Everitt 2011: 291). Yet, most ‘belongers’ did not originate in the United Kingdom but rather were born and have stayed in the Virgin Islands. In the British Virgin Islands, ‘belongership’distinguishes ‘belongers’ from other people residing in the BVI, yet the status of ‘belongership’ remains purposely vague and elusive to allow the Government of the BVI sufficient flexibility in conferring this status as the Government grants certain privileges of membership within the British Commonwealth (Virgin Islands 2007). Most important is the ‘belonger’ status gained from birth in the BVI or through a ‘born BVI’ mother or father. “Belonger’ identity is now legally acknowledged, and although it is different from citizenship within the BVI, the two statuses are commonly conflated (Maurer 2000: 146). ‘Belongership’ enables land ownership, confirms pedigree, and differentiates established BVI families from ‘non-belongers’ including non-resident British, immigrants from elsewhere, visitors, and, significantly, ‘belongers’ returning from other parts of the Caribbean with hopes to participate in the re-vitalized economy. ‘Belongership’ in the BVI uses the border and creates new and convenient forms of the border.

Belongingness is not articulated solely at the state level in the BVI. According to respondents, it encompasses the USVI when it is commercially convenient both for buying and selling in the greater Virgin Islands, accessing the full potential of the cruise ship business throughout the islands, and developing joint ventures requiring backing from sources in both the USVI and BVI. Most BVI ‘belongers’ were actually born in St. Thomas in the USVI, where the largest hospital in the Virgin Islands is located. Yet, ‘belonging’ is characteristically scaled down to the island home, where if asked where they belong, they insist that they are ‘from Tortola’ or ‘born Tortolan’. “The division between ‘belongers’ who have lived in the BVI most if not all of their lives but trace their roots elsewhere, and those who are essentially indigenous to the colonized islands, is articulated in terms of local attachments” (Konrad and Everitt 2011: 300). Yet, ‘down-islanders’ (from St. Kitts, St. Lucia, and Antigua) and other ‘non-belongers’ from the Dominican Republic, living in the BVI, are less concerned about these issues of belongingness and an increasing component of transnationalism in the BVI.

The border between ‘belongers’ and non-belongers in the BVI is a more significant division for social and economic interactions than the border between the USVI and BVI. Whereas all of the respondents agreed that the BVI and USVI do not share a national identity, they do acknowledge similarities that result from substantial intermixing of populations and similar cultural heritage that has made them the ‘same people’ with the ‘same background’. Most respondents conveyed a transnational identity for the Virgin Islands with people belonging essentially within the archipelago. Yet, scaled down from this transnationalism is a sense of belonging that is expressed differently on one side of the border than the other. In the USVI, the belonging articulated at the surface is aligned with American ideals and institutions. Below this national rhetoric and symbolism, ‘belonger’ connections link families, settlements, businesses, and other affiliations. In contrast, ‘belonging’ in the BVI is “more complexly articulated, with ‘belongers’ and ‘non-belongers’ living side by side, constructing their own affiliations with place and patrimony, and drawing on a British residual identity” (Konrad and Everitt 2011: 300).

Landscapes of Multiple Identities and Belongingness in the Basque Country

Compounded belongingness in the Basques Country emerges with the confluence of landscapes, ‘languagescapes’, ‘culturescapes’ (Appadurai 1996), and other representations of ‘borderscapes’ (Brambilla 2015). As aspects of language, architecture, social organization, political affiliation, and other cultural attributes all align or overlap each other, belongingness is asserted and sustained through association with plural and hierarchical attributes of bounded and defined Basque culture. Language is primary as a defining element of Basque belongingness in part because it is unique among European languages and restricted to the language region of ‘Euskara’ in the Basque Country (Euskadi). Basque diaspora to other parts of the world have preserved the language to a degree elsewhere but it has not spread within other regions. There is ‘language loyalism’ in Euskadi and elsewhere but ‘language activism’ is centered in the Basque homeland (Urla 2012). Essentially, “speaking Basque is being Basque” (Douglass and Zulaika 2007: 402). Consequently, the border around the space of belonging in the Basque Country is primarily linguistic, and the linguistic boundary is reinforced by Basque language media including music and cinema (Urla 2012). The Basque language is resilient within the ‘national’ space, yet it is also embraced with French or Spanish out of necessity, and, most recently, with English as Basques have become leaders in European multilingual proficiency.

Reinforcing yet dividing this linguistic space of belonging is a division of the space into seven provinces—five coastal and two interior, or four in Spain and three in France—straddling the international boundary (Douglass and Zulaika 2007: 23). Whereas the provincial divisions also align with traditional upland livelihoods of herding, and coastal lifeways associated with the sea and industrial legacies, belongingness in the Basque Country draws from tradition and development in all of the provinces to display cultural continuities of ‘national’ history, literary universe, gastronomy, political resistance, and economic transformation (Woodsworth 2008).

Although understanding how belongingness and borders relate in the Basque Country will require substantially more research, it is evident that beyond the primary importance of language in this regard, there are other contributors to belongingness that also need to be considered. Foremost among these are symbolic places and events associated with these places that engage the ‘common togetherness’ of the Basques (Bray 2004). Many of these are historical landmarks and ambiguous stone relics in the landscape that remind Basques of their ‘deep culture’ (Woodsworth 2008; Douglass and Zulaika 2007). Others are historical and also politically charged with meaning about wars and acts of radical nationalism (Muro 2014). Among these, Gernika or Gernica (Spanish) is a Basque place of significant meaning and territorial continuity. Bombed by the Germans (at the request of the Franco regime) during the Spanish civil war, Gernika/Gernica has been portrayed by Picasso as a symbol of resistance and national identity in his masterpiece Gernica, which now resides in Madrid to convey a more national and international cause (Raento and Watson 2000). Similarly, the Guggenheim Art Museum in Bilbao is viewed by the Basque political elite as ‘indigenous’ to the Basque Country, by Basques more generally as contested by elements of particularistic radicalism, and even more broadly, as an expression of ‘McGuggenization’ or global cultural imperialism (McNeill 2000). Nevertheless, Bilbao becomes viewed as a ‘crucible’ for the negotiation of globalization, and a place for contextualizing regional identity and imagination (Van Houtum and Lagendijk 2001), as the city evolves to encompass ‘national’ and ‘global’ belonging. In order to sustain Basque leadership development in global enterprise, Basques have recognized the importance of social identity influences on leadership, and they have embedded both Basque identity and Spanish language proficiency into their approach (Pittaway, Rivera and Murphy 2005). The Basque sense of ‘international’ is extensive and multi-scalar, and malleable, because it is rooted firmly in belongingness that is well established for Basques yet constantly becoming.

Belongingness and Borders: Some Conclusions

The case studies all address the nature of belongingness in the spaces and places in-between rather than dwell on affirmed belongingness on one side of the border or the other. Affirmed belongingness is theorized readily as aligned and consistent with the whole. This is not the case for belongingness in-between in time and in space; it is either in the process of becoming or in various states of liminality, ambiguity, transition, and relatedness. In Basque Country, the coalescence of boundaries of belonging with language is strong, with political, culinary, architectural, and other borders aligned more consistently and effectively to assert belongingness than in the adjacent Spanish State, and to a lesser degree in the adjacent French State. Although the quest for a Basque ‘state’ has consumed much political energy and cost lives, Basques now live effectively in a space in-between where an extensive sense of belongingness prevails in a multi-scalar expression of Basque identity that extends from local communities to transnational affiliations. Belongingness is formed, yet, consistent with the Basque embrace of the transnational, belongingness remains becoming. In Kokang, we find that the degree of belongingness, within the transnational space, is greater for the wealthy elite. In fact, Kokang without money and status belong only in Kokang territory where they are obliged to return after menial work in China, and even after hostilities have destroyed their homes. As the space in-between is impacted by both internal and external forces, and evolves, it becomes a space of opportunity for some residents but a space of confinement for others. Belongingness appears to be scaled both vertically and laterally. This multi-dimensional scaling is apparent in the Virgin Islands as well. Here ‘belongers’ are actually identified and named within a transient bordered space where tourists, foreign landowners, returnees, and businessmen from the region all interact and mix. In the British Virgin Islands, ‘belongers’ have legal rights and they enjoy the pedigree of tradition and lineage within the bordered space, and even across the boundary in the adjacent American Virgin Islands. Their belongingness is firmly anchored in their ancestral space, yet it may extend beyond this space into a transnational space as they link with family and other relations beyond the border. This transcendence of the border is viewed as a human essence in establishing belongingness, independence and status (Nadler 2018). The transcendental and emerging properties of the Salish Sea ‘borderlands’ concept are built around an Indigenous core of belonging, aligned with a natural, environmentally sensitive, and physical reality. Belongingness is internally consistent and uncomplicated.

Yet, as we have learned in this exploration of belongingness and borders, the nature of belonging in spaces in-between is rarely consistent and uncomplicated. Considerable research needs to address how spaces in-between become spaces of belongingness. Creating belongingness may become increasingly important in globalization as more and different spaces emerge in-between polities and peoples. How can we address and mediate a hyphenated sense of belonging? How do we avoid increasing marginalization and affirm group belongingness in foreign or shared space? How is belongingness situated in relation to the provisional bordering of territory through occupation, and within legal frameworks of bordering ownership? Is there a sequence, process, or evolution of borders of occupation, ownership, and belongingness? Belongingness is an essential human fiber necessary to connect individuals and groups to the space that they occupy, and to the territory that they own and inhabit. As these spaces, these territories, become increasingly in-between and becoming in a more fluid and mobile world, it is necessary to comprehend and explain the nature and articulation of belongingness and borders.

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Urban Borders, Urban Neighbourhoods and

a Cognitive Approach

James W. Scott

Introduction

The study of borders within society has progressed from a largely descriptive, state-centric endeavour to a highly differentiated and multidisciplinary research field (Diener and Hagen 2012; Lamont 2002). Among other disciplines, social geography, anthropology, ethnography, sociology, political science and the humanities have explored the centrality of borders in conditioning social reality. Perhaps most significantly, contemporary border studies have provided detailed analyses of socio-political borders as a nexus of power, identity, culture and historical memory (Popescu 2012; Andersen, Klatt and Sandberg. 2012; Brambilla et. al. 2015). This has been coupled with a concern for the impacts of social and political borders on specific groups and individuals (Haselsberger 2014; Newman 2006).

While there now exists broad consensus that borders are socially produced phenomena, we have tended to forget that borders are most fundamentally about creating social space in order to interpret the world. Without borders, relational thinking about the world would be hardly possible. Boundedness is hence an essential element of space-society relationships; borders are central to cognitive functions that stabilise ways of knowing the world. For the purpose of this discussion, the term border (rather than boundary) will be used in a non-linear but socio-spatial understanding. Moreover, once we have dropped the reductive requirement of linearity, we can more clearly understand borders as the creation of social, functional and environmental distinctions that resonate emotionally. In terms of theoretical debate, linking borders to cognition can widen our understandings of space-society relations, for example by gleaning insights from a number of seemingly eclectic sources, such as architecture, neuroscience and cultural and political psychology. Capturing the cognitive complexity of border-making processes is not the intention of this brief essay. However, in relating border-making to the creation of urban place distinctions, we can link cognitive processes to social communication and the materiality of urban space. Precedents for this line of investigation have been established by architects such as Harry Francis Mallgrave (2015) who suggest that built environments are not simply architectural products or aesthetic artefacts but are part of affective social relationships and embodied cognition. In other words, border-making and place-making are closely linked, they create knowledges of place that serve to distinguish places from each other, thus producing a sense of orientation and belonging.

To paraphrase Maturana (1980), bordering is about creating categories of distinction and relationality between spaces thus producing, reinforcing and/or transforming place ideas. Moreover, the idea that borders are products of complex cognition is not a trivial or strictly academic question; as will be discussed below, it is closely related to issues of place identity and a sense of belonging. Border-making is therefore a cognitive process that is ontological, political, as well as emotional. Understanding bordering as a cognitive process puts emphasis on the social significance of place and can be linked, for example, to cultural and political psychologies of identity (see Hopkins and Dixon 2006). The centrality of the built environment, and thus of place, to feelings of well-being is, moreover, captured by the concept of ontological security in the form of habits, routines and environments that stabilise a sense of self and group identity (Kent 2015; Jabareen, Eizenberg and Zilberman 2017).

Within this context, the concept of enaction, in which perceptions of the world are constituted through embodied action in the world (Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991), provides a valuable link between internal interpretations of the environment, cultural influences, and the social creation of meaning (Popova 2014). Rosch’s (2017) elaborations on enaction as a form of mutual participatory sense-making support the idea that borders (for example, within society and cities) emerge in the interaction between imagined and experienced space. Furthermore, they provide evidence as to how the making of borders is not only a result of social relations but also more specifically a product of complex social cognition and the social communication of distinctive place ideas. I suggest that the enaction approach can be adapted by relating mutual participatory sense-making to the active creation of place identities through physical transformations and cultural appropriations of the urban landscape.

Generally, I suggest that borders are meaning-makers par excellence. Specifically, the emergence of borders will be related to the collective and intersubjective creation of place narratives as reflected in representations of urban change. In the vignettes that will be developed below, urban borders will be identified not as discrete socio-spatial divisions, but as narratives that express specific place relationalities vis à vis wider urban contexts. Borders are hence created when relational and distinctive attributes of neighbourhoods in flux become actionable knowledges of urban place – both individual and shared. In terms of my concrete methodological appropriation of enaction, this article takes its cues primarily from humanistic geography. Developing an approach elaborated by Scott and Sohn (2018), examples of urban border-making will be gleaned from Berlin and Warsaw. The focus is not on cognitive mappings of urban borders as such. Rather, border-making will be revealed as socially communicated narratives of place distinction – stories and knowledges of place that reflect embodied experience of place specificity and relationality with regard to wider urban contexts.

What I therefore suggest is that borders are being narrated around specific distinctive characteristics of place, of ‘thereness’, that exhibit both continuity and change, connecting place heritage to the present context of ‘post-Millennial’ physical and socio-cultural transformation. By way of conclusion, I argue that the utility of interpreting urban spaces and places in this fashion lies in understanding why borders within society are created and how they become evident in the labelling and categorisation of places. This perspective also helps us understand the significance of place and why cities and their neighbourhoods are continuously appropriated and re-appropriated in social, cultural and political terms. As borders tell stories, border-making itself involves narratives of change and continuity that can reveal much about how places function - or fail to function - as communities.

Borders Studies and the ‘Why’ Question

Finnish geographer Jussi Laine (2016: 467) writes that:

“... Borders are products of a social and political negotiation of space: they frame social and political action; help condition how societies and individuals shape their strategies and identities; and are re- and deconstructed through various institutional and discursive practices at different levels and by different actors”.

As Laine’s statement suggests, contemporary border studies champion a holistic and interdisciplinary view of how borders within human societies are constantly made and remade. Having transcended the limits of traditional state-centred, geopolitical and ethnographic understanding of borders, the research field now posits the making of borders as a process embedded in everyday life. The evolution of border studies as a research field indicates, moreover, that questions of power, social relations and spatial scale dominate contemporary debate (Agnew 2008). Contemporary border studies recognise the fluid and changing nature of borders, their increasing sophistication, and the complexity of border-making processes by different agents (Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015; Casaglia and Laine 2017). Consequently, one major interdisciplinary paradigm in the research field is that of bordering, or the more fundamental process of creating socio-spatial distinctions at various scales by multiple actors (Van Houtum and Van Naerssen 2002; Pötzsch 2015). To study processes of bordering is to investigate the everyday construction of borders, among others through ideology, cultural mediation, discourses, political institutions, attitudes and agency. This paradigm brings diverse forms of social, cultural and economic life into a unified frame of analysis and furthermore indicates that borders are not only semi-permanent, formal institutions but are also non-finalisable processes.

Despite this already very rich theoretical and conceptual background, I suggest that border studies can be advanced by linking the making of borders more explicitly to psychological processes. Moreover, I will attempt to demonstrate that the cognitive nature of bordering is manifested in framings of urban places and neighbourhoods: place ideas create categories of distinction and relationality that shape shared knowledges of (urban) space. Per Gustafson (2001:13) has observed that: “A meaningful place must appear as an identifiable, distinguishable territorial unit. Distinction is a basic feature of human (and social) cognition [...] and is a matter of categorisation, ascription of similarities and differences, and the drawing of boundaries.” These ideas merit further development and my ambition is underscored by the observation that while border studies have focused on the ways in which borders are constructed, on the ‘how’ of borders, little attention has been paid to basic ‘why’ questions above and beyond more obvious power and security related rationales. In terms of the symbolic communication of borders and their significance, the concept of borderscapes perhaps comes closest to capturing the link between cognitive processes and the construction of socio-cultural borders. Among others, Brambilla (2015) and Nyman (2018) argue that borderscapes are contexts where cultural appropriations and social contestations become visible via a broad repertory of communicative means and strategies. As Brambilla (2015) herself states in an interview, borderscapes consist of spatial practices in the sense of Michel de Certeau, and thus allow for the abandonment of essentialised ideas of political borders and an understanding of contemporary borders “as continually performed and (re)composed by sets of contingent performances revealing their dynamic character”.[1] And yet, the borderscape is both a reflection and re-appropriation of an existing border context and thus gains social significance as a political project of contestation (Grundy-Warr and Rajaram 2007).

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Arguably, the cognitive nature of border-making has been neglected in the interest of political commitments and theoretical and ethical questions that problematise the wider impacts of borders. Along similar lines, Jeff Malpas (2012: 228) has criticised what he sees as a neglect of ontological questions relating to space and place in favour a focus on spatial politics that involve the “theorisation of spatial rhetoric and of spatial imagining.” In his development of the concept of place, Cresswell (2004) has voiced similar concerns, drawing attention to unproductive antagonisms between Place as something essential to existence (‘Being in the World’) and Place as a product of negotiating spatial relationships (‘Social Construct’) when in fact both understandings mutually contribute to place construction.

If borderscapes contribute to a more complex understanding of how borders are constituted within society, the why of borders is basically about the creation of meaning. In one fundamental way, the why question I pursue here can be answered outright: we create borders, individually and as a society, as a means to create a sense of everyday reality through attributing meaning to specific spaces and relating these spaces to each other. Bordering thus also proceeds through cognitive processes though which individual self-identifications with certain territories, cultures and political systems takes place. Consequently, place, both as a concept and as concrete areas within cities, represents a fundamental link between the psychic and the physical, between practice and representation. In particular, I will argue here that urban bordering can be situated as an everyday practice central to organising social life. Moreover, to paraphrase Relph (2008), this is a pragmatic notion of border that reflects human necessities. It is bounding within space that makes a sense of place possible (Tuan 1977). At the same time, creating a sense of boundedness in no way suggests exclusionary closure. As Jeff Malpas (2012: 238) writes: “The boundary is that which, inasmuch as it establishes the possibility of openness and emergence, also establishes a certain oriented locatedness.”

Borders, Enaction and Meaning-Making

The discussion of complex cognition is rich and defies easy characterisation, but in very general terms we speak here of mental processes that create new information out of existing knowledge in order to effect action and ground decision-making (Sternberg and Ben-Zeev 2001; Knauf et. al. 2010). However, while cognition involves functional information processing internal to the human brain, it is also influenced by interactions between the environment and the human body. The architect Harry Francis Mallgrave (2015: 22) writes that “Our brains, bodies and environments (natural and cultural) are no longer seen as entities to be independently investigated, but as highly dynamic and interacting systems connected with each other biologically, ecologically and socially.” As such, understanding cognition as “embodied action” (Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1993: xx) is a highly salient starting point for understanding the significance of socially constructed borders in everyday life. Through embodied cognition we code or traduce environmental stimuli into action potentials; we act out and simulate how to interact with material objects. Moreover, our environments are selectively created depending on our abilities to interact with the world.

In a foreword to a book on autopoiesis, co-authored with Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana (1980: xxii) writes: “The fundamental cognitive operation that an observer performs is the operation of distinction. By means of this operation the observer specifies a unity as an entity distinct from a background and a background as the domain in which an entity is distinguished.” Implicit in this statement is the propensity of the observer to establish a border that separates an entity from its background. Moreover, the operation of distinction - and thus the establishment of borders - is more than a functional process, it is also emotional and relational. Hence, the production of actionable information is influenced by emotional states. Emotions work to integrate cognitive activity and are a source of meaning rather than an antithesis of rational thought. However, emotions are not wholly internal but are relational as the observer is an active participant in a “sentient and responsive world” (Robinson 2015: 45). Feelings, as patterns of relationships, only have meaning in relation to persons and things lying outside the self (Bateson 1973). Burkitt echoes this (2002: 151-152): “…our emotions are an active response to a relational context: to other bodies with which we are related and that respond to our actions in particular ways.”

Cognition, emotion and relationality are central elements of enaction. As developed by Varela, Thompson and Rosch (1993), enaction is concept that perhaps best characterises the link between cognitive processes and border-making. To quote Rosch (2017: xxvii): “the lived body, lived mind and lived environment are all (…) part of the same process, the process by which one enacts the world.” This notion captures the idea of bordering as embodied social interaction and a mutual participatory sense-making.

Linking Enaction to Humanistic Geography:

Place Ideas as Border-Making Processes

Enaction forms part of a methodological strategy that can bridge gaps between rationality and affect, socially mediated and physically experienced realities as well as the cognitive and the socially constructed. Cognitive agents create new knowledge of the world “by making sense of (their) interactions with the world around it and, in the process, enlarging (their) repertoire of effective actions” (Vernon et al. 2015: 13). Cognitive and humanistic geography have traditionally studied subjective interpretations of the physical world, such as landscapes, and connections between society, mind and the environment (Ley 1981). In Yi-Fu Tuan’s (1977) geographies of space and place, cognition reveals itself in the knowing of space. As Tuan (1979: 388) writes, “The study of space, from the humanistic perspective, is thus the study of a people’s spatial feelings and ideas in the stream of experience.”

Tuan’s perspective resonates with psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu’s (1985) insight that space is created by linking the psychic to the physical, through interaction with the material environment, by moving in space, through appropriations of space and by attributing to space specific meaning. Moreover, the reciprocal process of experiencing space and endowing it with meaning is not structurally predetermined but inherently guided by feelings and affect. This squares, moreover, with Heideggerian ideas of being in the world (Dasein) and philosophical positions that privilege ontological questions of space and boundedness (Malpas 2012). Humanistic geography and enaction also share a concern with the intersubjective making of meaning and thus with social, cultural and environmental contexts of interaction where individual subjectivities create shared understandings of the world. And indeed, Tuan’s (1991) narrative-descriptive approach to studying the creation of place can be closely linked to participatory sense-making (de Jaegher 2018), narrativity (Popova 2014) and other elements of the intersubjective turn in cognitive science. The symbolic communication of borders and place ideas has been echoed in the work of humanistic and urban geographers such as Deborah Martin (2003), who have related the establishment of neighbourhood boundaries to cognition and interaction with the physical environment.

In this discussion, I argue that borders need to be investigated more explicitly as part of the intersubjective creation of meaning as expressed, for example, in the form of signs, codes and ways of communicating information about the environment. A major insight of alternative planning movements in the 1960s is that a deeper understanding of perception and social communication of urban images is required in order to craft a more contextually sensitive approach to urban planning and redevelopment. As Kevin Lynch (1960), Christopher Alexander (1977) and others demonstrated, those who live in cities actively and continuously make borders between their own neighbourhoods, everyday action spaces and other parts of the city. These mental borders are loaded with places images, material points of reference within the urban landscape, feelings and value judgements. Ted Relph (1976) has argued that a sense of place elicits, almost instinctively, recognition and specific associations. Moreover, Relph (2008: 321) suggests that a pragmatic perspective allows for the development of a notion of place that is bounded, yet open and dynamic and that “(…) combines an appreciation for a locality’s uniqueness with a grasp of its relationship to regional and global contexts.

The ontological significance of borders and place is expressed, among others, in rootedness, familiarity and through supporting a sense of being in the world. However, place-making does not necessarily involve ‘linearity’ and discrete spatial divisions. Borders in society exist insofar as they emerge from embodied cognition and socially transmitted knowledge about the world. By extension, urban places and their boundedness are products of socially mediated ideas and practices, such as appropriations, attributions and representations, that link bodies with the physical, the emotive with the built environment (Scott and Sohn 2018).

On this view, therefore, urban borders and places are a product of human intellect and social uses of space in which formal and informal practices of organising everyday life mutually reinforce each other. They also reflect a need for rootedness and a sense of place (Relph 1976) and in providing a sense of ontological security, establish conditions for social and political agency (Malpas 1999). A pragmatic approach also emphasises the importance of everyday life and practical concerns in shaping place. The practical significance of place as ‘rootedness’ is evident in the work of Pratt (1999) and Arreola (2012) and many others who have documented migrant place-making in new urban settings. The centrality of rootedness in everyday life is also very much apparent when people must cope with its absence, for example in the aftermath of natural disasters (Prewitt, Diaz and Dayal 2008). Health studies have documented the importance of attachment to place in promoting a sense of well-being and providing psycho-social support in times of stress (Boon 2014).

Borders and Cognitive Geographies of Urban Neighbourhoods

The (re)creation of urban borders will now be addressed with two brief cases as an example of mutual participatory sense-making. In the examples that will be elaborated below, borders emerge as elements of place narratives that give meaning to and that are reflected in representations of specific areas (see Egger 2012). This is, admittedly, an unorthodox way of conceptualising borders, but the point is that borders cannot exist in spaces bereft of meaning or social significance; borders bound meaning, and only in certain cases as discrete lines. In this treatment, borders take shape as ideas, as spatial knowledge that creates socio-spatial difference through attribution and representation (Scott and Sohn 2018). Attribution confirms that urban borders emerge in social practices of distinguishing and differentiating and in the creation of shared understandings of place. Attribution is associated here with cognitive processes of producing boundedness by associating specific qualities with place. Representation is expressed in the creation of place narratives, stories that construct a specific socio-spatial identity as well as express the relational character of place identity within a wider urban situation. Moreover, attributions and representations give evidence of the intersubjective nature of these transformations in which contestations of place consolidate the social embedding of place borders. In other words, while it is not in any way suggested that these narratives are ‘monolithic’, their significance as border-making practice lies in the production of shared meanings of specific places that elicit recognition and mutual comprehension. Institutionalising place borders and place ideas is a recursive and iterative process; it involves the everyday practice of creating, confirming and re-creating socio-spatial distinctions. In some cases, this can involve the intersubjective invention of entirely new, and often informal place names, such as the Kreuzkölln Neighbourhood in Berlin (Scott and Sohn 2018).

The methodology employed here is experimental in nature. As indicated above, Yi-Fu Tuan’s (1991) method is a point of departure, and it is relatively short journey from his narrative-descriptive approach to understanding how place is made to enactive cognition as expressed in co-constructed narrativity (Popova 2014). The sources used reflect processes of appropriation and representation in the narration of place ideas – specifically, these are perspectives on neighbourhood change, architectural design, urban development processes, cultural change as well as critical commentary of these transformation processes. This approach demonstrates how intersubjective place narratives are being constructed around interactions with and experiences of urban transformation and their specific social and spatial manifestations.

The method involves content analysis and the curation of place ideas expressed by residents, stakeholders, visitors and users of the locales more generally. Following Fotopolou and Couldry (2015), curation involves weaving various individual narratives into a set of consistent themes. Through the curation process, place ideas around which various narratives converge can be identified. In terms of processes of change we find that in both cases the creation of new cultures of diversity, new spaces of economic, cultural activity as well as concerns with gentrification and its impacts are important elements. The narratives highlight place characteristics as well as compare, or rather relate, these characteristics to those of other areas in the two cities. The borders that are thus (re)created result not from linear divisions real or imagined, but from the spatialisation of place difference – in other words, in the narration of a specific ‘there’. These place narratives are structured in symmetric fashion according to three interlinked subthemes: 1) references to historical legacies and place traditions, 2) narratives of change and contestation, 3) narratives of place uniqueness based on distinctive qualities and relationality.

As it is experimental in nature, this discussion of bordering limits itself to a rather small selection of online sources and insights from background research. The sources that were used here represent international press sources, local online platforms that specifically narrate neighbourhood stories as well as sources that represent both ‘expatriate’ and long-term resident perspectives. Accordingly, I have restricted my results to a few generalisations of place ideas that nevertheless provide a picture of how place uniqueness and relationality are communicated. The potential for much more extensive and thematically complex research is, course, virtually limitless.

Berlin: Wedding, a Narrative of Diversity and Tradition

Place narratives of contemporary Wedding include an emphasis of diversity and a sense of authenticity. Wedding has acquired a place identity as an exceptional area in that it represents both socio-economic and socio-ethnic continuity and change. It offers alternative cultural spaces and lifestyles at affordable levels/rents. Wedding is however still home to more traditional populations who have not (yet) been displaced by gentrification. It is above all, the mix and the diversity of Wedding that is at the root of narratives of place uniqueness within Berlin and that distinguishes it from other inner-city areas.

Wedding is part of the Mitte Bezirk (District) of Berlin. It is a traditional working-class area and former industrial centre that housed major firms such as AEG, Osram and Rotaprint before WWII. Today, Wedding remains a relatively poor area, with high unemployment and almost 36% of the population dependent on welfare payments. Foreigners make up 58 % of the population, including German ethnic immigrants. Wedding is thus one of the most ethnically diverse localities of Berlin. The multicultural atmosphere is highly visible on the streets, in the types of shops and services flourishing in the area and bilingual shop signs. Similarly to the Warsaw case presented here, new place narratives of Wedding build on an awareness of its historical heritage Wedding’s image as an up-and-coming working class area[2] references the area’s historical development, and traditional left-wing activism. It is a place where local Berlin traditions have been maintained despite Berlin’s overall rapid pace of change. At the same time, Wedding embodies gradual cultural shifts in terms of an increasingly diverse population. According to the bloggers Mick ter Reehorst and Natalia Smolentce:

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“What was once a working-class neighbourhood called ’Red Wedding’ is now a booming and culturally diverse area. Compared to other Berlin neighbourhoods, Wedding is relatively untouched by gentrification, making it one of the city’s most authentic areas. The true spirit of Berlin is still alive here.”[3]

3 Meet my Hood: Wedding, Berlin, https://cafebabel.com/en/article/meet-my-hood-wedding-berlin-5ae00be2f723b35a145e8079/

In the past, Wedding and other Berlin inner-city neighbourhoods have been subject to highly sensationalised debates regarding multiculturalism (which to some is an ugly word), ethnic diversity and their association with social dereliction. Officially, Wedding is home to the most deprived neighbourhoods and the highest concentration of socio-economic and public safety problems in Berlin (Bezirksamt Mitte 2016). Wedding’s negative reputation as a centre of social tensions, criminality, youth unemployment and dereliction is thus a constant in the narration of transformation. As Klein (2015) suggests, invisible borders restrict mobility between Wedding and more prosperous neighbouring areas: many fear that Wedding is ‘unsafe’, yet others, such as one visitor, proclaims that “yes, it is dirtier here and at first glance perhaps more bleak in places. Still, if I want to experience Berlin and find authenticity, a simple everyday approach to life, then I have to go to Wedding” (ibid). Nevertheless, in contemporary place ideas of Wedding, its past stigmatisation as a ‘problem area’ is giving way to more positive narratives based on social integration, cultural diversity and community-building.

For example, a ‘positive’ distinguishing narrative is that Wedding is ugly but authentic – it has been largely spared the gentrification and upscaling that have transformed many central neighbourhoods in Berlin.4 Such narratives of uniqueness are not specific to ‘foreign’ observers, as more locally based observations indicate. Now, positive imaginaries of Wedding’s neighbourhoods in which the mix of ‘working class’ and ethnic diversity is understood as an asset, are present in traditional and social media. Wedding is therefore known as a place that, unlike the showcase renewal of Berlin neighbourhoods such Prenzlauer Berg, has escaped many of the socio-economic and cultural ravages of gentrification.5 In a weblog of 2 November 2016, Culturetrip Sarah Coughlan, writes:

4http://www.petrazlatevska.com/nice-day-for-a-white-wedding-berlins-ugliest-but-most-charming-suburb-2/

5 http://needleberlin.com/2013/08/31/gentrification-alert-wedding/

“In a city so overrun with Kreuzkölln hype and Mitte types, north Berlin’s Wedding often gets overlooked. For travellers lucky enough to find themselves in this neck of the woods, we have a run-down of the best things to see and do with a focus on the area’s rich history”.[6]

6https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/7-historical-things-to-do-and-see-in-wedding/

A number of blogs indicate that Wedding is being misread by Berliners and visitors alike. In a piece published 13 February 2017, culturtrip.com announces that stereotypes about Wedding abound that should not be believed:

“Despite Wedding being perceived as the hapless and unsuccessful younger brother of Berlin’s boroughs, it has surprised those who live and venture there with its local gems, indisputable charm, and untouched reprieves. (…) it seems Wedding has been sorely misjudged – it’s irrefutably a microcosm of all Berlin has to offer”.[7]

7 https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/berlin-neighborhoods-6-stereotypes-about-wedding-you-shouldnt-believe/

Other websites, blogs and media reports outright praise Wedding as a meccas for students[8], Berlin’s ‘hippest district’[9] or ‘hottest new neighbourhood.[10] For example, a major UK newspaper has celebrated Wedding as “an up-and-coming neighbourhood.”[11] Expat, business-oriented narrations of Wedding are particularly revealing: Sophie-Claire Hoeller takes us on a tour of the “hottest new neighbourhood” in which she extols Wedding’s “shabby charm and special flair as multicultural but authentic neighbourhood”.[12] At the same time, and with consideration of expat anxieties, Hoeller warns about the ‘roughness’ of the place; Wedding is, after all, not the wealthiest part of Berlin. Perhaps the most unique feature of Wedding that receives attention is its apparent ability to thrive as a highly diverse place. In the Arte Info website blogger Nathalie Daiber describes the profile of a ‘Multikulti-Wedding’in which:

8https://www.morgenpost.de/schueler/article104973341/Der-Wedding-wird-zum-Kiez-fuer-Studenten.html/

9 https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/11-reasons-why-you-should-visit-wedding-berlins-hippest-district/

10 https://www.businessinsider.com/berlins-hottest-new-neighborhood-2015-8?IR=T

11 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/destinations/article-5718815/Guide-Wedding-district-Berlin.html

12 Business Insider Blog, Berlin 24 August 2015, https://www.businessinsider.com/berlins-hottest-new-neighborhood-2015-8?IR=T

“(..), Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, Lower Saxonians, Swabians, and other refugees live here quite peacefully together. Might this be a model for all Germany’s future? Decision-makers at least should have a closer look at the people here.” [13]

13 https://info.arte.tv/de/wedding-portraet-des-multikulti-berlins

At the same time, there are tensions between Wedding and the ‘outside world’ (ICR 2018, p. 43). The spectre of gentrification and rapid neighbourhood change are constant subthemes in narratives of Wedding’s transformation. Since 2015, and primarily due to rapidly increasing housing prices in the central city, students, artists and small entrepreneurs have discovered Wedding and in some parts (Schillerkiez neighbourhood is generally mentioned) the area has begun to resemble popular areas in gentrified neighbourhoods. According to Guthmann Real Estate:

“Berlin Wedding is located close to the city centre and expected to be an upcoming district in the next years. What was once a neighbourhood for the working class has become an industrial, modern district for service companies, science and research today.”[14]

14https://guthmann.estate/en/market-report/berlin/wedding/

In contrast to this upbeat story of progress, such change is seen to represent a threat to Wedding’s identity and unique culture of diversity (ICR 2018). The internet hyping of Wedding that adds to perceived coolness is also reflected in new cultural and gastronomic attractions such as the new Silent Green ‘Kulturquartier’[15] that many find alienating.[16] In this way, Wedding is also narrated as the next potential target of large-scale gentrification, a process that would threaten Wedding as a model of diversity.[17]

15https://www.silent-green.net

16 The issue of ‘UFO’ projects appropriating local public spaces was addressed in conversation with members of the Pankstrasse Neighbourhood Management team (Quartiersmanagement Pankstrasse) in March 2018.

17 https://checkpointcharlie.cfjlab.fr/2017/02/26/gentrification-a-berlin-au-tour-de-wedding/

Warsaw:

Wola as Postindustrial Urban Frontier and Memoryscape

The Warsaw District of Wola has gained visibility as a hub of business development, spectacular architecture, residential growth and as an area where elements of a new urban economy are emerging. It is also known for demolition of older buildings, speculation and gentrification. Wola’s place identity is moreover very much rooted in history. The area is known and remembered as a traditional area of industry and working-class neighbourhoods and its history is indelibly marked by World War II, resistance against German occupation and the 1944 Warsaw uprising. Historical sites in Wola that document its industrial past and the ravages of war.18 Wola’s image as a new urban frontier thus co-exists with its historical significance - what Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone de Iacobis characterise as an urban ‘memoryscape’.19 Kuciewicz and de Iacobis argue that Wola is “one of the most heterogeneous (and vexed) spaces in Warsaw (...) a place where many temporalities co-exist”. This multi-layered sense of place is reflected in different narratives that identify and thus border Wola as a space of contrasts within Warsaw. Magdalena Ziółkowska, a resident of Wola and photographer, has captured the ‘extraordinary character’ of Wola in a series of photographs entitled ‘A Wola full of contrasts’: “(…) where you can find a full architectural cross-section - from the oldest tenements, through construction from the 60s and 70s, then blocks from 1997, to the modernity of Warsaw Spire and other office buildings.”[20]

18https://warsawlocal.com/discover-warsaw-wola-district-edition/

19 Kuciewicz, K and de Iacobis, S. [3.2] Memoryscape in Wola, Footloose Warsaw. Towards a Walkable Urban Theory, 28th INURA Conference, June 2018, https://inura18.wordpress.com/trips/

20 Kamienice w ruinie, tuż obok szklane wieżowce. Tak zmienia się Warszawa (Tenements in ruins, right next to glass skyscrapers. This is how Warsaw is changing), http://metrowarszawa.gazeta.pl/metrowarszawa/56,141635,21371302,wola-pelna-kontrastow.html

During the period of state socialism, Wola was an area in which industrial and residential uses co-existed; much of the area remained underdeveloped after WWII ruins were demolished, After the collapse of state socialism in 1989, Wola’s development was quite slow and as the new downtown in central Warsaw began to take form and expand in the 1990s, Wola was bypassed, marking an urban borderland very different from the rapidly growing new employment centres in Central Warsaw. Wola’s transformation to a new urban and urbanistic frontier was perhaps inevitable given the growing demand for housing and office space, but the completion of the East-West metro line in 2011 was a decisive event. In the eyes of developers at least, Wola has emerged from a certain functionalist facelessness to a place full of dynamism that gives Wola a reputation as the ‘new business heart of Warsaw.’[21] As one Polish real estate investment website claims:

21https://www.bazabiur.pl/reports/destination-wola-138.pdf

“Bordering the western fringes of the city centre, historically-speaking it’s been largely viewed as working class urban sprawl. Now touted as one of Warsaw’s most dynamic areas, one doesn’t need to look too far back to appreciate the scale of this achievement: even as little as ten years ago, Wola was perhaps better noted for its derelict factories, unused plots and bleak accommodation. Dishevelled and decrepit, it felt like a quietly forgotten no-man’s land.” [22]

22 https://www.property-krakow.com/news/the-district-of-wola-from-an-urban-sprawl-to-an-area-of-dynamic-investment .

Wola’s new image has been actively narrated by image-makers par excellence – the real estate developers who extol the quality, distinctiveness and aesthetic inventiveness of new office buildings, commercial and residential complexed that have replaced old industrial and empty spaces in the area. Examples of this are the Warsaw Spire, which has become famous as Poland’s tallest building and one of its most flamboyant business hub landmarks.[23] It is also an area of Warsaw where a new, more sustainable and aesthetic quality of urban development is emerging with a rich mix of urban functions and activities. [24] The relational character of Wola’s place image (identity) partly results from bordering it as a new form of more sustainable urbanism and urban growth in marked contradistinction to other dynamic areas of Warsaw, such as the much criticised Służewiec business district which is plagued by accessibility problems, monotonous architecture and a lack of amenities for a large working population. Służewiec is popularly referred to as ‘Mordor’, as a poorly planned and exploitative business quarter almost as hellish as the dark Lord Souron’s abode in the Lord of the Rings books.[25] The district provides more than 100,000 jobs and thus generates enormous amounts of traffic congestion. In the Spring of 2016, the US conglomerate Stanley Black and Decker announced it was leaving Służewiec for the District of Wola and the flashy new Proximo office building located near the Rondo Dazyńskigo metro station.[26] Other US firms have followed suit, preferring the accessibility and amenities of Wola over other areas of the city.[27] More than just an anti-Mordor, Wola has the veneer of a future smart city, and large-scale developments either competed or planned often emphasise sustainable transportation, a jobs-housing balance and environmentally sound working as well as with new cool places for urban elites.[28]

23https://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/warsaw-spire-long-road-polands-tallest-office-building/

24 .

25 See footnote 16

26 Stanley Black & Decker to move to Proximo office building in Warsaw, Office finder.pl, 7 April 2016, https://www.officefinder.pl/press-releases-stanley-black-decker-to-move-to-proximo-office-building-in-warsaw.html

27 US giants to open offices in Warsaw’s Wola district, Poland-in, 06.06.2018 https://polandin.com/37530935/us-giants-to-open-offices-in-warsaws-wola-district. See also the Wall Street Journal article https://www.wsj.com/articles/warsaws-wola-district-lures-big-u-s-companies-1528204313

28 For example, Skanska’s projects located in Wola, https://www.skanska.pl/en-us/about-skanska/media/press-releases/203598/Skanskas-buildings-will-become-even-more-sustainable; the Metropoint Apartments, which are touted as the first residential investment in Poland to be recognized with a high level of sustainability certification based on the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), https://www.asbud.com/en/news/metropoint-apartments-first-residential-investment-poland-be-recognized-such-high-level-breeam; the Warsaw Hub complex www.warsawhub.com; as well as the ‘best’ apartment development, the Dzielnica 19 complex which will produce 1700 new apartments. https://www.19dzielnica.pl/en/19-dzielnica-development/

As land markets in Warsaw heat up, Wola is portrayed as more successful in integrating housing, work, business, and high-quality buildings, although not to everyone’s delight. Gentrification and privatisation have exposed distinct faultlines.[29] Critical voices see the spectacular skyline emerging in Wola as a futher example of a ‘New Metropolitan Mainstream epidemic’ which is subordinating Warsaw’s (and Poland’s) economy to the dictates of international investment capital.[30] And indeed, Wola, having been bypassed by the first waves of central business district expansion, in now experiencing a rapid process of direct gentrification through an influx of middle-class workers. As such, reprivatisation, property restitution and evictions also impact on Wola’s place identity. Piotr Ciszewski of the Warsaw Tenants Association writes that Wola was once a famous and politically active workers’ district (‘Red Wola’) where social housing experiments were realised in the early 20th Century. Today, residents of buildings scheduled for reprivatisation have partly successfully resisted gentrification trends.[31]

29 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/dec/18/stole-city-soul-warsaw-reprivatisation-chaos

30 See City Portrait Warsaw: From Post-Communist to Corporate. How Neo-liberal Forces are Shaping the Warsaw Urban Space, http://www.euroreg.uw.edu.pl/dane/web_euroreg_researches_files/1567/_nmm_warsaw_city_portrait_web.pdf

31 Cisewski, P. [2.4] Property restitution (Wola), Footloose Warsaw. Towards a Walkable Urban Theory 28th INURA Conference, June 2018, https://inura18.wordpress.com/trips/

Conclusions

This essay has interpreted urban borders not as discrete divisions with cities but in terms of specific narratives of place. The assumption is that borders, in their most basic form, involve the creation of distinctions that make the conceptualisation of a ‘here’ vis a vis a ‘there’ possible. Place borders are not simply physical features of the townscape, they result out of embodied interaction with the urban environment. They also express and communicate appropriations of urban space, marking place-making practices that contribute to everyday socio-spatial knowledge. Place borders make a sense of place possible and, as historically contingent social institutions, are part of the “becoming of individual consciousness and thereby inseparable from biography formation and the becoming of place” (Pred 1984: 292).

These two very condensed stories of urban place symbolise, in their own individual ways, the shifting socio-cultural geographies of Berlin and Warsaw and the differentiation of inner-city spaces, expressing, for example, spaces of cultural possibility and lifestyle alternatives as well as political contestation. The bordering stories are of course wholly different ones: in the case of Wedding we find a unique culture of diversity co-existing with traditional Berlin lifestyles; Wola, on the other hand, is a story of rapid and dramatic post-industrial development that contrasts with the historical memory of working-class Warsaw and the struggle against German occupation. The sources of place narratives are also quite distinct, reflecting very different processes and velocities of urban change. In the case of Wedding, a socially oriented ‘bottom-up’ view from the neighbourhoods themselves prevailed while Wola was predominantly narrated as physical-structural change by stakeholders in and observers of the urban and economic modernisation of the area. In both cases, gentrification is a constant subtext.

The theoretical ambitions of this contribution have been to associate cognition and enaction with a human geography perspective on everyday processes of place-making, assuming that this might enhance our knowledge of why, and not only how, borders are created and re-created within society. The approach is thus informed by a consideration of border-making as essential to human flourishing and thus with an ontological as well pragmatic concern with the attribution of meaning to the built environment. Moreover, as Wedding and Wola indicate, continuities of place identity are not incompatible with processes of change, indeed they often complement each other. Above and beyond these ambitions, a wider significance of the approach used here could lie in identifying factors that promote positive identifications with place and that strengthen or potentially threaten multicultural conviviality. Moreover, bordering place is not of necessity a retrograde process of exclusion, identitary thinking nor a deeply conservative impulse. Rather, it expresses a need to create and sustain liveable places that provide a sense of anchoring.

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Everyday Psychological Boundaries: Evidence from the Ceuta-Tétuan Borderland

Alicia Español

This essay provides and analysis of bordering processes and their relation to experiences of living near one of the external borders of the European Union, namely that between Morocco and Spain. The aim is to understand how people experience and live with border-crossings as everyday routines and in this way understand the impact of bordering practices, not only in this specific case, but in other situations of asymmetry of power, demarcation, and differentiation. My focus on psychological borders is exemplified by the case the Spanish enclave city of Ceuta and its Moroccan neighbour Tétuan. This example is of particular salience because of the intensity of the border-crossing experience and the ways in which people perceive and live the border in everyday contexts.

Moreover, such cases will allow us to contribute to the debate and study of bordering practices from a bottom-up perspective, and the characteristics of social and cultural differentiation that come into play. My observations stem from ‘self-making narratives’ at the Ceuta-Tétouan border, and in this chapter I indicate how bordering practices are constructed in the identity narrative of those who habitually cross the Spanish-Moroccan border to work. My observations relate to three specific questions: 1) How is the border represented in the narratives of those who habitually cross it? 2) How are the markers that generate bordering practices presented at the narrative level? 3) How are these representations and markers linked in the narratives of the participant?

Theoretical Framework

A presentation of the theoretical concepts that underpin this study follows. First, we present a definition of bordering practices and their impact on the social processes of demarcation and differentiation. We then reveal the framework of the narrative study of bordering processes. Finally, we outline some theoretical concepts to establish the relations between the sociopolitical frame, the establishment of national boundaries and the individual level, that is, the daily narratives of bordering.

Bordering practices

In speaking of bordering practices we refer to the actions of demarcation and differentiation that lead to how the border is conceived as processes dividing territories and human groups (Brambilla, Laine, Scott and Bocchi 2015; Diener and Hagen 2012; Kolossov and Scott 2013; Newman 2003). Borders are considered as dynamic and often invisible institutions, which do not need to be associated with the classic demarcation of the nation state (Newman 2003), and which are more closely connected with social processes (Paasi 1998). This renewed conception of the border and the processes of demarcation and differentiation that affect human groups has prompted a questioning of the social and human processes that occur in bordering processes (Brambilla et al. 2015; Kolossov and Scott 2013). Such an interest leads us to an understanding of those practices that reproduce power relations and the construction of social frontiers in everyday worlds.

Interest in the perceptions and actions people develop in their daily lives is thus especially relevant. It seeks to study the bottom-up processes of change arising from the daily practices of the inhabitants of the border region (Brunet-Jailly 2005; Johnson et al. 2011; Newman 2003). The border thus understood is included in specific practices, reproducing its characteristics and functions in everyday social practices. These proposals urge a quest for mechanisms of border reproduction and its processes of demarcation, delimitation and management in representations and daily practices (Newman 2003).

With this in mind, the concept of bordering practices makes it possible to envisage the border and glimpse the implications and impacts it has on everyday life. Understanding the border as a dynamizing element of specific social practices allows us to understand the social relations established by participants in the border area. These practices frame their actions and the different bordering processes to which those who participate in this scenario are exposed, and which they reproduce. Social practices constitute the basis for the construction of border identity narratives. This becomes a useful concept that allows us to examine these narratives and trace the elements of the border that constitute the perceptions and personal constructions that are this study’s theme.

Border narratives and markings for bordering practices

Among these bordering practices, those related to the identity narratives maintained by border inhabitants are especially relevant (Martínez 1994; Vila 2005). Traditionally, the construction of national borders has entailed the creation of unifying identities that help to maintain a separation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Wilson and Donnan 1998). These border discourses are not only maintained from a top-down dimension; bottom-up processes also perpetuate or question such constructions (Brambilla 2007), bringing people’s experiences into continuous contact with them.

The analysis of border experiences has highlighted the various bordering processes that occur in such border contexts. It highlights the processes of union and mestizaje among communities (Anzaldúa 2012; Martínez 1994), where the border is conceived as a zone of contact and encounter, allowing the creation of mestiza identities, overcoming the idea of binationalism. However, there are identity narratives that reinforce the separation that the border marks (Vila 2005). Likewise, various territorial discourses (local, national or supranational) come into play, sustained by the political actions and privileged discourses that encourage one or other identification (Meinhof 2002).

The different experiences narrated at the border are articulated on the basis of inclusion/exclusion markers that are established as filters restricting the crossing and inclusion of the people who are allowed or forbidden to cross. The criterion in both national and social borders is associated with the creation of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ difference (Newman 2003), and this may be associated with multiple personal or social traits. Such criteria of separation are sometimes not explicitly expressed, but an analysis of border practices and experiences allows us to glimpse a set of factors that serve as basic criteria for bordering processes, thus reproducing asymmetric power relationships (Newman 2003; Velasco Ortiz and Contreras 2014). The criteria of differentiation by nationalities (Martínez 1994; Meinhof 2002; Vila 2005), gender (Solís 2016; Vila 2005), religion (Newman 2003; Vila 2005) and class (Kearney 2004) are the main criteria outlined by the literature.

Border narratives provide clues of the meanings the border can assume for the people who live with it and the main border markings that articulate them. A border’s meanings depend on local conditions, according to the border being considered and the groups it separates (Schmitt 2000: 9). A knowledge of these meanings and the markers that sustain bordering practices facilitates an analysis and understanding daily experiences in the lives of the inhabitants of border contexts. It also reveals the characteristics of the border that are reflected in their personal narratives, showing in turn the bordering practices they reproduce in their daily lives.

Cultural psychology

We understand that the border frames and reproduces itself in social dynamics and interactions that have an impact at the individual level. In its attempt to understand the mutual interaction between the sociocultural and individual levels (De La Mata and Cubero 2003; Shweder 1996) psychology has prioritized the study of meanings as a way of understanding their interrelations (Bruner 1991; Shweder 1996; Valsiner 2014), motives and actions.

In this chapter such meanings are framed by self-making narratives (Bruner 2003): brief, concrete and framed narratives that give meaning to the self in certain scenarios. Such narratives are the means by which people give meaning to personal experiences and events following a cultural pattern of meaning. Self-making narratives are nourished by a scenario in which the speeches of those significant ‘others’ a person values and brings into their narratives take on special importance for the value and consideration they offer to give meaning to their experience (Wertsch 1993). It is therefore necessary to link them to the cultural scene in which they occur, as they offer the keys to understanding personal motives and meanings, and of the others linked to them.

These meanings are mediated by the symbolic action of the artefacts imbued with meaning with which people operate, which in turn are guided by shared cultural representations. The border is thus also understood as an artefact or psychological tool for mediating and managing the relationship with other human beings and the environment (Marsico 2014; Valsiner 2014). These artefacts allow the psychological processes of differentiation, opposition, confrontation, connection, categorization and creation of meaning (De Luca Picione and Valsiner 2017). Material or symbolic boundaries are created, maintained and removed over time to regulate actions and manage the ambivalence of lives (Tateo 2016).

Finally, we understand that the border frames the social context and is reproduced in social dynamics and interactions in bordering practices. In participating in the border scenario, people internalize practices, values and discourses developed at the social level to be included at the individual level (Wertsch 1985). The practices that characterize the border scenario are reproduced at the social level through bordering processes and are finally internalized by their participants. Thus, the border moves from being a physical element (a fence, a wall) to practices that modulate and structure the psychological experience (Español, Marsico and Tateo 2018), which is ultimately reflected in personal narratives. The process of giving meaning to actions and motives that create the self makes it another space in which to make and reproduce the border. Thus, we understand that taking bordering processes occurring at the social level into account can be useful in analysing and understanding the border experience and personal narratives.

Data Production Context

Border area

This study’s data was produced in the border area between the cities of Ceuta (Spain) and Tétouan (Morocco). In this study the border space is defined as the existing territory between both cities, given its historical importance and the daily practices that occur in it, linked to a large extent to the existence of the international border.

My article Postdisciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences Quarterly (Español 2018) deals in more detail with the socio-demographic, historical and political keys for an understanding of the relations between the two states in the last century.

Participant

The participant was selected on the basis of a previous work (Español, Cubero and de La Mata 2017), which described different groups crossing the border between Ceuta and Tétouan. The groups were defined by their activities or reasons for crossing. These help to make visible the functions that the border fulfils in the daily life of the person who crosses, thus allowing a first approach to the meaning of the border experience (Español 2018).

The interview with Javier was selected from those carried out during fieldwork.[1] Javier is a middle-aged Spanish national, born and resident in Ceuta, with a higher education. He crosses the border daily, mainly to work on the Moroccan side. This selection answers the objective of depicting the reality of a population sector not always regarded in the literature, while the single case format guides the theoretical construction (Yin 1994) – in this case psychological bordering processes.

1s been deleted.

Data production strategies

The interview began with a brief introduction of the participant and continued by addressing the following topics: a description of the border crossing; a description of the border itself; his relationship with the inhabitants of the other side of the border; his description of being an inhabitant of a border area and the border experience; his assessment of the border and the fact of living close to it.

Español (2018) provides more information about the data production process.

Data analysis strategy

Following a previous work (Español and Cornejo 2018), we used the thematic analysis method (Braun, Clarke and Terry 2014) to respond to the first objective, which aimed to identify the major meanings the border has for the participant. To respond to our second objective, we used thematic analysis to identify the markers for each meaning the border takes, and the multivoicedness analysis method of Aveling, Gillespie and Cornish (2014) to identify the voices that appear in each meaning of the border. Both methods made it possible to reflect on which markers of difference were used and against which the significant other appeared, thus responding to our second objective.

The analysis is based on analytical intentionality (Cornejo, Faúndez and Besoain 2017), supported by a set of guiding questions. We established three analytical axes that articulated the analysis and data presentation:

- Border experience. In this axis, following the work of Español and Cornejo (2018), we set out the different meanings the participant ascribes to the border and the crossing. This includes the main reasons for crossing, the border’s different functions, the border city in the participant’s daily life and the values it acquires. It is based mainly on thematic analysis.

- Border marking. In this analytical axis we describe the main narrative markers for the bordering practices the interviewee uses to generate the difference between people. Such narratives are understood from the construction of narratives of difference and otherness, resulting in the perception of a division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ linked to each of the border experiences mentioned. It is based mainly on thematic analysis.

- Border inner-Others. In this analytical axis, developed in a previous work (Español and Cornejo 2018), we address the description of the main significant others present in the various narrated border experiences before which border markings are articulated.

Results

The main results of the analysis of border experiences, border markings and border inner-Others are presented below. The border, according to the meanings that the participant constructs through his story, refers both to the border crossing point or the physical demarcation, and the space and territory around it. As previously stated, these meanings allow us to understand border experiences, that is, how people experience and perceive the border and the main functions and values it takes in their lives, thus corresponding to our first objective.

These border experiences are at the same time the basis for understanding border markings and border inner-Others. The first represent those meanings that the interviewee uses in his narrative to (de)limit the difference between him and other groups, resulting in a division between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The latter refers to the representations of significant others who are relevant to the border experience through their voices or descriptions. Border markings and border inner-Others will allow us to demonstrate the main markers or criteria that articulate the narratives of difference and before which significant others are generated, corresponding to our second objective.

Border markings and border inner-Others interact in such a way that narratives are sustained on the basis of the rhetorical use of some significant others that serve as opposites in the personal narrative linked to the border experience. Thus, bordering practices from the interviewee’s narrative will be understood as the meanings that are taken by the border, and from which certain markers of difference are linked with some significant others to generate comparison or opposition. This interaction between the three proposed analytical axes makes it possible to meet our third objective.

We present the different border experiences, and within them we describe the border marking and border inner-Others that are linked to these experiences. The border is mainly signified as: a) access to the workplace; b) a place of uncertainty and discomfort; c) a limiting and enriching of the city of Ceuta; d) a separator between different worlds. These border experiences are presented in order of their greatest occurrence in the narrative to their least.

a) The border as access to the workplace

The main meaning of the border for Javier is that crossing it offers him the possibility of exercising his profession, which he has been unable to develop in Ceuta. This is the main reason he crosses to the Moroccan side. To get to his workplace, he must cross the border. Once he is in Moroccan territory, he must travel by car for more than an hour. At the time of the interview he had been commuting like this for more than ten months.

In the morning he usually encounters Moroccans crossing in the opposite direction to work in Ceuta, and their crossing usually happens quickly. This is because under a Schengen exception those entering Ceuta and Melilla do not need to have their passports stamped when they leave on the same day. Thus, the fact of being a resident of the autonomous city becomes a border marking, that is, a marker that generates differentiated border experiences.

This habitual crossing has brought Javier into contact with Moroccan society, a reality with which he has been unfamiliar until now. Concerning the border crossing, he refers to media observations of informal trade, porteadoras (porters) and police action, none of which usually affect the majority of the Ceutan population. Although we can identify the porteadoras, other Moroccans and policemen as border inner-Others, the fact that most Ceutans are not in contact with such a reality from which they differentiate themselves is especially relevant. Crossing or not becomes a border marking that allows an articulation of how he differs from other Ceutans and his former self before he began to cross the border.

[Because] if I didn’t have to cross it, for me, it would be a place… I wouldn’t have any involvement with such a place, okay? And the people who were there probably wouldn’t affect my daily life. Because I’ve been gone a long time without coming and going. And, and really, all those images of people and girls you can see on TV – the porteadoras (carriers), of the people, the cops and, and the avalanches and all that. It doesn’t affect my daily life, okay? Uh, now that I have to experience it, yes, I do... Yes, I suffer more.

However, he makes the point that his contact with Moroccans is associated with his workplace, meaning he interacts mainly with highly educated people like engineers, architects and lawyers, who are not representative of the wider Moroccan population. The relationship he has created with his co-workers resembles his other experiences in other work contexts in his home country. Javier also mentions that he has attempted to eliminate friction between colleagues and make the time he spends at the office pleasant and cordial.

Every day I arrive and say ‘Good morning. How are you? How are you all?’ And that kind of thing. They speak Moroccan Arabic to each other or a little French and, and I try to be part of the group, make jokes, tell them this, that and the other. Because of course, we’re there for eight hours, there are many moments to get on well with them, as is the case in any office. My relationship with them is the same as the one I would have with anyone in Spain. There’s a language barrier. There’s a cultural barrier. That’s important. Because… Well, when you meet a girl who’s a workmate and all, you give her two kisses, don’t you? I don’t know. Well, there, you shake her hand. With men you also have to be very correct. Don’t go beyond the barrier of good taste, in the, in the cultural sense. Don’t ask indiscreet questions and all that.

In this border experience he points to language, practices associated with religion and the relationship between genders as border markings that modulate his experience with his co-workers, who represent the main border inner-Other.

His lack of the local language, Dariya,[2] is one of the main markers of the distance and difference between him and his co-workers. Yet his interest in learning it and communicating in it makes him feel more appreciated and respected by the people with whom he works.

2sed in Morocco.

He presents Islam as an important border marking between his workmates and himself, because he does not practise it. He perceives Islamic practices as organizers of daily life that sometimes cause him discomfort. Likewise, he perceives things like dietary restrictions as obstacles to him being able to share with his peers in a relaxed manner.

The relationship between genders is the last border marking to which he points. He says men and women are treated differently than in Spain. Although he thinks interpersonal distance has softened with time, he maintains that the cultural conceptions of gender in such contexts are far-removed from his own, and he finds them difficult to reconcile.

It is in this experience of seeing himself ‘on the other side’ that he perceives himself as a foreigner with a resulting loss of control and comfort in day-to-day life. He recognizes that he must respect customs that are not his own, despite the discomfort, and emphasizes the questioning of his own values such practices prompt.

Because, you’re … the foreigner there, you’re the one who has to abide by their customs, aren’t you? And... Not only comply, right? But respect them, value them and sometimes ask yourself why they’re different, and if you think yours are better or worse. They’re not better or worse, are they? But they’re different. It’s neither better nor worse, but questioning the value of one thing compared to another and deciding which you… which you feel more comfortable with and so on.

b) The border as a place of uncertainty and discomfort

However, when he is returning from work, he describes the border as a place of uncertainty. The border can be ‘unpredictable’. There are sometimes delays, causing tension and discomfort for those waiting to cross. This reveals a need to provide better political solutions that, while maintaining the city’s identity, favour fluidity at the crossing.

This loss of time is also associated with some other agents at the border. The main border inner-Others of this border experience are the border police, whose crossing management is sometimes unreliable, and other drivers and pedestrians around the border area. Both hinder traffic, which increases the tension and conflict associated with the experience.

The main border marking established between them and our interviewee is the lack of collaboration and patience in their management of bottlenecks.

Then, the border, it can be like a traffic light some days … waiting at red and going on green. On other days it can be a very unpleasant experience because of all the people of all different kinds around you, because they have little patience, because it is a very tense situation for people who need to earn money pushing in one or other direction. Because the police officers aren’t reliable. They don’t have a very defined code of conduct. So the experience could be a lot better.

Based on this experience, another border marking connected with crossing the border is represented by border inner-Others, the Ceutans who do not cross the border daily. This situation causes irritation and frustration for those who must cross daily. The border inner-Other is described in the next section.

c) The border as limiting and enriching the city of Ceuta

Another meaning is the vision of the border itself as a constituent element of Ceuta. The border is seen as a limit that prevents the city from growing, placing pressure on political management and conditioning social relations. The latter implies that the possibility of crossing into Morocco is neither considered a leisure alternative nor as a means to create or maintain personal relations with Moroccans, given the economic, social and cultural difference between the two sides. Yet social relations are conditioned, affording routine to the life of the city and of Ceutans.

Most Ceutans are identified here as the main inner-Other, articulated by the border marking of whether the border is crossed. As the previous section demonstrated, this border inner-Other is constituted by those Ceutans who are not directly influenced by the border. This also generates self-identification as a border against these Ceutans.

However, at the same time, the border enriches the city because of the economic benefits it can bring by offering services the other side lacks and needs. The border therefore becomes an ‘opportunity’ for the city if the management of crossing can improve and function as a filter that facilitates the crossing for people who may be of ‘interest’, mainly people with high purchasing power, and this restricts the crossing of ‘bad people’, who do not contribute to the city.

Well, in this part of Morocco there’s a lot of need – there are a lot of people who need a lot of things. They come here, and it’s like a hidden gem. People who don’t know how to behave. People who have a lot of problems, and they bring them with them. But it’s a great opportunity for an open country. It’s a positive value for us. If we knew how to attract tourism, people and all that to the city, life would be much better here. And if the border were fluid… If it opened too wide… If it were well controlled so no more bad people came in and if it were controlled and left more fluid for the better people, the better ones, those who are going to contribute, life would be fucking great for everyone here. So, for me, it’s an opportunity that’s there, though it’s far from blooming.

It follows that border marking is the economic level associated with the perceived goodness or wickedness of the people who cross. This not only establishes a difference between the two sides of the border but between the Moroccans who should be allowed to cross into Ceuta. These border inner-Others, although described in a somewhat abstract way, correspond to Moroccans with high and low purchasing power.

d) The border as a separator of different worlds

Another idea that recurs throughout the interview is that the border functions as an element that keeps two different worlds apart. In this respect, the physical division between the territories serves to materialize the difference between the societies, identifying it with several border markings.

The socioeconomic improvements the Spanish side has experienced are contrasted with the Moroccan side, which is identified as backward with a very high level of poverty. This is associated with other border markings, such as different social and political values, the Constitution, family and gender relations, or the religious practices in each society. Thus, the main border inner-Other is identified with a conception of Moroccan society as a group with which there is nothing in common. This division is defined in terms of identity, and as long as there is no identification with these practices and values.

I think people are very different. Those coming from one side are very different from those coming in the opposite direction. Because… Well, from what I see and from what I perceive, the people crossing from Ceuta to Morocco are normally the qualified workforce, those kinds of people.

In short, they aren’t unskilled workers, but workers who are graduates, intellectuals, for the type of jobs that require a… a little more technical skill, more development and so on. The people coming from Morocco to Ceuta are from the less skilled workforce.

However, concerning the socioeconomic differences and Javier’s main reason for crossing the border (in the performance of his profession), he recognizes that the border divides those crossing from one side to the other into people with very different academic training and jobs, depending on the side from which they come. While people with higher education tend to cross from the Spanish to the Moroccan side, those crossing in the opposite direction are unskilled or informal workers like porteadoras and domestic workers. Education therefore becomes the unifying border marking of this experience, establishing a difference between border inner-Others identified as workers with different academic training coinciding with one nationality or another. There is thus a striking situation in which, at the very point of separation the border marks, people from different socioeconomic strata are mixed and united by their desire to it.

Discussion and Conclusions

The basis for analysing bordering practices in the personal narrative stems from understanding them as the practices of delimitation and differentiation that constitute the social world (Paasi 1998). Borders organize, guide and articulate the daily life of people and their social and personal world (Marsico 2014; Valsiner 2014). An analysis of these practices in personal border narratives allows us to understand how these practices of delimitation and differentiation are articulated, shaping how our interviewee understands the world.

In this study we have focused on the border experience of a Ceutan citizen who crosses daily into Morocco to work. This has allowed us to observe the experience of a population sector that has been little considered, while serving as an example for exploring new ideas for the study of bordering processes.

The main border experience pointed to by the interviewee is connected with the border as access to the workplace. This is accompanied by the experience of coming into contact with realities to which he had not previously been exposed, such as the crossing of the border and the relationship with Moroccan citizens. The fact of crossing or not becomes a border marking with respect to other Ceutans, border inner-Others who appear in several iterations, and to his life before he obtained his work on the Moroccan side. His relationship with his co-workers, identified as the main border inner-Others, also generates multiple border markings through linguistic, religious or gender-related practices. This prompts him to perceive himself as a foreigner in scenarios in which he feels he has lost control and comfort, and must accommodate these new social behaviours. In addition to being a place of uncertainty and discomfort, the border is simultaneously signified as a limiting and dynamizing element of the city, generating a spatially constrained society experiencing a relatively prosperous life, at the same time as an opportunity for growth, given the economic disparity between the two sides. Associated with this is the border experience of the border as a separator of different worlds. The physical border becomes responsible for these dynamics, and these border experiences are articulated by the border marking of the economic disparity between the sides, which is also associated with different social and political practices and educational levels. This border marking establishes the differences between Spanish and Moroccan society, identified as the main border inner-Others of this border experience.

The analytical border experience axis has allowed us to detect the multiple meanings the border assumes for the participant, based on his reason for crossing. This ‘entry into meaning’ (Bruner 1991; R.A. Shweder 1996; Valsiner 2014) allows a connection of the macro framework, or sociopolitical practices, with the micro framework, or personal construction of the world. We thus access how the interviewee understands the world, while we are simultaneously enabled to assess the impact of border practices through the narratives that give meaning to the experience (Bruner 2003).

These border meanings are created by participating in a scenario that internalizes the border practices that are reflected in border markings. Many, such as language (Petrjánošová and Leix 2013) or gender (Solís 2016; Vila 2005), are reflected in the literature, and others are constructed from the experience represented by this case, such as the fact of crossing or not, as a differentiating element in relation to other Ceutans and his previous experience. These demarcation criteria organize and articulate his interpersonal relations with workmates, the relationships between Spanish and Moroccan society, which function as imagined communities (Anderson 1983) and play an identity role, or with his previous experience. It is noteworthy in this respect that border marking works on a temporal scale (Tateo 2016) in the personal narrative – as a marker of change which thus structures the narrative about his own life’s lived and perceived experience.

Thus, in understanding the individual located in the ‘“borderized” positions’ (De Luca Picione and Valsiner 2017: 538) from which meaning is given to the experience, and the relationship with the world and with significant others, several border markings are established that situate him or her in the world and in relation to others. Following these authors, we can understand that these markers constitute temporary semiotic borders that allow or disallow contextualization, subjective positioning and pertinence in giving meaning to the experience. Such border markings, which articulate bordering practices, help to establish social limits and anchors to locate and face the uncertainty generated by the same experience of the border (Marsico 2014), always using a significant other (the border inner-Other in this case) that serves to establish an ‘us’ and ‘them’ demarcation (De Luca Picione and Valsiner 2017; Español and Cornejo 2019; Newman 2003).

The border marking established on the basis of economic level or purchasing power may be of special interest, as it is central in the participant’s narrative. Thus, in parallel with the reborderization experienced on the Ceutan border (Castan Pinos 2014; Ferrer-Gallardo 2008), the Spanish population has experienced an economic improvement derived from European policies, which has increased the economic disparity between the two territories (Ferrer-Gallardo 2008; Fuentes Lara 2016). This entails a different use of the border (Español and Cornejo 2018) and different reasons for crossing it (Español et al. 2017) for people from both sides. It is interesting in this respect to emphasize that the division that occurs in both territories indicated in the last two border experiences is articulated by the same border markings, identified in Javier’s daily dynamics with his workmates. Such a demarcation ultimately creates a de facto differentiation with particular people in his day-to-day life, which also affects his relationship with his workmates, with whom, despite the contact, the differences do not dissipate. This shows how these demarcation criteria work at different levels. The border thus materialized, with its associated discourses, reveals differences that are ultimately constituent of societies – or at least our perception of them. It seems the national identities created to sustain the idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’ on the margins of the territory (Wilson and Donnan 1998) have been internalized and condition the perception of the world and social relations while adapting to each side, thus granting a different value to each society (Marsico and Tateo 2017).

However, the border inner-Other concerning the Ceutan is also used to explain his personal experience. Although the interviewee identifies himself as Ceutan and Spanish, he finds that the border marking concerning whether to cross the border or not constitutes several experiences that differentiate him from other Ceutans and his previous life. This affords him new elements of identity, such as identifying himself as a border person or foreigner and creating the opportunity to see himself through others (Shweder 1996). Such terms do not seem to reveal hybridization, because they appear in other border studies (Anzaldúa 2012; Español and Cornejo 2018) in the absence of identification with the other side or with identification as mestizo. However, they exemplify that mobility in the border zone obliges us to create new meanings for the experience (Marsico and Tateo 2017).

In conclusion, this work constitutes a first proposal for the systematization of bordering practices at the narrative level by proposing three analytical axes that apprehend some of their basic elements: the meanings derived from the experience of crossing the border; the narrative markers that generate demarcation and differentiation; and significant others as the basis for the construction of the difference. We believe this constitutes an attempt to transfer the processes that take place at the macro or sociopolitical level to the micro or personal narrative level, linking both spheres and making visible the impact these practices and social dynamics have at the personal and identity level. From a bottom-up perspective this brings us closer to people’s understanding and interpretation of the border (Brambilla 2007). Such personal narratives are offered as a new space in which to study the border and enhance the scope and lines of work in which to explore bordering processes.

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Voicitys: Living with Diversity in European Cities

Krisztina Keresztély and Hayley Trowbridge

Introduction

Borders, whether they be political, social, cultural, or all of those in one, are not necessarily barriers to action, they can in fact be understood as invitations to engage in dialogue. Borders are essential elements of organizing everyday life but they also require management and negotiation. Respecting the individual spaces and life-worlds of others need not, indeed should not, impinge on our own everyday borders as we go about our affairs. Social border management is most important when it comes to sorting out community issues that affect all citizens, regardless of who they are and in what areas they live. Diversity is what makes cities dynamic and vibrant places. Living with diversity in cities is an ongoing process of redefining social and cultural spaces and, in many cases, creating new political ones through citizen activism and engagement. The VOICITYS project that will be discussed in some detail below demonstrates the ways in which social, cultural and political borders can be reconceptualized as spaces of encounter and dialogue. This issue is even more salient given destructive, anti-urban political forces all over Europe that would create divisions and thus resurrect hard social (and perhaps political) boundaries between ethnic groups and social classes.

Implemented between January 2018 and June 2019 as a pilot project supported by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Union, VOICITYS investigated relationships between urban diversity and social dialogue.[1] The project’s concrete aims were to improve social integration through the strengthening of social dialogue in European neighbourhoods characterized by ethnic and cultural diversity. This was targeted through improving sustainable communication and integration between different social groups, and through deepening dialogue between policy-makers, stakeholders and citizens as a means of promoting more efficient diversity management. Our activities focused on four diverse neighbourhoods in four European countries with different histories, political cultures, traditions and experiences with diversity and migration. Our specific objectives were to map diversity by using a dual approach based on citizens’ and stakeholders’ voices:

1Comparative Research Network (CRN) form Germany, People’s Voice Media (PVM) from the United Kingdom, Mine Vaganti NGO (MVNGO) from Italy, and the Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (CERSHAS) from Hungary.

- Creation of a methodology based on the interaction between bottom-up investigation (citizen’s voice, community reporting) and top-down research (semi conducted interviews with stakeholders and policy makers).

- Identifying the challenges and opportunities of diversity in the four areas;

- Formulating policy recommendations for local policy makers and local stakeholders on improving the management of diverse neighbourhoods;

- Formulating policy recommendations on the European level for integrating diversity management in urban policies;

With our methodology, we aimed to enhance dialogue and communication between citizens and decision-makers through participatory events and discussions. The compilation of local recommendations, supported by parallel research and participatory events, permitted us to elaborate some general European-level considerations and recommendations related to diversity management in neighbourhoods.

Discussion proceeds as follows: After a theoretical and conceptual elaboration of diversity in cities, we briefly present the VOCITYS approach to analysing citizens’ perceptions of diversity and establishing platforms for local dialogue and local social cohesion. We then describe the four neighbourhoods under consideration and proceed with the main questions and results generated by our research. In the final section, recommendations for strengthening links between diversity and community cohesion are provided. The recommendations target moreover different scales of action.

Urban Diversity and Hyperdiversity: The Conceptual background

Reinforcing social dialogue and inclusion in diverse urban areas first needs a general consideration of what we mean by the term “diversity”. What makes a neighbourhood “diverse”? How can we describe this phenomenon? What makes the difference between a “diverse” and “not diverse” neighbourhood? And furthermore, are there any neighbourhoods that are “not diverse”? During the past decades, the understanding of “diversity” has gone through a deep transformation strongly influenced by general changes in societies – especially in Western countries – and the perceptions of the role of individuals within those societies. The conceptualization of diversity reflects the changing context of migration trends, the increasing complexity of urban societies and the need for public policies to deal with these changes. The reflection on the different approaches to diversity has also been motivated by increasing tensions within urban societies where the fear of “otherness” has been reinforced as a result of violent events in several European cities.

Until very recently, diversity was considered a term clearly linked to ethnicity. According to this “traditional” understanding, ethnic diversity describes a society where different ethnic groups are living side by side, one constituting the “majority” society and the others composing ethnic minorities. The cultural and political approaches in Europe regarding ethnic diversity have of course always been subjects of debate, ranging from policies of assimilation towards the more liberal approach of integration and acceptance. Multiculturalism, considered during the 1990s to be a very positive way of living in mutual respect with diverse ethnic and cultural groups, was increasingly questioned during the 2000s by several politicians[2] and scholars partly in reaction to the violent events and attacks that took place in Europe and elsewhere. These tendencies became even stronger due to the sudden increase in the number of refugees and third country nationals in certain European cities in the mid-2010s, changing the vision of diversity and multiculturalism in Europe. The strengthening of discriminatory voices all over the continent which considered multiculturalism and the acceptance of “otherness” as threats to the integrity of European societies and cultures is only one – negative – reaction to this situation. One positive reaction has been the terms of diversity, multiculturalism and integration being taken under constructive reconsideration in order to respond to the new societal challenges and opportunities linked to diversity.

2https://euroalter.com/2013/multiculturalism-vs-assimilation, also see Angela Merkel’s 2010 statement about the “end of multiculturalism”

This second approach, mainly introduced by social scientists analysing the situation in the UK, underlines the fact that, as with almost all societal elements, diversity has also become more complex and diverse so that today we might talk about a “diversity of diversities”. Based on this consideration, Steven Vertovec identified the term “Super Diversity” in 2007 (Vertovec 2007). According to Vertovec, the analysis of diversity cannot be limited to the differentiation of ethnic groups as these groups themselves do not form homogeneous units. One ethnic group might be strongly divided according to their constituent parts’ immigration status, gender and age profile, labour market experiences, economic situation, religious background, etc. The concept of super diversity is in fact rooted in the theoretical approach of intersectionality, which draws attention to the fact that the interplay of these factors might entirely change the social and cultural behaviour and capacities of people belonging to the same ethnic group (Wessendorf 2014). The super diversity theory of Vertovec sent a very important message to local and national policy makers: it is “…a call, or at least a reminder, to social scientists and policy makers to take more sufficient account of the conjunction of ethnicity with a range of other variables when considering the nature of various ‘communities’, their composition, trajectories, interactions and public service needs” (Vertovec 2007: 1025). The concept of superdiversity is also a strong criticism of policies based on multiculturalism, which highlights the need to create bridges and dialogue between people instead of identifying the needs of ethnic groups from a top-down approach. “While multiculturalism policies were blamed for enhancing (...) parallel lives and widening the gaps between different ethnic groups, the new cohesion discourse emphasized the need to facilitate more interaction between different ethnic and religious minority and majority groups, and create a shared sense of belonging and civic pride” (quote by Wessendorf 2014 :4).

Superdiversity has been analysed on the neighbourhood level by Susan Wessendorf, based on the consideration that this is the level where the inter-ethnic, inter-faith and intercultural relationships are the easiest to observe and relevant policies are the easiest to identify. Super diversity as a concept is not only the criticism of multiculturalism; it is also an interesting approach for mapping and understanding the positive and negative elements of diversity through the functioning of and the main conflicts within complex and diverse communities (Wessendorf 2014). Many of the author’s findings in the London neighbourhood of Hackney were used as the base of our research, and were confirmed by our results achieved during the VOICITYS project. Wessendorf pointed out the fact that in super diverse neighbourhoods, ethnicity is not considered a condition of belonging by the people: a person from Italy or Bangladesh, living in his/her neighbourhood in the UK for a long time, can be considered more “local” than a middle class newcomer born in the country by English parents but having never lived in the area before. Wessendorf’s research also reconsidered the reasons for the main social conflicts with these “newcomers”. These conflicts had been traditionally explained by ethnic or religious differences, whereas according to her conclusions, they are most often the result of resentments linked to the competition for social benefits (i.e. allocation of social housing or other support) or for economic opportunities. This fact will be clearly illustrated in our interviews and reports conducted with some citizens in Berlin.

The widening of the approach to diversity was not only a revolutionary step towards understanding our current complex societies and the political tensions related to them, but it also was contributing to a better formulation of the needs and opportunities of policy making willing to generate real social change in diverse cities and areas. The concept of super diversity also has some limitations. First, born in the UK, the concept was created as a reaction to the specificities of diversity there, whereas diversity has very different traditions and historical and social contexts in other European countries. It is therefore insufficient to apply the findings and solutions proposed by the authors in the other European countries or cities on an individual basis. As a second limitation, the concept accepts that diversity of diversities can be regarded as the intersection of ethnicity, gender, age, religion, administrative status, job profile, etc., but that the intersectionality of these profiles is mainly used for the differentiation of people based on socio-economic and ethnic considerations. Thus, although the concept represents a huge step towards widening the notion of diversity, it remains essentially based on the traditional socio-ethnic categories.

As described by Wessendorf, belonging to a place – being a “local” – is not necessarily linked to ethnic or socio-demographic characteristics; it might be more a question of the length of time spent in the area or of the behaviour of someone vis-à-vis local people or his/her interests vis-à-vis local problems and events. This assumption also shows that diversity as a concept often goes beyond the socio-demographic aspects, and might be linked to many other factors such as cultural interest, behaviour, hobbies, approach to others, etc. As observed by a research group in the framework of the recently finalized FP7 programme “Divercities”, “…cities are not only diverse in socio-economic, social and ethnic terms, but many differences exist with respect to lifestyles, attitudes and activities” (Tasan Kok et al. 2013: 5). Due to the changing parameters of urban mobility and of the connection between space and society linked to the emergence of ICT, social media networks and the growing importance of internationalism, the traditionally acknowledged strong relationship between territory and communities is also being questioned. Policies dealing with diversity must also take into account the effect of mobility on people. Based on these multiple considerations, the Divercities team set their new concept of “hyper diversity”.

The hyperdiversity concept is based on three main dimensions. 1) it goes beyond ethnicity and socio-economic characteristics; 2) it is rooted in the acknowledgement that society is based on the mutual interactions of its different dimensions (i.e. the concept of intersectionality); 3) it takes into consideration the action space of the people – not only the place where they live, but also where they work, have leisure activities, etc. Through this broad vision, the hyperdiversity concept has opened up a new path to understanding and modelling complex urban societies by describing a structure that relies on several societal phenomena that earlier had been regarded as independent from each other. Through the hyperdiversity concept, it is possible to link ethnic diversity, gender and social inequalities; to understand the complex interactions and social polarisations within mixed local communities; and to understand the conflicts and strengths linked to the opening of local communities towards external influences as a result of the increasing mobility of their members. “The implications of this view are immense. They change the way we have to look at cities, their neighbourhoods and their inhabitants. They will have to lead to new policies and governance arrangements in order to cope with these diversities and its effects” (Taşan Kok et al. 2013: 13).

Perceptions and Voices of Citizens – The VOICITYS Approach

The increasingly widening concept of diversity inspired us to follow the line of this reflection. When discussing with people on the topic, one might notice that diversity can appear in their discourses in very diverse forms, attached to positive and negative values in the same time. Based on the concept of intersectionality, we concluded that the perception of diversity might also change according to the social, economic and cultural conditions of the people providing a narrative on it. As the subjective feelings of people are the strongest elements to influence their values and actions, it seems to us relevant to conclude that the different perceptions of diversity are constituting the local diversity itself. This reflection echoes the theory of Piekut and Valentine (2016) according to which diversity can be also classified by perceptions. Perceived diversity is the degree to which people subjectively recognize that an area or a group is composed of different social categories and of people who are different from themselves. Perceived diversity is related to feelings generated by day by day interactions, experiences that positively or negatively impact attitudes towards an ethnic minority. These perceptions are affected by socio-historical background, the social and ethnic structure of the neighbourhood, the changing position of the neighbourhood within the city, and the stigmatization and changing physical environment of the city.

People’s perceptions of diversity and the narratives they provide about their feelings might also strongly influence the way diversity can and should be seen and governed by local policies in a neighbourhood. People’s narratives concerning their everyday, positive and negative experiences of diversity and the main needs and fears they identify are all basic indicators of the specific features of local diversity. The main objective of VOICITYS were to identify and test a methodology which allows us to make heard all these local voices linked to diversity and to bring policy making closer to the citizens’ lived experiences and needs. Using our complex methodology and bottom-up, community-based research approach, we were able to elevate the voices of citizens, while our top-down social research method elevated the voices of stakeholders. VOICITYS has been an attempt to ‘merge voices’ on perceived diversity expressed by everyday people with the voices linked to institutionalized diversity expressed by stakeholders and policy makers. Setting up a dialogue between these two perceptions was one of the main objectives of our project.

Dialogue needs mutual understanding and a common language. VOICITYS began with the co-creation of a common language, a common concept on diversity. According to our presumption, diversity has different meanings and connotations in different languages according to cultural traditions, the political, historical and economic experiences linked to diversity, the current situation of the country/city regarding diversity, and many other local elements. A first crossing of the linguistic barriers in the four participating countries clearly proved this presumption. Later on, this was further nuanced by the narratives of the local citizens in each city. Diversity has entirely different meanings and connotation in Italy, Hungary, Germany and the UK.

In UK English, the term “diversity” is strongly linked to communities and is used primarily to identify different identities of people. The term permits the creation of “boxes” of identities, not for reinforcing discrimination but rather to show the complexity of societies and to permit the linkage between these groups. The term has a strong connotation with “conviviality”. In Italian, the word “diverso” is also a term designating groups with different identities; however, contrary to the British term, the Italian highlights otherness, suggesting groups that are “outside” the majority and that are different from the “locals”. In Hungarian, the word “sokszínűség” has a double connotation, strongly determined by political approaches. According to the “liberal” meaning, it is seen as a symbol of openness and dynamism; according to the “traditionalist” one, the term is seen as negative, a kind of threat for the unity of the local (and national) communities. In Germany, there is a broad definition of “Diversität”, meaning inclusivity, conviviality, the melting of variety and togetherness.

In order to find our common language, VOICITYS partners tried to find out how the word “hyper diversity” should be understood within the project. What would be the meaning that fits best with the main objectives of our project? What is the process that VOICITYS partners imagine is behind the term? As VOICITYS’ main aims are to create dialogue and interaction between the different stakeholders and citizens living in diverse areas, it seemed evident that in our approach, hyper diversity must mean a social situation where diversity, dialogue, interaction and social integration are in casual contact with each other. To put it differently: hyper diversity is seen as a positive way of interaction and dialogue within and between communities.

Methodology

The VOICITYS project was based on two different research methods aiming at mapping perceptions of diversity by different segments of local societies. The first was dedicated to mobilizing voices of citizens living in the area by using a special method called “Community Reporting”; the second was dedicated to understanding how stakeholders, civil organisations and policy makers see diversity and diversity management issues in the neighbourhoods. The two methods were run parallel to each other in the four neighbourhoods during the first year of the project. The summaries of each method and the crossing of their results were discussed at a project meeting, and finalized by the leaders of the research in a summary table.

The VOICITYS Neighbourhoods

VOICITYS project has been running parallel in four diverse neighbourhoods of four European cities with entirely different socio-economic, geo-political and historical backgrounds. This diversity of our study areas permitted to the VOICITYS consortium to provide a comparative overview on diversity in very different conditions. In the following, the four neighbourhoods are briefly presented, whereas more detailed data is provided in the Annexe of this handbook.

Wedding in Berlin, Germany

Wedding is a sub-district of Berlin, north of the city centre. In 2016, the area had a little more than 84,000 inhabitants. It is traditionally a working-class area, and before World War Two it was an industrial centre in the city. However, the area experienced a period of decline in the post-war period. In 1961, Wedding was surrounded on two sides by the Berlin Wall, and as a result, industry and its workers left this neighbourhood and former industrial epicentre. Following the construction of the Berlin wall, Wedding’s original population of industrial workers abandoned the area en masse. The population gap was then largely filled by an influx of “guest workers” from Turkey and Yugoslavia arriving in the area, attracted by low rents and many available social dwellings. The structural result of this process has, over time, been the association of Wedding with both poverty and migration. The negative effects of industrial decline and outbound population flows concerning the neighbourhood’s place within Berlin’s urban geography were largely mitigated by its gradual establishment as a vibrant area of exchange between different identities with further influxes of migrants from other European countries and regions of the world like Africa and Asia.

Migrants established in the area contributed to its revitalization by opening cafes, shops and small businesses. Simultaneously, the area became a place for students, artists and creative businesses to establish themselves, further adding to local diversity. This vividness and vibrancy, enabled by the fall of the Berlin Wall, has allowed the area to acquire a new, diversely shaped centrality in the life of Berlin. However, multi-layered change led to concerns over the closing of old businesses and the outflux of long-term residents linked with the process of gentrification.

Charlestown and Lower Kersal (CHALK), in Salford, United Kingdom

Charlestown and Lower Kersal (CHALK) is a neighbourhood in Salford, a city and metropolitan borough in the north-west of England (United Kingdom). Official city statistics (2016 Salford City Council report on the area) quantify the population of CHALK at around 13,000 residents. CHALK was one of 39 neighbourhoods selected for the UK Government’s New Deal for Communities (NDC) regeneration scheme, which ran from 1998 to 2011. As outlined by the Department for Communities and Local Government, the programme’s aim was to “reduce the gaps between some of the poorest neighbourhoods and the rest of the country”. As part of the NDC programme, new services were brought to the area as part of the regeneration, including a sports village and local community centres and Healthy Living Centres. Impact evaluations of such regeneration efforts have shown mixed results: assessments from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (1999) indicate that the positive impact of reduced crime rates in the area was accompanied by a negligible impact on reducing the number of workless households. Despite public-sponsored regeneration schemes, both areas are within the 1-3% most deprived areas in England according the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

According to official reporting by the Salford City Council, the neighbourhood faces a number of challenges linked with the high proportion of residents lacking basic qualifications (28.6%), a rate higher than the Salford average and in the UK as a whole. Other challenges include high unemployment rates, particularly affecting marginal groups like single parents (which are predominantly women in CHALK). Furthermore, chronic health conditions are also an issue in the area, exasperated by some behaviours such as high levels of smoking.

Despite the diffused social and economic challenges, a high standard of public services prevails in CHALK, to help mitigate the issues that the community face and support the community to address their challenges. The area is served by four primary schools: in Lower Kersal by the St Paul’s C of E Primary School and Lower Kersal Primary School, and in Charlestown by the St Sebastians RC Primary School and St Georges C of E Primary School. The Albion Academy is the area’s only secondary school. Services for children under five are provided by the East Central Children’s Centre in nearby Broughton. This is located outside of the neighbourhood but does offer some limited service delivery at Lower Kersal Primary School. The council-run Beacon centre, the result of an NDC project, hosts event space and offices and is home to services for young people including regular youth clubs. Salford Sports Village, another NDC project located in Lower Kersal, is a £4.7 million multi sports centre with Astroturf pitches, grass pitches, fitness suites & studios.

The area has two NHS GP surgery facilities open to local residents, both located inside Healthy Living Centres which offer a variety of health and wellbeing services in addition to primary care. Both of these facilities were built as part of NDC developments in recognition of the area’s high health needs and previous lack of primary care facilities (Big Life Group 2011, p. 3). The centres house pharmacies and host events and services run by partner agencies and local residents, including support groups for those with chronic conditions, physical activity groups and programmes, creative outlets, complementary therapies, nutrition advice, baby clinics, and training and employment support. There is one library located within the Salford Sports Village which is open over 40 hours a week Monday through Saturday. Other services in the area include two post offices and the St Sebastian Community Centre. The nearest police station is Pendleton Police Station and the nearest fire station is Broughton Fire Station on Bury New Road.

Diversity in Salford has changed in terms of the increasingly composite ethnic background of its resident population. According to a 2016 report of the Salford Council, the ethnicity most represented in CHALK is White British while a sizable percentage of residents identify as BME (Black and Minority Ethnicity), forming a higher percentage than in the rest of the Salford urban area and than the national UK average. The largest group within the BME component is represented by White Other (25%), followed by smaller ethnic components of African and Pakistani residents. A sizable percentage of the BME component speaks English as a second language. According to a statement released by the head teacher of Lower Kersal Primary School in 2014, “there are 14 languages spoken by children at the school and 22% speak English as an additional language”.

The Old Town of Sassari, Italy

The Old Town of Sassari encompasses the entire area of the city of Sassari, capital of the province of the same name in North Sardinia. It is located within an area circumscribed by the former ancient walls of the city, which are today mostly destroyed. The area went through a period of major urban upheaval in the 19th century, resulting in the demolition of nearly all of the city walls to make room for urban expansion. According to the latest available data (December 2016), the total urban population of Sassari totals 127,533 inhabitants. Around 13,000 students live in the city (UNISS 2018), and it contains approximately 3,800 foreign inhabitants (Servizio statistica del Comune di Sassari 2018). The Old Town of the city is home to approximately 12,000 inhabitants, mainly composed of lower middle-class families who have lived there for generations and increasingly by migrants (Servizio statistica del Comune di Sassari 2018).

The Old Town is characterized by urban decay and socioeconomic issues, with high rates of unemployment affecting young people in particular: 27.6% of them are unemployed, according to official ISTAT data. A high percentage of local housing is presently uninhabited, with the resulting market depreciation linked with the lack of upkeep. The same condition is suffered by many of the local retail shops, which have been a distinguishing feature of the Old Town but are now largely closed. A partial revitalization of the area’s business infrastructure has been led by the growing presence of migrants, who now make up the majority of shop owners. Local retailers, now representing a minority, run most bars and restaurants. The Old Town suffers from more urgent urban security challenges than the rest of Sassari, due particularly to the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency. Many local and migrant youngsters, many with poor job prospects and educational records, tend to gather in “Baby Gangs” which engage in debauchery and petty criminality. From a civil society perspective, a noticeable degree of local participation is present in the area, with concerned groups of citizens organizing themselves in local committees and NGOs with the purpose of tending to general concerns. The Old Town hosts some key institutional buildings, including a Youth Centre (Centro Giovani Santa Caterina) which offers educational and recreational activities to a youth audience, including disadvantaged categories such as NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training). The area also hosts the central headquarters of the University of Sassari. It hosts a burgeoning community of foreign students who come under the framework of the Erasmus programme for a period of study at the University of Sassari.

Józsefváros in Budapest, Hungary

Józsefváros, the 8th district of Budapest, is part of the historical inner city that had been mainly formed during the urban boom of the late 19th century. It saw a mild population during the 1990s and has since seen a rise in population in the last decade as part of city-wide gentrification processes (Hungarian Central Statistical Office, 2015). Within Józsefváros, there are 11 neighbourhoods split between three sections: Inner Józsefváros (Palace Quarter), Middle Józsefváros and Outer Józsefváros. Within Inner Józsefváros there are high-quality residential buildings and some national institutions such as the National Museum. By contrast, housing in Middle Józsefváros is more run-down and includes socialist-era prefab housing estates. The area is traditionally working class, rather poor, and ethnically heterogeneous, and has long experienced a lot of migration and a high fluctuation in the population. This is the district’s most complex area, and it can be further segmented into smaller neighbourhoods. In Outer Józsefváros, the landscape changes again, featuring many more brown-field and industrial sites and a mixture of elegant low-rise residential areas not seen in the other sections. The neighbourhood has a total 76,000 inhabitants, encompassing a relatively small but socially and culturally diverse urban landscape. The area is characterized by a unique mix of vibrancy, nostalgia and deep-rooted social issues such as poverty and a reputation for crime (Czirfusz et al. 2015).

In the latest strategic urban plan (Integrated Urban Development Strategy - ITS 2015), the municipality positions the district “at the edge of downtown Budapest”, underlining its centrality and the high number of institutions with national relevance (ITS 2015: 6). In this document, the district’s central location and good transport connections within the urban fabric of Budapest, its human diversity and diversity of functions, the local strengthening of the presence of institutions of tertiary education, and its social services are presented as the district’s main strengths. The main challenges identified are the high concentration of social problems, spatial inequalities within the district and the poor quality of the housing stock (particularly publicly owned housing).

The area of poorer and more ethnically diverse Middle Józsefváros has garnered a negative reputation based on increasing social issues over recent decades. Many of those displaced due to urban regeneration projects in other parts of the district have found housing here. Currently, the district municipality plans to implement an urban regeneration programme in this area as well, which will surely result in the displacement of many families. In the past decade, Józsefváros, and particularly the middle part of the neighbourhood, has become the focal point of gentrification in Budapest. This means that the position of the neighbourhood has changed in countless ways. From a more material perspective, the number of public housing units has declined and the possibility for privatizing a large segment of the remaining housing stock has also been opened. Housing and rental prices have risen the most drastically here compared to the rest of the city. Spaces of consumption have also changed, with a number of bars, cultural and commercial entities catering to the needs of higher status social groups. Public spaces have been rebuilt, partially connected to the stations of the new metro line which opened in 2015, and partially connected to urban regeneration projects. Beside the public housing stock, there is also a relatively high share of privately rented flats in the district (although the majority of these private rentals are on the grey and black-market and therefore do not appear in statistics).

The main question relating to physical renewal pertains to its social consequences. Investment in an area can rarely (if ever) occur without displacing previous residents who are unable to keep up with rising housing prices and a changing commercial landscape. This is also what has been happening in Middle Józsefváros. Józsefváros has historically had a role of accommodating new arrivals to the city, partly due to its high share of public housing. The role of the district as a mixing/transition zone is particularly important in Middle Józsefváros. The district, and particularly its middle section, was an important point of entry for Roma and poor people driven out of ramshackle settlements on the outskirts of Budapest over the decades. Between 1971 and 1986, the share of Roma pupils in Budapest schools doubled (from 1.2% to 2.4%), and in all inner-city districts combined, this ratio reached 8.3% by 1986. By the same year, the share of Roma pupils in certain parts of Middle Józsefváros reached 25, and the share of Roma students at one highly segregated elementary school was around 50% (Ladányi 1989). This phenomenon is partly due to the large number of both public and private rental flats in the area (compared to a higher share of owner-occupied housing in other parts of the city) which allows for easier fluctuation of the population. The share of public flats in the area was extremely high at the end of the 1980s (nearly 100%, much higher than the Budapest average of around 50%), and privatization happened at a slower pace than in many other districts.

Diversity in Neighbourhoods – Summary of Results

Across the stories gathered in Berlin, Budapest, Salford and Sassari, a number of perceptions of diversity have emerged. When discussing the concept of diversity on a surface level, people generally spoke about ethnicity. For example, when talking about diversity and changes in the Józsefváros neighbourhood of Budapest, one resident stated that “Arabic, Turkish and other Asian people have moved here, it wasn’t like this before. It was much better, for the shop and everything. Mostly Roma musicians lived here.” Where this was slightly different was in the stories from Wedding, in which people spoke about other aspects of diversity such as religion and sexuality.

The Wedding stories valued difference and saw it as strength. As one resident reported, “People here behave peacefully and with no violence because they all got the idea since they came that our diversity builds a stronger community.” In the Old Town of Sassari as well, people generally saw diversity as a good thing: “Diversity is an opportunity” through which one can grow and “enrich oneself”, as one resident explained. Yet within these stories, there seemed to be a discourse that denied (whether intentionally or not) the differences that diversity presents. This could be problematic in diverse neighbourhoods if integration becomes too close to assimilation. Essentially, the recognition of difference should not be seen as a negative.

When people spoke about their lives in the neighbourhoods, their perceptions of diversity were more varied when they were not talking about it directly. For example, when just talking about their experiences, the residents of CHALK, Salford acknowledged other parts of diversity beyond ethnicity. Understandings of health issues emerged from such discussions, particularly in terms of mental health. As one resident stated, “I built a wall around myself for five years, not speaking to anyone, so then trying to talk to someone was very hard.” Moreover, societal issues that transcend ethnicity were addressed such as poverty and unemployment. Such understandings demonstrate the importance of the adoption of the concept of ‘hyper-diversity’ within this project. By approaching diversity through a multifaceted lens, we aimed not to reduce discussions around ethnicity but to seek more interconnected and nuanced understandings of people’s life in diverse neighbourhoods.

Some Overarching Challenges

Within the stories, a number of challenges to the neighbourhoods and the people who live there have emerged. Some of these issues were related directly or indirectly to notions of diversity while others seemed not to be. Based on the stories gathered one might conclude that diverse neighbourhoods experience rather high levels of change across a range of areas and seem to be home to some of the more marginalized groups within society. This in turn makes them more susceptible to arising social issues.

Looking across the individual summative reports, three overarching challenges to the neighbourhoods can be identified. They are:

Demographic shifts: The stories all referenced evident changes in the areas’ demographics. In the case of Józsefváros and Wedding, the threat of gentrification may displace current inhabitants. In the case of CHALK and the Old Town of Sassari, newcomers from outside the country who have moved into the area are often greeted with low-quality built environments or housing conditions, neither of which are supportive in making a home in a new setting.

Fear of newcomers: With population changes has come a fear of the people who are new to the area – essentially a fear of ‘otherness’. This is evident in statements like the Sassari businessman’s description of the historic area as a “ghetto”, and in the lack of trust for Eastern European people spoken about in a story from Salford. Such fears contribute to the breaking down of a sense of community, and disable the cultivation of strong social ties across groups. This fear also appears, yet in another context, in the case of Wedding, where the arrival of new “gentrifiers” are considered as being a threat for the existing local diversity of the neighbourhood.

Wider contexts: The neighbourhoods also do not exist in a vacuum from the wider world, and external factors also inevitably influence them. For example, stories from CHALK and the old town of Sassari highlight how changing social attitudes have led to people to become less connected. In Wedding, although the neighbourhood is seen as being a good example of a diverse community, residents are still impacted by systemic issues such as institutionalized racism within the police force. It is hard for individual neighbourhoods to be resilient to such issues or have the capacity to combat them.

What Next? Going Beyond the Status Quo

What has become apparent from the stories is that in order for the diverse neighbourhoods we worked in to address the challenges they face, ‘beyond’ thinking and approaches are needed. Beyond thinking and approaches go further than seeking to solve the symptom of an issue, and delve into more multifaceted, complex solutions to an issue’s root cause. This is not to say that some manifestations of more linear and symptom-addressing approaches are not needed, but rather to state that in order to fully tackle a social issue, new ways of thinking and doing things must be cultivated. In turn, this can lead to real change that goes beyond surface-level interventions. Looking across the stories, three distinct notions of beyond thinking and approaches have emerged, as detailed below.

Beyond physical regeneration and into creating environments of interactions

There are many examples within the stories about different types of physical regeneration that has occurred in our neighbourhoods. These include new bars opening in the squares of Sassari’s Old Town, facades of buildings being renovated in Józsefváros, and the legacy of the NDC Regeneration Scheme in CHALK embodied in community centres. Yet what seems to be valued about such spaces is not just the visual appeal of buildings, but the ways in which the spaces allow for interactions between people. As one person detailed regarding Wedding, “There is one or several spaces where people of different origins can meet.” When such spaces are no longer there, such as the closed pubs in Salford, it is not only the service they offered the community that disappears but also the opportunity for people to socialize. Furthermore, when certain spaces are renovated it can also lead to the exclusion of people, as is the case with the gatekeeping of the regenerated parks in the 8th district of Budapest. Therefore, when creating or renovating physical spaces it is important to think about how they can help facilitate social interactions, particularly for those in the community who may be the most excluded.

Beyond services and into creating meaningful connections

While many of the stories highlight how services and formal support provision have helped people in their neighbourhood, it is important to remember that services alone are not the answer. In Józsefváros, for example, people reported that they didn’t feel that those who really needed newly emerged services were accessing them. In CHALK, people spoke about difficulties navigating services and finding out information. Furthermore, in the stories from Wedding, it is highlighted that although there is a system in place to support newcomers in settling into Germany, the bureaucracy of the system presents a barrier to people who use it. Examples of services working for the people who need them are found when people have either been signposted by other locals or when the services enable them to connect on a human level with others. As the caregiver who attends a Zumba class in CHALK stated, the group helps her “live a life as well as caring for [her] husband”. What we can learn from stories like this is that connecting local knowledge regarding services and connecting people to one another are key contributors to services reaching their intended recipients.

Beyond top-down strategic interventions and into bottom-up action

The stories and their contexts demonstrate that top-down strategic interventions should be combined with the real engagement of local people. In Wedding, the Social City programme is being used to include local people in decision-making processes in an attempt to bridge this divide. In CHALK, despite some of the divides between newcomers to the area and people who have lived there for generations, both sets of people work together at the local food bank to help address the bigger issue of poverty in the area. In essence, people who the stories suggest might otherwise not interact with one another have connected due to a common purpose and need. This demonstrates the power of taking responsibility for creating the neighbourhood that people want to live in. As one resident in Józsefváros stated, in the future they hope that people go beyond looking to the local government for answers and realize that “we are all responsible for the environment we live in”.

While some wider societal issues and systemic problems are difficult to overcome, particularly in these diverse neighbourhoods which undergo change more so than other areas, it is evident that strengthening connections within communities helps people to overcome the challenges they face. These connections are social (i.e. between people and people), environmental (i.e. between people and the place they live) and internal (i.e. between people and their sense of social responsibility). Through activating these connections, diverse communities are better placed to build (both physically and metaphysically) the neighbourhoods and lives they would like to have.

Comparing Results

The Community Reporting and Stakeholder interviews’ approaches brought similar and complementary results. The two methodology are based on two different initial approaches: bottom-up in the case of Community Reporting because the discussions are not directed and based on what the interviewee wanted to say; and top-down in the case of stakeholder interviews, because the discussions were semi-directed, based on an interview guide and on a previous knowledge on the area. In the same time, both methods are characterized by an approximately similar share of subjectivity and objectivity. While Community Reporting is based on the subjective opinion of people, the whole process of story gathering, co-curation and analysis is accompanied by a strong guidance on behalf of the lead organisation, the Institute of Community Reporters, ensuring that the subjective voices are treated and analysed in a systematic and structuralized way. In the case of stakeholder interviews, the interviews are guided, since the beginning, by the clear identification of the stakeholder’s types to be contacted, the questions (or at least the fields) to be asked, the approximative information expected. However, the interviews themselves and the description of the interviews were not guided, and thus let a large field of free reflexion and subjectivity to the interviewers. In this way, the two methods, that at the start of the project seemed to be in complete contradiction, revealed to be closer to each other than expected, and to be rather complementary than opposite. The crossing of their results is particularly apt to give an overview on the opinion of the large spectre of the local society. As mentioned above, VOICITYS was a pilot project, with limited time and structural frame; therefore our method could not be deepen enough. However, this pilot research has already proved the interest of the parallel use of the two research methods for the understanding of local societies and societal issues.

Looking across the results from the Community Reporter stories and Stakeholder interviews three distinct, yet interconnected, categories in which the findings could be situated have emerged. They are:

- People: This category focuses on findings related to the main social changes and interactions, the conditions of dialogue and inclusion of social groups, as well as the social infrastructures and contexts of the neighbourhoods, the lives of the people who live and work there, their own understandings and experiences of diversity and social changes.

- Place: This category focuses on the main areas and physical infrastructure where diversity is reflected in the neighbourhoods, the buildings, spaces and services that are evident in them and notions of regeneration, physical change and placemaking.

- Power: This category focuses on the power structures in the neighbourhoods in terms of decision-making and policy making processes, management of the areas, top-down and bottom-up processes, governance, and the different types of power (i.e. public, civil, legal, social capital) and the ways in which the actors in them interact.

The table below identifies the findings that emerged in both the Community Reporter stories and Stakeholder interviews and situates them in the aforementioned categories.

People

Place

Power

Berlin,

Germany

Living Together: The different demographics live together in Wedding without conflict. It is felt that there is interaction between the different groups (ethnic, social, age etc.) in the area but that this could be enhanced further.

Tensions: There is a tension around gentrification in terms of young professionals/middle-classes moving into the area and changing its social make-up that could weaken the diversity of the area. Diversity is seen as being a key part of the area’s and its inhabitants’ identity.

Language: Language is seen as something that can united people if it is common, and separate people if it is not.

The importance of spaces of interaction: There are spaces in which people can interact, such as specific streets/squares and schools. The schools are generally sites at which the children interact rather than their parents.

New spaces: The different migrant populations of the area have opened up different businesses such as a shops and restaurants that have added to the diverse vibrancy of the neighbourhood.

Decision-making and governance: There are systems in place to connect residents with the people in positions of power, and also channels through which local people can meet to address their needs through cooperation. These can help to address any power imbalances in the area.

Budapest,

Hungary

Perceptions of people: In general, the Roma community are largely seen in a negative light, whereas other groups (i.e. migrants) are seen more positively.

Perceptions of diversity: The area is seen as being diverse and vibrant, even if there are negatives associated with this vibrancy and liveliness.

Physical improvements and social consequences: Whilst the area has seen physical improvements to the aesthetics of the area and the assets available, they are not generally seen as supporting the growth of the social infrastructure between different groups. In general, the ‘regenerated’ spaces seem to have fragmented people or excluded certain social groups.

Policing: The policing has been enhanced in the area. This and other factors have penalized (and in some instances) criminalized the poor and the Roma community.

Divisions: The power structures in the area have created divisions between people. More inclusion of the residents (in particular those who are becoming more marginalized) in change processes and power structures is needed.

Salford,

UK

Demographic change: The neighbourhood has undergone changes in terms of the demographics who lived there. It was predominantly a white British area (and is still so statistically) but in recent years it has become more ethnically diverse.

Lack of integration: There is little integration or interaction between the different groups who live in the neighbourhood. This has led to the feeling that the social infrastructure of the community is not as strong as it once was.

Changes to spaces to interact: The area has seen changes in the types of spaces open to people to use that provide sites of interaction. Whereas previously informal spaces such as public houses were the hub of social interactions, in recent times other spaces have emerged (as the public houses have closed) such as community centres that provide a range of activities and support for people. Some of these places are seen as belonging or being only used by a specific demographic, whilst others provide support that crosses such divides (i.e. the food banks that focuses on the common problem of poverty).

Perception gaps: Whilst the support organisations in the area feel they are well connected to one another, the users of such services identify that it can be difficult to know where to go for support.

Bottom-up Action: Action from a grassroots level is seen as positive for the community and the individuals involved as a way of ‘giving back’ to their community and there are communication channels that exist between people who live in the area and those in positions of power.

Sassari,

Italy

Demographic change: The Old Town has seen significant changes in which the migrant population has increased. There has also been a movement out of the local people of Sassari belonging to the lower middle classes from the lower sections of the Old Town. This area is now largely populated by migrants.

Perceptions of Diversity: The diversity of the neighbourhood is largely discussed as ethnic diversity.

Squares and Schools: The piazzas and schools provide spaces in which different groups of people can interact. They are seen as being key to bringing people together and promoting social interaction. The cultural events that take place in the public spaces and the new cafes opening in the squares are seen as supporting this too.

Lack of connection and communication: There seems to be little communication or connection between residents and the power structures of the area. It is seen that people themselves most make the change happen as there is little support or connectivity with those in a position to support change processes.

Europe-wide Recommendations for Cities and Localities

The reflection on the common points raised by diversity in local neighbourhoods was launched by the Pan European Conversation of Change event held in Salford, during the second half of the project. During this event, the participants were asked to identify the key characteristics of diversity, and the main similarities and differences between the cities. The following quotes reflect key messages of this event and ideas that emerged from local conversation of change events:

1-The concept of hyper diversity has been confirmed:

“Diversity is not only a term based on religion and ethnicity.”

“Diversity is not just about culture but also about classes.”

2-Dialogue and interconnection are crucial for an inclusive development of diversity:

“Real diversity is not just about living side by side but being connected.”

“Diversity needs to be built on reciprocal relationships, to avoid some people feeling pushed out”

“There is a need for communication and to listen to people”

3-Policies need to be aware of the negative perceptions and feelings of certain people concerning diversity, that are mainly the result of their fear from differences and newcomers:

“People are rather scared of diversity, and what it might bring and not of certain ‘races”

“There are acceptable and unacceptable differences”

“We all have prejudices”

“The frustration of people pushes them to search for new enemies”

“Diversity is considered as a “threat” by the people, because it is the result of a change. The arrival of newcomers might mean the “change of the enemies”.

“Diversity is a two sided process, where locals are face to immigrants”

“There is a general negative trend in the public discourse concerning immigration. In general, even in this negative aspect, the discourse often does not cover reality.”

4-Diversity can be seen from different points of view: policies dealing with diversity management needs to take diversity as a strength, an asset for the local communities and local development.

“Diversity in general should NOT BE A PROBLEM, not a negative thing to be resolved. Unfortunately, for instance, Roma communities are seen in Salford or in Budapest, as a problem, and not as an asset.”

“Vibrant communities bring something extra to the people and they realize that”

5-Policies dealing with diversity management should be careful and attentive in order to generate real social inclusion:

“It is important to let people chose their ways of belonging and looking like. Integration cannot be forced, but can be supported through tolerance (for instance, tolerating someone’s religion). But these actions shouldn’t go beyond someone’s comfort zone, that can be different: for one it is just sharing, for another, it is about integration”

“There are strong differences between tolerance, welcoming, dialogue and integration. All these have different meanings and different results in the community. “

“Integration does not support diversity; inclusion supports inclusive diversity”

“Inclusion should be a natural approach for all people”

“Turning the positive and negative approach to a neutral one, where inclusion is a natural thing would lead to a better humankind”

“There is a difference between priorities of policies and of the society: Minority groups with social needs are prioritized in the UK by the policies but not by the society; this is the reciprocal situation in Hungary where people with special needs are not forming a priority for policies, but do have the sympathy of a large part of the society.”

6. Place making policies and actions have a strong impact on diversity in different ways.

“From the point of view of diversity, physical location is important: differentiation of places characterized by “racist” by “welcoming” attitude”

6/a: Inclusive diversity depends a lot on the existence of places of encounter:

“Diversity needs public spaces, but also structure & security”

“Places are important: they might help starting a conversation. Berlin offers places for exchange that are also relaxing and open places”

“There is a need to facilitate diversity through places (schools, community centres)”

6/b: The economic and spatial transformation of neighbourhoods also have a strong impact on social inclusion and on the development of dialogue and interconnection between groups forming diversity:

“Urban regeneration is changing the communities. It can be negative: push out marginalized people reinforcing gentrification; and positive when it is about investing into the people.”

“Economic interest outweighs social interest that can destroy spaces of diversity”

7. The importance of education in diversity management has been highlighted:

“It is important to support the opportunities for kids to learn in school about diversity, but we have to take care so that they do not learn something ‘bad’”.

“A positive feature is that the increase of public discourses and debate on immigration and diversity is breaking down taboos regarding immigration as a subject of conversation. As a result of this, children are more informed and open towards diversity – here schools have an essential role to play.”

“Schools are good places for diversity for the children, and adults are also seeking for creating their places of diversity where they can be in safe.”

Conclusions

VOICITYS’ main goal was to strengthen social dialogue between residents, stakeholders and policy makers in diverse urban neighbourhoods. As a pilot project, VOICITYS has been testing a complex methodology for generating dialogue. It has collected narratives from all segments of the local community and has providing opportunities for open dialogue within the community through a participatory process. This has been done for four case study neighbourhoods as well as in the context of an international comparison. Through this complex methodology, VOICITYS has achieved several results on the local and on the transnational levels, as follows:

The main conditions, assets and challenges linked to diversity in the four neighbourhoods have been mapped by using two different approaches: a bottom-up research brining up citizens’ voices by using the Community Reporting method, and a top-down research collecting the voices of stakeholders, organisations and policy makers by using the more traditional social research method based on conducted interviews. As a result, VOICITYS obtained a complex picture on diversity in the four neighbourhoods that was the basis of the following step of the project: the dialogue between stakeholders and the identification of policy recommendations.

Two participatory events were organized in each of the four neighbourhoods with the participation of residents, community reporters, stakeholders and, where possible, decision makers. These events permitted to jointly identify the main challenges and assets of local diversity and the policies needed to be implemented for a more integrated and cohesive development of the neighbourhoods. Moreover, with a view to the identification of local policy ideas and recommendations as being part of VOICITYS’ objectives, the local participatory events – Conversation of Change event and Consensus event –had positive impact on the local communities by providing them a place and time for dialogue and discussion on some local topics that were identified by themselves as being the most pertinent ones in the neighbourhood. VOICITYS provided a possibility for the communities to discuss about local issues openly and contributed to the social dialogue on the local level by generating new connections and collaborations. The concrete and direct impact of these events varied according to the local needs and capacities. In Berlin, they contributed to the already existing social dialogue on the neighbourhood of Wedding; in Sassari, they provided a new approach to injecting social content to present policies of revitalizing cultural heritage in the Old Town; in Salford, they permitted to re-think policies in order to outreach to all segments of the local society; in Budapest, the participatory events created a real occasion for open dialogue and brought up many constructive ideas for improving social cohesion in Józsefváros.

VOICITYS was a transnational European project and one of our objectives were therefore to provide some conclusions and recommendations at the European level by comparing the results achieved in the four case study areas. Wedding in Berlin, the Old Town of Sassari, CHALK in Salford and Józsefváros in Budapest are representing entirely different socio-economic, political, historical conditions, different roles in the European migration trends and even diversity is appearing under different connotations and understanding in the local languages. Therefore, while the VOICITYS process has been primarily managed at local levels particular attention was also paid to the permanent international dialogue tween the consortium partners. The Pan European Conversation of Change event provided a unique occasion for dialogue between the partners and delegated members of the local communities. These activities contributed to the formulation of some policy ideas and recommendations on the European level.

As a pilot project, VOICITYS aimed at implementing and testing an innovative methodology that links different practices and approaches as well as empirical research and methods based on community dialogue. Our project has had an important direct impact on the partners and their collaborators, by providing them practical know-how of these different tools and methods. Community reporters in each city went through a complex training process, and as a result, became validated members of the Institute of Community Reporters, with the right to use the method in other projects and occasions, in their local communities as well. Partners also obtained a training in social research method and especially on how to prepare, realize and analyse semi conducted interviews. During the participatory events, all communities learned about diversity, the specific problems and needs in their areas, and also about the need of real dialogue and exchange between each other.

VOICITYS was a pilot project. It allowed us to identify general problems and elaborate recommendations based on a participatory and community-based process. We believe that our methodology and our results will provide as useful support for diverse neighbourhoods and localities that seek to develop local dialogue regarding social cohesion and integration and in this way maintain diversity as a community asset. We also believe that VOICITYS has considerable potential for follow-up activities. These will provide opportunities for improving, and further developing our methodology.

References

Czirfusz et al. (2015): Gentrification and Rescaling Urban Governance in Budapest-Józsefváros. Intersections, Vol. 1. No. 4, pp. 55-77.

Ladányi, J. (1989): Changing patterns of residential segregation in Budapest. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 13. pp. 555-572.

Piekut A. − Valentine, G. (2016): Perceived Diversity and Acceptance of Minority Ethnic Groups in Two Urban Contexts. European Sociological Review, Vol. 32. No. 3, pp. 339-354.

Taşan-Kok, T. et al. (2013): Towards Hyper Diversified European Cities. A Critical Literature Review. Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht.

Vertovec, S. (2007): Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 30. No. 6, pp. 1024-1054.

Wessendorf, S. (2014): Researching social relations in super-diverse neighbourhoods. Mappingthe field. University of Birmingham. IRiS Working paper, No. 2/2014.

Some useful websites

Europe for Citizens programme https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/europe-for-citizens_en

Diversity charters in Europe: https://ec.europa.eu/info/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/combatting-discrimination/tackling-discrimination/diversity-management_en

Intercultural cities : https://www.coe.int/en/web/interculturalcities/about

Divercities: Governing Urban Diversity: https://www.urbandivercities.eu/

Portuguese-Africans: in Practice a True ethnicity

Goran Bandov and Bruno Antonio Erdeljac Cunha

Portugal - a Country of Immigration

In the immediate aftermath of the Carnations Revolution (April 25, 1974), a small number of African families came to settle in Portugal from the former colonies, which accompanied the great return movement of the Portuguese living there at the time of the independence of those territories. The African presence, until then reduced to a nucleus of Cape Verdean population coming to Portugal, still in the 60s, to work fundamentally in the sector of civil construction and public works, grew and diversified. But it was during the 1980s that this flow increased considerably, and came to have the basic characteristics of a migratory phenomenon of economic motivation. Without ceasing to be a country of emigration, Portugal also became a country of immigration.

After a phase in which it apparently ignored it, the Portuguese State finally recognized the existence of an immigration issues, put in place a process of extraordinary legalization of the many illegal immigrants and adapted the concerted policy of containment of immigration at European Union level and enshrined in the Schengen Agreement. However, the immigrants were setting up their own organizational schemes, and the main associations representing them gained some recognition and space for intervention. Today it can be said that immigration and immigrants have entered the public discourse and the political agenda in Portugal, and the term “immigrants” has now been used to refer to the African presence with great visibility in some parts of the country, particularly in the Lisbon region.

Meanwhile, the designation “immigrants” is far from encompassing the diversity of forms that this presence assumes, diversity that escapes the common observer. For various reasons, which relate to the arrival dates and residence times, with the social composition and cultural characteristics, with the paths traveled before and after coming to Portugal and even with the formal status – a significant part of them have the Portuguese nationality – many of these Africans cannot be considered, nor consider themselves, immigrants.

More adequate to designate this sector of the African population, which, as we shall see, is clearly distinguished from the proper immigrants in various respects, will be the expression “Portuguese-Africans” (Portuguese: luso-africanos). It encompasses at least two situations. One, older, is that of the Portuguese-born Africans of average or high social status and often racially mixed, who chose to settle in Portugal following the independence of their countries of origin. Another, which began to take shape and could be called the new Portuguese-Africans, is that of the children of immigrants, who were already born and/or grew up in Portugal and are mistakenly called “second generation immigrants”. In both of these cases, for different reasons, two of the basic features of the immigrant populations are not observed: the transience of the presence and the return project.

Today in Portugal, the presence of ethnic minorities and the phenomenon of ethnicity have already achieved considerable social and cultural expression. One can even speak of some politicization of the ethnicity; insofar as belonging to these minorities is the basis of embryonic forms of collective action, that already elicit political responses from the state. What is the position of the old and new Portuguese-Africans in this picture? Their hybrid identity, of double cultural reference, has kept them on the margins of ethnicity. But, there are signs that their future path may be more involved.

Portuguese-Africans: Diversity of Paths and Social Conditions - the First Portuguese-Africans

The oldest nucleus of Portuguese-Africans settled in Portugal is formed by individuals and families of African origin, holders of Portuguese nationality, who, a) were living in Portugal before 1974, a less common situation, b) in more frequent cases, arrived in the post-25th of April, before or shortly after the independence of the five former Portuguese African colonies. The possession of the Portuguese nationality comes mainly from one of two conditions, accumulated or not: existence of Portuguese ancestors (parents or grandparents) or performance of functions in the old colonial administrations.

At the outset, the fact that they are of Portuguese nationality and of relatively high positions and occupational and school qualifications ensured, albeit with some degree of risk, the possibility of this choice and the possibility of maintaining their social status, which didn’t seem so certain if they stayed in their countries of origin. Within a framework of multiple constraints and indeterminations, both in the departure and the arrival societies, and in the face of the resources they could mobilize, individual decisions leaned towards the option which appeared to be the safest.

Their coming to Portugal did not obey to the factors of repulsion and attraction generally present in the migratory flows of the “third world” to the industrialized countries. Rather, it was a direct consequence of the decolonization process,[1] and it mixed with the wider movement of return of the hundreds of thousands of Portuguese set in the old colonial territories. They were therefore non-white “returnees” who, in a context of a large-scale social and political change, have opted to come to Portugal.

1Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos, # 10/11, 1989, pp. 203-226.

The establishment of this initial nucleus of Portuguese-Africans corresponds to the second of the three main stages of recent migrations between Portugal and ACPOL.[2] Before, during the 1960s, the first Cape Verdean population had come into Portugal, mainly to fill the voids, especially in the civil construction and public works sector, which had been left empty in the labor market. Then, in the mid-1980s, and up to the present, it was the stage that can properly be called immigration, in which the immigrants’ almost exclusive destiny was also the construction industry, but where a much larger contingent of population was involved, their starting points diversified and the economic motivations of those who came were accentuated.

2icial Language.

However, unlike the protagonists of these two flows, the ones we call here Portuguese-Africans cannot be considered as immigrants, not only because they are Portuguese nationals but also, as we shall see, by the fact that their social composition and the way they inserted themselves in the Portuguese society were markedly different.

It should be noted in this regard that the categories of “immigration” and “immigrants” entered the public discourse in Portugal, practically in the 1990s. As it is shown in a review of the dominant reference press carried out between 1983 and 1989, until that date those categories rarely appeared to designate the foreign presence. The most frequent categories were “Cape Verdean” and “African”, often used as synonyms.[3] At that time, not only the Cape Verdeans arrived in the 1960s, but also the Portuguese-Africans from all five ACPOL, had long been fixed in Portugal, and the fact that public opinion did not categorize their presence as “Immigrants”, is a confirmation, at the level of social representations, of their difference in economic and social status.

3Portugal, a country of immigration, Lisbon, Instituto de Estudos para o Desenvolvimento, 1991, pp. 63-74.

The limitations of the official statistical sources preclude any direct quantification of this category. In the absence of indicators of ethnic/racial membership in the forms of the population censuses, the criteria of nationality and naturalness remain, although they are insufficient in this case. The first, of course, does not distinguish them, because they are Portuguese like any other. But even delimiting the universe of foreign citizens born in the former colonies, we continue to have a too broad cut, since there were also many Portuguese born of non-African origin, especially in the cases of Angola and Mozambique, which were settlement colonies.

We can, however, approach the problem by taking the case of the nationals of the other three former colonies. In 1981, had their residence in Portugal more than 8.000 individuals of Portuguese nationality who were born in Cape Verde, more than 2.000 who were born in Guinea-Bissau and around 1.000 in Saint Thomas and Prince.[4] Although with a margin of indetermination, since it is certain that not all are of African origin, we can say, however, that a great part of them would be, since the Portuguese settlement in those territories did not have the broad and multigenerational expression that it reached, mainly, in Angola and to some extent in Mozambique. Still, and despite this, the proportion of Portuguese born there to the total number of residents in colonial times was lower than that of those born in Portugal.[5]

4 Data retrieved from XII General Population Census, INE - 1981.

5 See Rui Pena Pires et al., The Returnees – a sociographic study, Lisbon, Instituto de Estudos para o Desenvolvimento, 1984.

In any case, assuming that the number of Portuguese-Africans coming from each of the five former colonies is proportional to the total number of Portuguese living there before independence, it is safe to say that most of them would be Angolan-Portuguese and Mozambican-Portuguese. In fact, it was from Angola and Mozambique that almost all of the “returnees” came – 61% and 33%, respectively, of a contingent estimated at more than half a million people, although we do not know how many of them would be, in each case, of African origin.[6] The prominence of Angolan-Portuguese and Mozambican-Portuguese is, after all, a direct consequence of Angola and Mozambique being precisely the colonial territories where the Portuguese presence had more expression at all levels, including the racial miscegenation.

6t al., op. cit.

Another aggregate indicator worth mentioning is the number of people granted or retained the Portuguese nationality in the post-independence period of the former African colonies – more than 30.000 between 1976 and 1989.[7] Under the new nationality law, introduced at that time, where it was established that individuals who remained in the territories of the former colonies would automatically acquire the nationality of the new States, these requests for naturalization or conservation of the Portuguese nationality were based either on the existence of Portuguese ascendants, either in the provision of public service to the Portuguese State, or even in the time of residence in Portugal. Considering the distinction between “nationals” and “foreigners” of the former colonies in the cases where it is more indicative and the number of people to whom the Portuguese nationality was granted or retained, it will not be wrong to say that this oldest nucleus of Portuguese-Africans and their descendants, meanwhile born and settled in Portugal, should be between 4 and 5 tens of thousands of people.

7Portugal, a country of immigration, Lisbon, Instituto de Estudos para o Desenvolvimento, 1991, pp. 119-143. Not all requests for concession or preservation would have been submitted by individuals of African origin, as certainly some individuals of Indian origin were also included. In any case, it can be said that a good part of these thirty thousand were.

In addition to the difference in status conferred, first of all, by the possession of the Portuguese nationality, the Portuguese-Africans distinguish themselves from the immigrants of the same countries of origin by significant contrasts “upwards” of social status, either at the level of degrees of schooling, professional status or areas of residence. To evaluate the size of these contrasts we can take as an example the original population of Cape Verde. In this case, for the above reasons, it is reasonable to consider that the distinction between “nationals” and “foreigners” broadly restores the differences between the Cape Verdeans with Portuguese nationality and the Cape Verdeans immigrants.

According to data from the General Population Census of 1981, the illiteracy rate was 45.5% among “foreigners” and 11.8% among “nationals”, conversely, 9.1% of the “nationals” had a higher education course, as did only 0.5% of “foreigners”.[8] Concerning the professional status, while about half of the “foreigners” worked in construction and public works, only 12.7% of the “nationals” worked in this sector of activity; the labor market segments most occupied by the latter were services provided to the community, social services and personal services (41.2%) – including qualified professions such as doctors, nurses or teachers – and in transport and communications (15.7%).[9]

8 For the presentation and analysis of these and other data on Cape Verdeans resident in Portugal see Rogério Roque Amaro, “Characterization of Cape Verdeans Residing in Portugal, from the Census Data of 1981”, Luís de França (coord.), The Cape-Verdean Community in Portugal, Lisbon, Instituto de Estudos para o Desenvolvimento, 1992.

9 ibid

As for the areas of residence, the differences are also noticeable. Although strongly concentrated in the districts of Lisbon and Setubal, as is the case with other Portuguese-Africans and with immigrants in general, a closer analysis at county level shows patterns of contrasting residential locations: strong presence of “foreigners” in the contiguous neighborhoods of Lisbon, unlike the “national” ones, which, in contrast, appear much more within the city of Lisbon itself.[10]

10 ibid p.16.

Demographic characteristics, such as the age structure and masculinity, also reveal differences in the social profile between the two groups: in the case of “foreigners” there were 126 men per 100 women, while among the “nationals” the ratio was 95.5 to 100; on the other hand, more than twenty percent of the “nationals” are 50 or more years of age, while only 7.2% of the “foreigners” are such, which coincides, in the case of the latter, with the usual demographic profile in the communities of immigrants, suggesting to the former, on the contrary, a situation of stabilization and integration in the Portuguese society.[11]

11 As in Rui Pena Pires et al., op. cit.

In view of the similarity of historical parameters and personal paths that underlie the formation of the social category of the Portuguese-Africans, regardless of the former colony of origin, it is very likely that the contrasts between Portuguese Cape Verdean and the Cape Verdean immigrants reproduce in their fundamental features the other African populations from the ACPOL, distinguishing also Portuguese Angolans from the immigrant Angolans or the Portuguese Guinean from the immigrant Guineans. Many direct observations in the Lisbon daily life, although obviously limited in their objectivity, allow us to think that this is as such.

The social composition of these Portuguese-Africans leads one to conclude that in most cases these people do not establish direct and regular social relations with the immigrants of their respective countries of origin. The social distance which its class condition imposes – especially for those who fit fully into the urban middle classes with high school and professional resources – is doubled by the very discontinuities of the residential location, and will tend to overlap with the possible effects of certain cultural affinities resulting from their common origin.

In terms of socio-professional composition, levels of school qualification, residential location, language, religion, lifestyles, and thus contrasts between ethnic minorities and host society populations,[12] this oldest nucleus of Portuguese-Africans is, among all the minorities originating from the ACPOL, the less contrasting with the Portuguese population in general. In the particular case of what we can call the Portuguese-African elite – constituted by entrepreneurs, cadres and liberal professions – the social contrasts are even upwards.

12 For a presentation of the model of social and cultural contrasts for the analysis of ethnicity see Fernando Luis Machado, “Ethnicity in Portugal - contrasts and politicization”, Sociology -problems and practices, # 12, 1992, pp. 123-136.

If, in this case, it is true that class identity overlaps with ethnic perception, this does not mean, however, that some of the direct actors in the process of politicization of ethnicity do not emerge from this sector of Portuguese-Africans, as we shall see. Another of the distinctive features of these Portuguese-Africans are their racially mixed genealogies, which may be more or less old. These mixed families were formed in the middle of colonial times, the result of the relationship between a Portuguese man and an African woman (the opposite was much rarer), having married or lived together or not. If the man often did not assume this relationship, he usually assumed the descendants. The descendants of these relations, in many numerous cases, tended to know some social promotion within a framework of racial relations of a colonial type. Studies carried out in varied historical and cultural contexts have rightly shown that the social promotion of the descendants of mixed families and the process of “whitening” of the color of the skin are, moreover, strictly intertwined processes that feed each other, with the clarity of the skin facilitating the access to higher social conditions.[13]

13 José Ramos Tinhorão, “The whitening of blacks in Portugal”, in The Blacks in Portugal - a silent presence, Edições Caminho, 1988.

Among all the former colonies, Cape Verde was undoubtedly the one in which miscegenation was historically taken further, in very particular terms.[14] But in modern times, let us say from the end of the XIX century to independence, and in the context of the lasting presence of a white colony in interaction with a large black majority, it can be said that in Angola the miscegenation had a more significant expression. Proving this is the constitution of a considerable population of mestizos, who in turn have mixed with whites or blacks giving rise to a wide range of shades of skin color, and in some cases the African origin is not already distinguishable.

14 About the miscegenation in Cape Verde and other relevant aspects of Cape Verdean history and culture see Manuel Ferreira, The Creole Adventure, Lisbon, Plátano Editora, 1985.

One of the questions that needs to be asked is how far one of the ways of successfully integrating the Portuguese-Africans has passed and is passing precisely by the miscegenation, now in the context of the current Portuguese society, and the way in which these possible inter-racial marital strategies intersect with class relations. In any case, it must be said that miscegenation is by no means a trait of all Portuguese-Africans. Not all Portuguese-Africans are racially mixed, although the latter are generally in this category.

A sign of their integration into the Portuguese society is also the non-prevision of a return project, at least definitive, to their countries of origin. Although many of them have lived there for long or even most of their lives, the adverse political and economic conditions prevailing there, on the one hand, and their own situation of stability in Portugal, on the other, combine to stop this eventuality. This does not mean that in a scenario of pacification and development of those countries – a hypothesis that many still hope for – would not do so, but it would be in a temporary regime and without abandoning the security base in Portugal. And even in this case, they would be rather Portuguese-African emigrants than African immigrants returning.

The New Portuguese-Africans

Another line of social construction of the Portuguese-African identity is the one that involves the so-called second-generation immigrants, including the descendants of Cape Verdean immigrants still in the 1960s and the much larger number of descendants of the immigrants who entered, especially since the 1980s. It is, therefore, a category of young people who are still in the education system or who are entering or recently entered the labor market. To a certain extent, one could even include in this category the youngest descendants of the early Portuguese-Africans, given some similarities of paths and lifestyles. The differences in social status, which will be nearer or even better than that of their ascendants, will tend, however, to distance them, so they will not be considered here.

The concept of second-generation immigrants appears due to the need to delimit a field of problems that tends to emerge, with varying degrees of intensity and in a more or less short term, in immigrant-receiving societies. With the prolongation of the period of time, generally far beyond the initial expectations of these societies and of the immigrants themselves, and with family reunification, the focus of the public attention is diverted from the problematic of the immigration, in a strict sense, to the account of the difficulties of social integration, no longer of the immigrants themselves, but of their descendants. What happens most often is that the disadvantaged social status of the first generation is inherited by their children.

It is within this framework that this concept appears, having implicit the idea that there is a mere reprint, with the same parameters, of the previous “problem” of immigrants, a sort of mechanical social reproduction. It is therefore necessary to think about the descendants in the same way and with the same instruments used to analyze the problem of the immigration and of the immigrants in general.

But this notion, at the level of sociological analysis, does not contribute to its thorough understanding. Indeed, the notion of second-generation immigrants implies an essentialist conception of social identities. The culture of origin (which, moreover, is often learned in caricature and folkloric terms and is supposed to be an integrated and homogeneous whole) is supposed to be reproduced, in its entirety, within the minority’s own space and exclusively there, without contamination by the surrounding society. There would be a mere automatic continuity between generations, losing sight of all that is contrast. Contrast of path, of social condition, of lifestyles, of values.

Several studies have rightly pointed out contrasts of various kinds between immigrants and their descendants, already born and/or raised in the host societies. In a paper on the descendants of immigrants in France, it is pointed out the mismatch of values between the young people and their parents, a mismatch that is even bigger than the one between the homologous generations of the French population, being the children of the immigrants closer to the concerns of the young French people in general than those of their parents.[15] In a paper on the Portuguese “second generation” in France, Hily and Oriol also detect contrasts of strategies and orientations between the young immigrants and their parents.[16] According to them, “the strategies of ‘invisibilization’ that allowed the parents to discretely maintain their cultural identity, then risk becoming problematic for their children”, a more likely hypothesis when they have higher school and cultural capitals. They add that the “new generation that emerges from the Portuguese immigration, which is very critical of their parents’ life experience, refuses to stay in the continuity of their economic projects”.[17]

15 Hanna Malewska, “Identity crisis, problems of deviation within the young immigrants”, Les Temps Modernes, # 452-453-454, 1984, p. 1801.

16 Marie-Antoinette Hily, Michel Oriol, “Portuguese second generation: the management of identity resources”, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, vol. 9, # 3, 1993, pp. 81-93.

17 Marie-Antoinette Hily, Michel Oriol, “Portuguese second generation: the management of identity resources”, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, vol. 9, # 3, 1993, pp. 81-93.

In another work on this subject, in addition to the critique of the notion of “second generation” – for implying “a representation of culture as a distinct and immutable entity, fixed for eternity” – are also criticized the ideas of incompatibility between cultural systems, cultural dilemma, identity crisis or problems of integration of young people from immigration; a new concept is thus proposed to designate the positioning of those young people who “by their practices are able to open passages and build bridges between two cultural groups”.[18]

18 Céline Pottier, “The social ‘fabrication’ of cultural mediators: the case of young girls of Maghrebin origin”, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, vol. 9, # 3, 1993.

In order to overcome the limitations of the notion of second-generation immigrants, applied to the descendants of African immigrants in Portugal, it was considered better to replace it with that of new Portuguese-Africans, to distinguish them from the earlier Portuguese-Africans, characterized above.

First of all, young people and children descendants of immigrants not consider themselves as immigrants. They do not have an immigrant path and most of them do not even know the country of origin of their parents. They were born and/or were socialized within the framework of the host society, where they suffered the powerful influence of contexts such as school, but also of the media, the city, or from their networks of youthful sociability. Its culture is inevitably a product of this, no matter how great the importance of the family and how much it constitutes an enclosed space of reproduction of the culture of origin. It should be noted, moreover, that the “first generation” immigrants themselves suffer the socializing influence of all these means and that, therefore, speaking of their cultural identity also implies taking into account the effects of this most recent segment of their life history.

Under Portuguese law, the birth on national territory does not, by itself, confer nationality. Most children of immigrants do not have it, therefore, at this moment. They can, however, obtain it after six years of residence by their parents, although this is an issue that, in most cases, does not applies immediately. Not only because many have not yet reached the age at which they can autonomously express this will, but also because a significant number of immigrants still do not meet the conditions of residence time, at least of a legally recognized residence. The consolidation of their Portuguese-African identity, by way of obtaining nationality and what it can mean in terms of integration into the Portuguese society, is therefore still open.[19] Their status as new Portuguese-Africans is, at this level, still a virtual condition, the concretization of which will depend, above all, on the greater or less prolongation of their parents’ stay.

19 It was important to know how many of the descendants of immigrants with more years of residence already asked for Portuguese nationality and if they obtained it. However, as far as it is known, this information is not available.

If in Portugal occurs what is the common experience of the European countries that had their peak of immigration in the 1960s, that is, the permanence and rooting of immigrants beyond what was in their initial projects, then this virtual condition will tend to become real. Although immigration is a recent phenomenon in Portugal, and therefore its trends are not yet clearly drawn, it can be said that this is the most likely scenario. In fact, the main factors of repulsion and attraction that prevailed in the arrival of immigrants during the 1980s remain. If the entry of more immigrants at the same pace could be halted, assuming that the strengthened containment policy has practical effects, it does not seem likely that the immigrants who are here will suddenly return to their countries of origin. It is enough to take into account the labor needs of the large public works projects scheduled for the next years in the whole country, particularly in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, to see that the structural dependence of this strategic sector of the Portuguese economy on the foreign workers will tend to be maintained, if not increased.

In addition, the extension of residence time generally has different effects on the immigrants and their descendants. If for the former it is only a question of postponing the return project, for the latter a non-return project is being consolidated. The question of the non-return of many of the so-called “second-generation immigrants”, even when the “first generation” does so, is a fact known in many European countries.[20] In fact, the concept of return often does not even apply, since many of them were born in Portugal.

20 This happens, for example, with children of Portuguese emigrants in France.

Regardless of the medium-term scenarios, the quantitative expression of this category is already significant. In the absence of global and systematic statistics, some partial indicators are quite revealing. For example, in the 2008/09 school year, 13.000 children from ACPOL communities were enrolled only in the first cycle of basic education, especially Cape Verdeans, who represented more than half of this universe.[21] In other degrees of education there will certainly be a few thousand more.

21 Data from the Coordinating Secretariat of Multicultural Education Programs of the Ministry of Education.

In any case, the juridical dimension – the current or short-term possession of Portuguese nationality – it is not the only, or even the most important, line of social construction of the new Portuguese-African category. What is fundamental is that their life history happens in the context of the Portuguese society, and not in the societies of their parents’ origin. This does not mean that for them this is not a positive and even mythical reference. But it is not a lived experience.

If we turn once again to a model of contrasts in order to define the ethnicity, then we can say that the children of immigrants have a level of cultural contrasts with the Portuguese population smaller than that of their parents. In many respects, they will be culturally closer to Portuguese young people of similar social status than to their families. On the other hand, and assuming the scenario of return to their parents’ countries of origin, these young people would be there culturally contrasting, even in comparison with the equivalent age group.

The length of stay in Portugal and the low level of cultural contrasts with the Portuguese population are characteristics that the new Portuguese-Africans share with the first Portuguese-Africans and distinguish them from the African immigrants themselves. But between the first and the new Portuguese-Africans there are marked differences in social status. If most of the early Portuguese-Africans are located in the urban middle classes or in the elites, the new Portuguese-Africans reflect and seem to tend to reproduce the social condition of their working-class parents, and within it to the more unstable levels in the labor market or, in a minority of cases, especially women, to the petty bourgeoisie of execution.

If the first Portuguese-Africans do not show great social contrasts with the Portuguese population, the vast majority of the new Portuguese-Africans are socially contrasting, given their disadvantaged condition. While the former are generally well integrated into Portuguese society, at the economic, professional and relational level, the latter are generally poorly integrated and limited in their opportunities, as a result of the all amount of difficulties and constraints in which their parents live. To confirm this is the serious difficulties that are beginning to show up in their relationship with the school and the labor market.

As for the former, it is already clear that the levels of school failure among children of immigrants are higher than the national average. Data available for the 2009 school year show lower approval rates for children from all African minorities, especially those of Cape Verdean origin.[22] Also, a study in the Greater Lisbon area of the most disadvantaged sectors of the various ethnic minorities shows that 64% of young people under 24 years of age have not completed the compulsory schooling, 25% did not complete more than this level of education and only 11% exceeded it.[23]

22 Data from the Coordinating Secretariat of Multicultural Education Programs of the Ministry of Education.

23 See Alfredo Bruto da Costa e Manuel Pimenta (coord.), Poor Ethnic Minorities in Lisbon, Lisbon, Departamento de Pesquisa Social do Centro de Reflexão Cristã, 1991, p. 202.

On the other hand, more localized evidence suggests that the integration of young Portuguese-Africans in the labor market is happening in ways not very different from those of their parents. Another research shows that non-European young people (the vast majority of whom are of African origin) have relatively poorer professional profiles than young Europeans. Non-Europeans are far fewer in the most qualified professions and half of them do not have a contract of employment or make social security discounts (a much less frequent situation among Europeans).

Given the age composition of this category, it is, however, in the school institution, first and foremost, that its future is played. The centrality of the school in the definition of the framework of possibilities of their children seems, moreover, to be clearly understood by the immigrants themselves. Evidence shows, in fact, that immigrant families have strong expectations in their children’s schooling as the best way to integrate them into the Portuguese society. This is the case, for example, in the Cape Verdean and Guinean cases, through the inhibition or even prohibition of the use of creole by the children at home, which, according to certain families, is the way to stimulate the learning of the Portuguese language and shows the mix of cultural references in their day-to-day experience.

However, this commitment to the school often conflicts with the constraints of daily life, where factors such as material deprivations of all order, disarticulation of the family relationships or the transfer of heavy domestic responsibilities to the children severely limits their chances of success. The relationship of the children of disadvantaged immigrants with the school reflects, after all, the combined effect of the class condition – and there the children of immigrants are very close to the Portuguese children of the most precarious sectors of the popular milieus – and certain cultural specificities, such as the existence of a different mother tongue, as is the case of creole between the Cape Verdeans and Guineans.

Thus, many young Africans-Portuguese may be in a situation of a poorly integrated dual culture. The universe of the family and culture of origin is not a positive reference, not only because of the difficult living conditions of their own people, but also because of the cultural distance that has been created in the meantime. Considering that the life experience of the parents and children takes place in two different societies, the first basically in the society of origin and the second in the host society, the generational divisions can be particularly pronounced in the immigrant families. But the reference to the world of the school, an institution that is the most visible aspect of the host society, is also not so positive. These young people may thus be between two cultures, but far from any of them. In this context, and even more so than for the young people in general, the networks of youth sociability and the groups of friends represent a positive reference of great importance.

There is no doubt about the decisive nature of the school for the integration of the children of immigrants, but the multicultural education projects may, however, incur in some misunderstandings, which can harm the effectiveness of their responses, if the problems that arise, regarding the presence of the descendants of immigrants in schools, are not clearly considered. It should be taken into account that the social construction of identities is an eminently relational process, in which the overlapping of belongings and diverse references prevail. The cultural identity of the young Portuguese-Africans combines dimensions that refer to a cultural inheritance passed on by their family with others that have to do with their specific path in a society very different from the one from which their parents came. Therefore, the targets of multicultural education projects are complex and changeable identities.

Portuguese-Africans and the Politicization of Ethnicity

The lasting presence of ethnically demarcated immigrant minorities in host societies, beyond the economic, social and cultural implications, always involves a political dimension. To speak of the politicization of ethnicity is to speak of the forms of collective action, more or less institutionalized, developed by ethnic minorities aiming at the appropriation of resources of various kinds. The politicization of ethnicity is, at the same time, a direct consequence of the action of the State, questioned by minorities and constituted as its main interlocutor.[24] While in countries such as France or England the issues of immigrant integration have long been on the political agenda, in Portugal, for various reasons, the constitution of ethnicity as a political phenomenon has only just begun. The process that led to the legalization of clandestine immigrants, where the representative associations of immigrants began to publicly affirm themselves, constituted the zero degree of politicization.

24 About this see Daniel Bell, “Ethnicity and Social Change”, in Nathan Glazer e Daniel P. Moynihan (edit.), Ethnicity – theory and experience, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1975, pp. 141-171.

Portugal’s adherence to the Schengen Agreement, among other episodes, has given the issue of immigration and immigrants clearer political contours and has led to the positioning and increased involvement of other entities, such as trade unions, the Church, anti-racist associations and certain local authorities. In this context of increasing politicization of ethnicity, what are the positions of the Portuguese-Africans? What is their relation to the immigrant associative movement? What are the reasons for these positions and in what circumstances can they change?

The first Portuguese-Africans, in general, have kept themselves away from the movements of associations linked with emigration. Not being and not considering themselves immigrants, the possession of the Portuguese nationality, the favorable social condition and the fact that they are not in direct social relations with the immigrants of their countries, are factors that have contributed to keep them away. They have their own associative forms – such as the Association of Cape Verdean Physicians or the Association of Cape Verdean Technical Officials – but their field of recruitment and of performance has not intersected with those of the immigrant associations. This divergence of interests is, after all, a reflection of the social and cultural contrasts between the first Portuguese-Africans and the African immigrants. Just think of the social distance that the class condition differences between those two groups impose. It should be noted, moreover, that the new Portuguese-Africans, as discussed above, differ in their turn from any of the other two groups.

But precisely because they have educational, professional, social capital and citizenship resources, the immigrant associations can find in the Portuguese-Africans of the same country of origin a powerful ally and a strategic support. If the vast majority of these Portuguese-Africans have been left out of the problems of immigration and immigrants, some of the most influential have assumed leadership positions in the associations with the greatest prominence. There are also other sectors of African elites residing in Portugal that could potentially be mobilized for the associative movement, but their primary interest has been, so far, to participate in the process of political change taking place in their countries of origin, Portugal functioning as a protected rearguard for this kind of intervention.

For various reasons, the mobilization of the immigrants themselves into the associative movement has proved difficult. However, Portuguese-Africans seem increasingly aware that they can play an important political role, and the future involvement, greater or lesser, of the Portuguese-Africans in the politicization of ethnicity is open. Factors such as the blocking or the opening up of the integration of immigrants into the Portuguese society (at school, labor market and other spheres), the type of response of the State in terms of immigration policy, the existence or not of high level conflicts and racial violence will not fail to mark the meaning and the intensity of this intervention. As for the new Portuguese-Africans, the situation is different. If in the next few years the trend seems to be drawn that most of them inherit the disadvantaged social condition of their parents, we can say that the mobilization potential for collective action is high, much higher than the one of the immigrants themselves.

What their parents have of conformism, discretion and retraction, is not reproduced as an attitude among young Portuguese-Africans, who are less submissive and resigned. If the parents accept their social status, since, as the immigrants that they are, they tend to see it as transient and compensatory in the long run, the children, who do not think like immigrants, have higher expectations because they also started from a higher level than their parents. In fact, there are different relative deprivation measures for the two generations here. If the parents compare themselves with those who did not immigrate and feel better than they do, their children no longer have this reference group, but rather the reference groups that the society in which they grew up puts them in sight, like that of the young Portuguese in general. The confrontation of these higher expectations with a structure of opportunities eventually blocked, which throws them into a social condition equal to the one of their parents, fosters the emergence of collective contentious attitudes. This may be an explanation for the involvement of young Africans in some violent episodes that have occurred in recent years in the Lisbon region.

This potential for collective contestation has found its cultural translation in the strong adherence of many young Portuguese-Africans to rap, a form of musical expression with great impact among young black Americans and that usually carries messages of protest. The rapid propagation of this cultural form among the new Portuguese-Africans does not fail to indicate that in their perception there are homologies between the original production contexts and their own daily lives in the suburban areas of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Today there are already several bands in activity and it has even been organized a “rap festival”.

This process of identification is explained by an element of one of these bands in the following terms: “First, because we are black, of course. It is the music of black Americans, but we identify more with black Americans than with those of South America or Africa. It turns out that our reality is more like this one than with any other”.[25] Rap music works as a mark of distinction, not only in relation to older Africans and their parents in particular, who certainly do not listen to rap, as in relation to the space of juvenile subcultures, demarcating them from other categories of youth and of their lifestyles.

25 Affirmations of Yen Sun, member of the band ‘Da Weasel’ in an interview with the newspaper “Público” on 01.06.2014.

So far, the potential for political affirmation of the young Portuguese-Africans does not yet seem to have found a visible organizational form. There are already neighborhood associations, located in the areas with the highest concentration of immigrants, but they have not been linked to the main associations of immigrants of a national scope and in the practice and discourse of these there are also no particular references to the descendants of immigrants.

It would not be wrong to think, however, that in the coming years the growing social visibility of the young Portuguese-Africans will contribute to the reconfiguration of the associative movement in this field, giving rise, for example, to a “second generation” of leaders. A sign of this seems to be the fact that one of the most prominent Portuguese rappers has, in one of the last European elections, associated with a small party and left-wing movement, speaking in the name and for the young Portuguese-Africans of the suburban areas of Greater Lisbon. This was also done by the Socialist Party and the Communist Party in one of the last legislative elections, when representatives of the Cape, Verdean and Guinean immigrants were included in their lists.

The very mode of delimitation of the field of recruitment and action of the existing associations may also be changed. Currently, the predominant model is that each association organizes itself based on a single immigrant community. There are Cape Verdean, Guinean, and Angolan associations, but there is no association of immigrants that articulates the different minorities in a transversal and global movement. This model reflects the very own composition of the networks of usual relationships of the immigrants, fundamentally established within their own communities and much less towards the outside. The common path of the young Portuguese-Africans in Portugal, providing more diversified relationships – notably in schools, neighborhoods and groups of friends – will tend to dilute, at least partially, these limitations, which in turn may increase their associative capacities.

Final Notes

As it is understood, the two categories here defined as Portuguese-Africans are not and do not consider themselves immigrants. Both the first and the new Portuguese-Africans demarcate themselves at various levels of the immigrant population, starting with the fact that they do not see their presence in Portugal as transient and do not consider a return project, a concept that, strictly speaking, does not even apply in the case of young Portuguese-Africans.

But if the Portuguese-Africans are not immigrants, the immigrants can become Portuguese-Africans, and this could be a third category to analyze here. Extensions of residence time, paths of upward social mobility, allowing the escape from the usual social condition of the immigrants, obtaining Portuguese nationality, mixed marriages with descendants, are factors that can make a part of them start abandoning the return project and replacing it with a project of virtual definitive fixation.

Regarding possible upward mobility routes, there is no strong evidence that they are occurring in large numbers, either because the residence time of most of the immigrants is not yet very long, or because of the social profile which is prefigured for their descendants. However, there are signs that the extension of the stay has brought, for some, improvements in their social condition. The study already mentioned on the poor immigrants of the Lisbon region shows changes in the socio-professional status in the period between the first job and the current one, precisely among those who have lived in Portugal for more years. There is a greater number of people who have started to deduct for social security, to have access to the unemployment subsidy and to the holiday allowance, and there is also an increase in the rate of unionization and the transition to more stable sectors of the labor market. It will certainly be among the Cape Verdeans who arrived in Portugal in the 1960s that there will be more cases in which this transition of status – from immigrant to Portuguese-African – may have been verified.

The time of residence thus becomes a decisive variable. Its extension will contribute to increase their number and reinforce the hybrid identity of the new Portuguese-Africans. As these descendants of immigrants approach adulthood, and decision-making autonomy, the chance of accompanying their parents in the event of their return becomes less likely, as in other long-term immigration situations. On the other hand, this extension, and the possible improvement of the conditions for the integration of immigrants into the Portuguese society, will increase the likelihood that some of them will settle for good. If the adoption of a policy of containment makes it possible to reduce the entry of new immigrants, the return of those who are now in Portugal seems much less probable. As far as one can see, the conditions of permanence are now stronger than the conditions of return. One of the indicators that points in this direction is the resumption of the Portuguese emigration itself, after a period of apparent apathy. The latest available figures are of about 260.000 departures from 2010 to 2012, which raises the question of whether the structural logic of migrant replacement is not being strengthened.

Assuming permanence as the most likely scenario in the medium term, it remains to be seen what kind of paths the Portuguese-Africans will have in the Portuguese society. These paths will depend, fundamentally, on the evolution of their level of social and cultural contrasts with the Portuguese population in general. In the case of the first Portuguese-Africans, the more integrated of them all, these contrasts are low and will probably remain so. It may even happen that they are diluted and mixed even more with the Portuguese, becoming progressively more Portuguese and less African. In the case of the new Portuguese-Africans, in the coming years it will be seen whether or not the underprivileged social profile that is beginning to be drawn is confirmed. If this contrast is accentuated, reproducing or even aggravating the social condition of their parents, those who are now on the margins may tomorrow be at the center of politicized ethnicity, in which case some of the first Portuguese-Africans will not fail to be involved.

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Research Note:

Current Institutional and Legal Framework for Ukraine’s Participation in Cross-border Cooperation

Alla Sanchenko

This overview presents a brief summary of a study on current legal and economic aspects of enhancing cross-border cooperation through European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs) under European and Ukrainian law. The study was delivered by experts of the Institute of Economic and Legal Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Law Faculty of the Uzhgorod National University for a Project initiated in 2019 by the Hungarian-Ukrainian EGTC “Tisza”. The Project aimed at revealing positive impacts of the creation and operation of EGTCs on economic development in border regions that the EU shares with its neighbours. Specifically, the study investigated how cross-border cooperation with Ukraine can be promoted, not only with Hungary but also with other European countries such as Poland, Slovakia, and Romania.

The major issue of this study is conditioned by the non-EU-member status of Ukraine which does not provide for the direct implementation of EU law. Relevant legislation to be considered includes the Regulation (EC) No 1082/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 July 2006 on a European grouping of territorial cooperation (EGTC) and the Regulation (EU) No 1302/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2013 amending Regulation (EC) No 1082/2006 on a European grouping of territorial cooperation (EGTC) as regards the clarification, simplification and improvement of the establishment and functioning of such groupings.

Despite Ukraine’s ‘outsider’ status, the study demonstrates that Ukraine is not outside the European legal framework. Development and deepening of traditionally cooperative relations with the European neighbours, the state policy in favour of European integration have been and remain the Ukraine’s strategic priorities. Being a Council of Europe (CoE) member, Ukraine (alongside with the majority of the EU member-states) is a party to the European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation between Territorial Communities or Authorities (Madrid Convention) of 1980 and 3 protocols to it of 1995, 1998, and 2009. In addition, Article 447 of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (in force since 2017) provide for the development of cross-border cooperation. The Agreement reinforces the commitments of Ukraine and the EU member-states to develop cross-border and interregional cooperation as envisaged by their various bilateral cooperation agreements – framework national and in specific areas. Also it gives an impulse to improve and develop the laws on foreign economic activity, on border control, custom services and taxation, on legal status of foreigners and stateless persons, on public-private partnership, on employment, on scientific and technical activities, on innovative activity, on state regulation in the field of technology transfer, on science parks, etc., necessary for the background of cross-border cooperation in different fields.

The current Ukraine’s legal basis for transfrontier/cross-border co-operation in the spirit of the CoE and EU acquis is secured by the Constitution of Ukraine[1], the laws of Ukraine “On the Local Self-Government in Ukraine”[2], “On Local State Administrations”[3], “On Cross-Border Cooperation”[4], etc. The latter, being the dominant in regulating the cross-border cooperation, is amended in 2018 with a view to implement the Protocol No. 3 to the Madrid Convention after its ratification, and to harmonise the national law with the relevant EU law in the context of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement realization, incl. the EU Regulations mentioned.

1The Constitution of Ukraine of від 28.06.1996 № 254к/96-ВР. URL: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/ rada/anot/en/254%D0%BA/96-%D0%B2%D1%80

2 The Law of Ukraine “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine” of 21.05.1997 No. 280/97-BP. URL: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/280/97-%D0%B2%D1%80

3 The Law of Ukraine “On Local State Administrations” of 09.04.1999 № 586-XIV. URL: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/586-14

4 The Law of Ukraine “On Cross-Border Cooperation” of 24.06.2004 № 1861-IV. URL: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/1861-15

The Law “On Cross-Border Cooperation” provides for a number of new and revised definitions, norms on organization of cross-border cooperation and the state support, financial incl., to its development. The cross-border cooperation is defined as joint actions aimed at establishing and deepening economic, social, scientific, technological, ecological, cultural and other relations between the subjects and participants of such relations in Ukraine and the respective subjects and participants of such relations from neighbouring countries within competences defined by their legislation. The subjects of cross-border cooperation, due to the Law, are the territorial communities, their representative bodies and their associations, local executive authorities of Ukraine, interacting with territorial communities and relevant authorities of neighbouring states within the limits of their competence established by the legislation of Ukraine and agreements on transfrontier cooperation; participants of cross-border cooperation are the legal and natural persons, public associations, participating in the cross-border cooperation.

There are other relevant definitions, in particular: “Euroregion” - an organizational form of cross-border cooperation held in accordance with the relevant bilateral or multilateral agreements; “Euroregional Co-operation Grouping” (ECG) - a form of cross-border cooperation with the status of a legal entity in accordance with the law of the country in whose territory it is located; “European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation” (EGTC) - the unification of subjects of cross-border cooperation of Ukraine and relevant entities of the neighbouring EU member-states with the status of a legal entity in accordance with the law of the EU member-state in whose territory it is located”; “Cross-Border Association” - a voluntary association of subjects and/or participants of cross-border cooperation of Ukraine and neighbouring countries, envisaged by an agreement on cross-border cooperation; “Agreement on Cross-Border Cooperation” - an agreement between territorial communities, their representative bodies and their associations, local executive bodies of Ukraine and relevant authorities of neighbouring states within their competence established by the Ukraine’s legislation, which regulates legal, organizational, economic and other aspects of cooperation.

The Law rules that the state is responsible for coordinating and supporting cross-border cooperation via authorized ministries (presently: the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) by means of funding the cross-border cooperation initiatives, activities, projects, programs and strategies that have received funding through international technical assistance programs; formation and implementation of preferential customs, currency, financial, tax and other economic conditions for participants of cross-border cooperation; conclusion of interstate and intergovernmental agreements on simplification of rules of border crossing, forms of cross-border cooperation; selection of cross-border cooperation projects (programs) in need of state support; development and implementation of state programs for the development of cross-border cooperation; providing legal, organizational, methodological, informational assistance and support to the subjects and participants of cross-border cooperation of Ukraine.

Following the Law, expenditures for realisation of projects (programs) of cross-border cooperation in Ukraine, as well as for the fulfilment of all necessary tasks related to cross-border cooperation, including the functioning of cross-border cooperation bodies, are borne at the expense of the State Budget of Ukraine, local budgets for the respective year, as well as other sources not prohibited by the law. For the joint financing of projects (programs) of cross-border cooperation, international technical assistance, credit resources of international financial institutions, EU funds may be used as foreseen by the Ukraine’s legislation.

On the whole, the mentioned legislative innovations are assessed by experts as expedient and welcome. They appreciate the norms on Ukraine’s transfrontier cooperation with European and other neighbouring countries via EGCs introduced by Protocol 3 of the Madrid Convention. These rules are quite well-developed in Article 9 and others and applicable both by Ukraine and CoE member-states as well as EU countries-Parties to the Convention and the Protocol.

However, there are undesirable shortcomings in the Law that should be eliminated without unreasonable delay. In particular, this concerns the status and characteristics of EGTC. Article 1 (5) provides that EGTC is an association of subjects of cross-border cooperation of Ukraine and corresponding entities of the neighbouring EU member-states with the status of a legal entity […], while Article 5 (3) states that EGTC is a body of cross-border cooperation, par. 6 of the same Article defines that EGTC is a legal entity and is formed in accordance with the law of the EU member-state in the territory of which it is situated. Moreover, Article 7 (5) refers to the powers of subjects of cross-border cooperation to form bodies of cross-border cooperation, and since Article 5 (3) specifies that the EGTC is a cross-border cooperation body, the above provision of Article 7, in fact, implies that the subjects of cross-border cooperation of Ukraine may become the founders of the EGTCs on the territory of EU member-states. Neither this Law nor other legislative acts clearly define the purpose, tasks, procedure of EGTCs’ creation with participation of Ukraine’s local public authorities. They are not authorized by any law to make decisions about formation of EGTC, validate its Statute, approve agreements, etc. Obviously, such evident legislative discrepancies and gaps cause misunderstandings and prevent expansion of EGTCs’ formation with participation of Ukraine’s subjects of cross-border cooperation.

Moreover, there are the flaws concerning the Law’s implementation. 2019, the year of the presidential and parliamentary elections, brought change to the Government and influenced decentralization processes in Ukraine. The newly established Ministry for Communities and Territories Development shall deal with a number of tasks in order to ensure the Law’s realization: to draft and promote amendments to the laws on cross-border cooperation, on local self-government and local state administrations, on the principles of state regional policy, on voluntary association of territorial communities, etc.; to evaluate the needs and resources of communities and territories that border the European countries; to review the state policy on cross-border cooperation (the current State Strategy of 2016-2020) and develop well-grounded programmes and operational plans; to regulate the issue of adequate financing and access to funding from the State Regional Development Fund and the State Budget; to develop a model form of a cross-border cooperation agreement and a state register of such agreements; to enhance the professional capacity of public officials on the national and local levels of decision-making, etc.

According to expert opinions, in order to promote EGTC as an effective tool of regional and local socio-economic development in the parameters of European integration, it is necessary that in Ukraine the researchers and practitioners are able to further study the EGTC legal phenomenon and the good experience. The knowledge obtained will facilitate drafting the law on EGTC and a package of supplementing it normative and regulatory acts. This bulk of various work requires the systemic involvement of the profound expert potential - both national and European, and the sufficient technical assistance.

The experience of the EGTC “Tisza”, a flagman of the EGTC movement in Ukraine, shall serve a laboratory to pilot the cross-border initiatives and an example to be successfully duplicated along the Ukraine-EU borders.

(The overview is prepared on the basis of the scientific and practical research held by: Prof. Volodymyr USTYMENKO, Director of the Institute of Economic and Legal Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Law; Prof. Yaroslav LAZUR, Dean of the Law Faculty of the Uzhgorod National University, Doctor of Law; Mrs. Alevtyna SANCHENKO, Ph.D. in Law, Senior Researcher, Chief of the Centre for Advanced Studies and Cooperation on Human Rights in Economics, Leading Researcher of the Institute of Economic and Legal Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Ms Yuliia FETKO, Assistant, Department of International Law of the Law Faculty of the Uzhgorod National University; Mr. Semen YATSENKO, Lead Lawyer, Department of Economic and Legal Problems of Urban Studies of the Institute of Economic and Legal Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

Research note:

The Pomoraví/Weinviertel/Zahorie Euroregion

Michal Šindelář

Cross-border cooperation between Czechia, Slovakia, and Austria began quite late, and the process was slower and less intensive than Czech-German cross-border cooperation (Halás, Slavík 2001; Dokoupil in Jeřábek, Dokoupil, Havlíček et al. 2004). The first step in the development of cross-border cooperation was the foundation of the Committee for Cooperation with Lower Austria in 1991. The next declaration on mutual cooperation was signed in 1997 (On the development of cooperation between the Weinviertel, Jihomoravský regions and the Zahorie territory [O rozvoji spolupráce mezi regiony Weinviertel, Jihomoravským krajem a oblastí Záhorie]). This document marked the formation of the Euroregion in this borderland. In 1999 it was agreed to create the Pomoraví/Weinviertel/Zahorie Euroregion.

Figure 1: Demarcation of the Pomoraví/Weinviertel/Zahorie Euroregion

This Euroregion lies along the approximately 240 km border between Czechia, Austria, and Slovakia. The Euroregion’s Czech districts are: Brno – město (Brno – city), Brno – venkov (Brno – hinterland), Břeclav, Hodonín, Znojmo, Vyškov, and Blansko. The Slovak districts are: Malacky, Myjava, Senica, and Skalica. The Austrian counties of Gänserndorf, Hollabrunn, Korneuburg, and Mistelbach belong to the Euroregion In comparison to the other Euroregions, for example with Bílé/Biele Karpaty, where all municipalities’ membership of the Euroregion is established, membership of the Pomoraví/Weinviertel/Zahorie Euroregion is voluntary, and not every municipality in this region belongs. Euroregions do not usually correspond to any legislative or governmental institution. Their work is limited to the competencies of their constituting local and regional authorities. They are usually arranged to promote common interests across the border and for cooperation for the common good of the border populations. This Euroregion’s main concerns are the coordination of cultural, economic, and social development, the provision of consulting for the municipalities, and the organisation of courses, workshops, and events.

Area (km²)

No. of inhabitants

No. of municipalities

CZ

5,135

735,000

59

SK

2,300

172,000

79

AT

4,090

245,000

86

Total

11,525

1,152,000

224

Table 1: Basic information about the Pomoraví/Weinviertel/Zahorie Euroregion

Source: euregio-weinviertel.eu, czso.cz, smojm.cz

Research overview

One of the motivations of this research is to investigate the intensity of cross-border cooperation and the perceptions of local inhabitants regarding its significance. We specifically targeted the following questions:

1. How do the local inhabitants and mayors of municipalities in the borderland perceive accession to the EU?

2. Are there any differences in how these changes are perceived by people in neighbouring states?

3. What role do the existence and activities of the Euroregion play in the development of the borderland’s municipalities?

4. How frequent or intense is the cooperation with the neighbouring municipality/county/region? What typifies the relationship with people in the neighbouring country?

5. How satisfied are the region’s people with their life?

6. Do they visit the neighbouring country? If they do, why? How often?

7. Do they perceive the border as a barrier?

These results are based on research in which two principal methods were used. First, a survey was conducted in each country. A total of 400 interviews were conducted. Second, fifteen mayors and other representatives of the Euroregion were interviewed. Their statements and understandings were used to complement the survey’s individual questions.. Larger municipalities were targeted in each country. The respondents were selected on the basis of sex, age, education, and permanent residence.

Results of the survey

Concerning the stability of the region’s inhabitants, we can say that the majority (around 60%) have lived in this area for their entire life in all three countries. Another ten to fifteen per cent of the inhabitants were born here, moved away (for study or work, mainly to the larger nearby cities like Vienna, Brno, Prague, and Bratislava), and later returned to the region. The third group of respondents (around a third in Czechia and Austria, and a fifth in Slovakia) stated that they had moved to this area largely because of the cheaper cost of living, the environment, its attractiveness, or because they had they followed their partner. Similar answers were received from respondents in all the countries.

In answers to the next question respondents mentioned that they did not wish to move out of the region (around 85% in Czechia and Austria, but only 70% in Slovakia), and that they were satisfied with their life in the area: see Figures 2 and 3. Research shows that the Euroregion’s population is stable, a positive sign for the region’s future development. The situation is different in Slovakia, where respondents spoke of the lack of good job opportunities and the higher salaries in Austria. Such people often consider moving to Vienna, Prague, or sometimes the United Kingdom.

The next question sought to establish what tied the respondents to the region. The answers in all three countries were quite similar. The main reasons given in these answers were family, relatives, work or school, and a tradition of living here. A labour shortage in Austria sees many travelling daily to Vienna, about fifty kilometres away. Yet Vienna has good connections with the area through extensive rail networks and park and ride car parks. In the Czech territory there are larger cities (Znojmo, Mikulov, Břeclav) offering many job opportunities, but this is less attractive to Austrians because of lower salary levels. Slovaks were less satisfied than Czechs and Austrians. Respondents mainly from Malacky and Skalicer were somewhat disillusioned not only with their own financial situation but with the economic level of the entire region.

Figure 2: How satisfied are you with your life in the region (answers in %)

Source: author, 2016

Figure 3: How satisfied are you with your life in the region (answers in %)

Source: author, 2017

The author then examined three mental associations of the neighbouring countries evident in the respondents. Not every respondent mentioned these terms, reflected in the sum of respondents. Czechs had many preconceptions about Austria, as did Austrians about Czechia, but when Austrians were asked what they thought about Slovakia, they could not answer. Slovakia was less well known. Only a minority of interviewees responded to all three terms.

Somewhat negative associations were expected from Austrians: Cizek conducted a similar survey nearly ten years ago (2010). In spite of some negative campaigns concerning Czech nuclear power plants or the transfer of Germans after World War II, Austrians had a relatively positive perception of Czechia. The main associations were with shopping, low prices, tourism, Prague, Czech cusine, beer, and open borders. Czechs associate Austria with the following: Vienna; the Alps; the German language; and job opportunities. Slovaks mentioned a high standard of living, higher salaries, proximity, and mountains. However, Austrians described Slovakia as a neighbouring country with a cheap labour market and large labour force. Austrians also mentioned higher criminality, issues with the Roma, and theft. Austrians’ fear is unsubstantiated but longstanding (Šindelář, Jeřábek 2018).

The second part of the survey evaluated Czech-Austrian and Slovak-Austrian civil relationships. Most interviewees classified them as grade two, or very good. The middle category was chosen by those respondents who did not care about the topic and had no opinion about it. Two-thirds of interviewees evaluated civil relations in the Euroregion as either excellent or very good. This perception influences cross-border cooperation and may lead to deeper future relations.

Responses to the next questions revealed that Czechs and Austrians visited each other’s countries more often then Slovaks and Austrians. Around ninety per cent of Austrians visited Czechia; almost eighty per cent of Czechs visited Austria. Prague was a very popular destination for Austrians. However, they travelled less often to Brno, despite the fact that the journey to Prague is two hundred kilometres longer. The author recommends that Brno should advertise itself in Austria, because it has many tourist sights and offers many shopping opportunities. Czechs travelled mainly to Vienna (around 75%) and to the mountains, for their sporting opportunities. In the borderland between Austria and Slovakia tourism is less developed. Only half of the Austrians visited Slovakia, while two-thirds of Slovaks travelled to Austria. The most attractive destinations were the capital cities, Vienna and Bratislava. There are only two border crossings across the Morava river. The regions do not cooperate. They focus on themselves, larger neighbouring cities, and Vienna and Bratislava (Šindelář, Jeřábek 2018).

The main motivations for Austrians’ visits were shopping and cheaper services (visits to hairdressers or dentists). The next factor concerned supermarket and shopping centre opening hours in Czechia and Slovakia, because all shops in Austria must be closed on Sundays. Some respondents had a positive view of the cruise connection between Vienna and Bratislava, but this is not connected with the Euroregion. Czechs also visited Austria for shopping opportunities. Some products are cheaper, and some may be of better quality. Between eight and ten per cent of respondents in Czechia and Slovakia said they visited Austria for work or study. The Austrian respondents did not select this option.

llFigure 4: How often do you visit Czechia or Austria? (answers in %)

Source: author, 2016

lFigure 5: How often do you visit Slovakia or Austria? (answers in %)

Source: author, 2017

Figures 4 and 5 indicate the frequency of visits to neighbouring countries. We can see that most respondents visited their neighbours between three times and once a year. Czechs working or studying in Austria were the most frequent visitors. However, roughly a fifth of all respondents never visited their neighbouring country. Visits by Austrians and Slovaks to each other’s countries were rarer: the most frequent answer was once or twice a year.

The third and most extensive part of the survey focused on cross-border cooperation. This topic concerns the perception of open borders and their positive and negative aspects, or the existence of cross-border activity in the municipalities. More than fifty per cent of inhabitants agreed that their municipality was located in a border area, suggesting that respondents were actively aware of the border’s existence. Most described this border area as a region with great development potential for tourism, for example. Only around ten per cent of respondents described their area as a periphery region. The Slovak-Austrian borderland was mainly considered peripheral. The Morava river, which acts as a barrier, and the industrial character of the Slovak part of the region, which is less attractive for tourists, may explain this. Austrian respondents were oriented towards Vienna because of work or the city’s rich cultural life. Many respondents wished the borderland was richer and more attractive, but they failed to mention what should be improved.

The next question concerned the border’s permeability. Two-thirds of Austrian residents and around eighty per cent of those in Czechia and Slovakia said that an open border was very or somewhat positive for the region. There were only a few negative reactions to this topic. Roughly a third of Austrians argued that some border control was desirable, because the current situation made criminality easier, and controls might prevent it. Some respondents also mentioned the current problem with refugees whose final destination is or was Austria. Local residents viewed this quite negatively, seeing it as justifying some border controls.

Roughly fifty per cent of respondents knew of the existence of some cross-border activity in all three countries. They knew of cultural or sporting events, recalled some shared traffic, administrative, or environmental issues, and occasionally mentioned mutual tourism events or projects in the borderland. There are only a few cross-border projects between Austria and Slovakia. The results are influenced, for example, by the awareness of respondents from Holíč or Skalica of cross-border activities, but this concerns cooperation with Czech (for example, Hodonín) rather than Austrian municipalities (Šindelář, Jeřábek 2018). Yet no one from towns like Malacky or Stupava near the border mentioned any cooperation with Austria. This was also true of Austria. These results reveal a very low level of cross-border cooperation in the region, even between Czechia and Slovakia.

Figure 6: How would you assess open borders and the accession of Czechia and Slovakia to the Schengen Area? (answers in %)

Source: author, 2016 and 2017

In the last question respondents could indicate what they saw as the opportunities and obstacles for future development in the borderland. A very frequent response was that the region was quiet with a pristine environment, and that relations between Czechia/Slovakia and Austria were good and improving (Šindelář 2018). However, there were few job vacancies, and many residents therefore commuted to the region’s centres (Vienna, Brno, and Bratislava). A second problem was the language barrier. Tables 2 and 3 present the most common comments and reactions regarding the obstacles and opportunities for the region’s future development.

Obstacles

Opportunities

language barrier

collective presentation of the border region

transit traffic, uncompleted highways

support for tourism

few job vacancies, commuting

learning foreign languages (Czech, German), working abroad → summer jobs

another mentality, tradition, culture, historical prejudice, lower standard of living in Czechia

organisation of collective cultural and social events → good to get to know each other

rising criminality, open borders → problems with refugees

improvement of road conditions and road network (ring roads and motorway to Vienna)

Table 2: Obstacles/problems and opportunities for development in the Pomoraví Euroregion (CZ/AT)

Source: author, 2016

Obstacles

Opportunities

road network and infrastructure, only a few border crossings

support for tourism, more information about neighbouring countries

language barrier

cultural cooperation

problems with refugees and illegal border crossings, rise of nationalism

improvement of common relations, close cooperation

lower salaries in Slovakia, few job vacancies, economic differences

equalising the standard of living with Austria’s

falling behind compared with the capitals (Bratislava and Vienna)

shared labour market, summer work opportunities in Austria for Slovaks

Table 3: Obstacles/problems and opportunities for development in the Pomoraví Euroregion (AT/SK)

Source: author, 2017

A comparison of these tables reveals that some problems are similar or identical in both parts of the region. The biggest barriers/obstacles are the road infrastructure, border crossings, and language. The mayors also agreed that knowledge of English was poor, and that knowledge of Czech or Slovak in Austria was very poor, meaning communication depended on the language skills of Czechs and Slovaks. The biggest problems for infrastructure were the incomplete motorway between Pohořelice and Poysdorf, and the small number of border crossings between Austria and Slovakia. Another perspective was the region’s peripherality: compared with the inland cores, job vacancies were scarce, and some municipalities close to the border suffered from depopulation.

However, some opportunities for future development were mentioned. Tourism was viewed positively, and respondents wished to see further growth in this area. Vaishar et al. (2009) also recommend tourism growth. They maintain that the region offers good conditions in its relief, protected natural areas (NP Podyjí, NP Thayatal), well-preserved cultural sights (Znojmo, Mikulov, Skalica, Retz, and Falkenstein Castle), and developed cycling and wine tourism. A larger number of tourists would lead to the creation of job vacancies, higher incomes for local entrepreneurs, and a better image for the region.

Mayor interviews

This section summarises the information from and interpretation of fifteen interviews with the region’s mayors, which supplement the results of the inhabitant surveys. Many of the mayors said that cross-border cooperation had been more intense since the parting of the Iron Curtain, and cooperation was now condiderably diminished. Some larger towns were occasional exceptions. For example, Retz cooperated with Znojmo, with which it was a candidate to organise a provincial exhibition for Niederösterreich (Lower Austria) in 2020 under the slogan, ‘Open Borders’. The idea had arisen in Retz and was supported by the mayor of Znojmo and even the regional council president in Hollabrunn, who said this represented a very important opportunity for regional development.

The town of Laa an der Thaya cooperates with Hevlín, and the municipality of Schrattenberg undertakes many projects with Valtice. Other small projects take place in Mikulov and Poysdorf. These projects focus mainly on the creation of bilingual cycle routes and hiking trails. Tourism is the most frequent area of cross-border cooperation in the region. However, the region’s largest town, Mistelbach, has almost no links with the Czech and Slovak parts of the Euroregion, and is mainly oriented towards Vienna. Nor do the Slovak municipalities have any signifiant cooperation with others across the borders. Only the cooperation between Holíč and Skalica and the Czech town of Hodonín, which is outside the Euroregion, is noteworthy. There is almost no cross-border cooperation between smaller municipalities.

The language barrier and economic differences were the most important obstacles. Some Austrian mayors wanted some cooperation with their neighbouring countries, but they did not see the situation improving. Current political events in Europe might lead to border controls and closures.

Many mayors said there was some cross-border cooperation, but that it was not deep. Although the mayors knew each other, they stated that there were few opportunities to meet and discuss each other’s views. The realised projects were generally evaluated as good or very good, and mutual cooperation was also described as good. However, some mayors said that residents did not consider cross-border cooperation important, and that a few locally engaged participants from schools or various local associations took the initiative. Unfortunately, there were few such participants in the region. The Czech mayors complained about larger administrative units. For example, the Jihomoravský district took no part in cross-border cooperation. Meanwhile, the Small Project Fund (FMP) was evaluated as very good. The application process was straightforward, relatively short, and neither too expensive nor especially time consuming.

The next obstacle featured the many differences between the Czech, Slovak, and Austrian political, administrative, and legal systems, which complicates the realisation of cross-border projects. Some suggested there was enough money for some projects, but the application process and criteria were difficult or even nonsensical, meaning some municipalities had no interest in getting involved with grant applications. Another difficulty was the requirement to pre-finance projects, which presented an almost insuperable obstacle for small municipalities.

However, there are many common projects. Czechia and Austria cooperate closely in the management of the Podyjí/Thayatal National Park. A project to integrate emergency services is also relatively new. Recent years have seen the popular Open Wine Paths project. Finally, many municipalities have created bilingual Czech/Slovak-German websites.

Summary

The findings reveal that relations between Czechia/Slovakia and Austria are quite good. The opening of the border is also perceived positively. However, the intensity of cross-border cooperation between Austria and Slovakia is regrettably low compared with the Czech-Austrian borderland. Locals are satisfied with their lives and with the quality of the environment, and there is a positive view of the area’s peacefulness. However, Austria’s high unemployment rate and few job vacancies and Slovakia’s low salaries are perceived as negative factors. Moreover, despite the growth of the Czech/Slovak economy, economic convergence with Austria continues to be very slow.

The findings also reveal that although most Czech and Austrian respondents visit each other’s countries quite often, Austrians and Slovaks rarely visit each other’s countries. The main reasons for visiting are shopping, excursions, or visits to friends or relatives. The most significant obstacles to deeper cross-border cooperation are the language barrier and the shortage of regional players who can generate activity and communicate with their counterparts in the neighbouring countries. These two negative factors mean that the Euroregion’s countries communicate insufficiently with each other and focus on Vienna, Bratislava, or Brno.

Almost no benefits accrue for the municipalities from their membership of the Euroregion. Interest in membership remains low, funding has failed to resolve the problem, and there is no development strategy. This begs a question: does it make sense for the municipalities to belong to an ineffective Euroregion? Znojmo, Valtice, Hevlín, and Laa an der Thaya show that cross-border cooperation is possible without belonging to a Euroregion.

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Book review

Andreas Faludi (2018): The Poverty of Territorialism: a Neo-Medieval View of Europe and European Planning, Edward Elgar Publishing.

In his new book, Andreas Faludi attempts to grasp and to analyse one of the most actual and at the same time one of the most controversial and provocative topics of international relations and political sciences, namely the question of territory and territorialism, their future forms and their possible alteration during the 21st century. The question of territory and territorialism is analysed by involving other important political and institutional elements and concepts, like state, democracy, legitimacy and the European Union. The author and his book noticeably push the reader to (re)think the currently dominating concepts, notions, imaginations, beliefs and it introduces the ongoing debates that surround territorialism, state and the European Union.

The book aims to challenge the traditional and dominant state based Westphalian sovereignty, its constellation, imaginations, concentration of power, hierarchy, territorialism, clear-cut identity and the subsequent limits of hard external border structures that assume us and our lives into boxes. In his book, the author significantly builds on the ideas of Jan Zielonka and on his provocative, but at the same time attractive idea of a ‘neo-medieval order’, i.e. introduction and transfer of the medieval model of overlapping authorities, divided sovereignties, diversified institutional arrangements, multiple identities and soft borders into our contemporary political and institutional environment. Hence, moving away from the currently ruling political framework with strict territorial logic and putting more attention to functional multi-layered vertical-horizontal relations between various actors of international society and paying less heed to territory and pure territorial thinking. Faludi (2018: 101-102) writes, “we should make the effort to overcome thinking in terms of sovereignty as a zero-sum game (…) the problem is the very concept of the state, its territorialism together with its claim to sovereignty, seen as a zero-sum-game”.

In order to understand the post-territorial and post-state constellation, there is a need to briefly look at the territorial sovereign state itself, since it embodies the ultimate ‘hearth’ of territorialism, territorial thinking and logic. The modern state-based order is often characterized by the Westphalian label, after the peace of Westphalia in the 17th century, where the primary attention was/is based on sovereignty, autonomy and nonexistence of higher authority over states. Formation of sovereign territorial states, which has become the dominant form of political and institutional organization around the world, was deeply influenced by the rise of the new social class during the feudal era (e.g. Blaut, 1993; Amin 2009); subsequently, the societal and economic transformation of the feudal arrangement triggered political transformation with many alternative versions, such as city league, city-state and sovereign territorial state. As Spruyt (1994: 539) writes, “The question is not why territorial states replaced feudalism, but why they ultimately managed to displace their competitors.” Within this political/economic development, the sovereign territorial states have achieved serious success thanks to their rational approach toward economy, their links to taxation and military power (Spruyt, 1994; Habermas, 2006). Consequently, if transformation of economic system and social classes are capable of bringing political transformation, as they did at the end of feudalism, as they did after the Second World War and/or after the economic crisis of Keynesian state, then we may be situated on the road toward a new political arrangement since late-capitalism and/or neo-liberalism has been reaching its limits sooner or later. Johan P. Olsen (1196: 248) concludes this phenomenon in this way, “different environments dictate or provide incentives for different structures.” Simply, the current constellation and territorial sovereign states are eyewitness of powerful shifts in political-economic structures, like globalization, deregulation, macro-regional cooperation, cross-border cooperation and/or ecological threats with the advent of risk society.

The state structures with its territorial logic, but also we as humanity, have been facing substantial structural changes in our way of life because modernity itself is at its omega point, e.g. the current path cannot be maintained because of environmental, health and/or infrastructural reasons. Subsequently, social scientists use various terms to describe the depth of that change and challenge, such as liquid modernity, risk society, reflexive modernity, second modernity, runaway world, post-modern society, post-industrial society, hypermodernity or information society. All these concepts suggest that the change has lost its regional context, thus the whole world is interconnected into one single space and, as Ulrich Beck (1992) notes it, in which we are confronted with unwanted, self-generated manufactured uncertainties, technological industrial risks instead of traditional threats. This means that the old concepts are under heavy pressure and they have been transformed into so called ‘shell institutions’ which are under serious internal transformation and they are systematically emptied from their essences; simply, they are ‘dead and still alive’ (Giddens, 1999; Bauman, 2006: 6), they are just kind of ‘empty signifiers’.

Nevertheless, what does ‘state structure’ mean? There is no clear answer what the state itself is. It can be an abstract idea, it can be a historical concrete political form of organization, it can signify a certain political community, a military apparatus, an organized administration or even it can be an activity of ‘gouvernementalité’ (e.g. Olsen, 1996: 146; Neumann and Sending, 2010: 18). This means that the decline of state and transformation of territorialism by post-modernity, immediately rises another question, specifically, what kind of institutional structure and/or legitimating principle will be put into its place? This question is remained unanswered in any book which aims to deal with this topic. Even Faludi (2018: 151) leaves this topic unanswered and uses a fitting metaphor of sailors in order to describe post-territorialism and state, signalling its shadowy and obscure transformation, “like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, using whatever materials we have (…) there is no dry-dock where we can safely dismantle the ‘ship of state’ and build a new one. (…) We must do this (…) whilst maintaining a course as straight as the winds and currents allows. (…) in due course, the ship may thus take on an entirely different shape.” Zygmunt Bauman (2004: 140) formulates this obscurity brilliantly, “we are on a rising slope of a mountain pass we have never climbed before and so have no inkling of what sort of a view will open up once we reach the top. We are not sure where the twisting gorge will lead us; one thing we are sure of is that we cannot settle and rest here, on a steeply rising path. And so we move on ‘because’; because we can´t stand still for long. Only when (if) we reach the top of the pass and survey the landscape on its other side will the time come to move ‘in order to’; pulled rather than pushed, and pulled ahead by vision, purposes and chosen destinations.”

Neverthless, Spruyt (1994: 528) expresses that “in essence, city-leagues, city-states and sovereign territorial states were all state forms” and this might mean that state is always present in some form, be it a new organization or a new polity, it cannot be eliminated, thus the question is not the decline or rebirth of the state itself, but rather a more abstract form of question, specifically, what kind of state will substitute the fading welfare/security/territorial sovereign state? Faludi (2018: 5) is clear at this point, “But the thing we do not know is what a world without territorialism would look like.”

Moreover, the book underlines the deeply rooted interconnection between democracy and territorialism, which had been already emphasized by Carl Schmidt in his critique of liberal democracy, and this goes hand in hand with the notion of Balibar that sacralisation of borders is way stronger in democracies. According to Faludi (2018: 6, 90, 152, 116), “Territorialism has fixed itself with an, apparently, impenetrable armour: democratic legitimacy being in and by territorial constituencies. (…) Territorial constituencies are thus privileged in the production of democratic legitimacy (…) Territories, I posited, were not only the building blocks of the political order; they were also the frames for what I called the production of democratic legitimacy”; however, “the state-centred model of representative democracy is coming apart at the seams. Non-state democratic representation is on the rise.” This might mean that if the state/territory and democracy are intertwined then crisis of one may generate troubles in another one, too.

Liberal democracy has been embodied as a normative, self-validated and even a civilizational standard in the post-cold war environment (e.g. Abrahamsen, 2000; Anghie 2004; Bowden, 2009; Doty, 1996; Kingsbury, 2002; McCarthy, 2009; Slater, 2004; Zarakol, 2011); however, this standard is in deep ‘democratic twilight’ and loss of its internal meaning and ethos. In the academic literature, naturally from the leftist and more critical writers, we might found numerous description of the ailment of contemporary democracy and democratic establishment. To mention some of them, democracies are significantly losing their normative dimension and they are transformed into pure instrumental machinery of the electoral system (Mouffe, 2000); they have become ‘framed’, where any substantial change of the neoliberal establishment is impossible (Vattimo – Zabala, 2011); liberal democracy has become an ‘Althuserian ideological state apparatus’, where the political system performs conservative/protective functions of the profit making system (Badiou, 2008); democracy is driven by consumerism, hypermarket lifestyle and/or consumerist narcism and it redirects the energy, vitality, enthusiasm or popular participation from the public stage toward categorically different ‘non-political’ dimensions of shopping in order to find (or search for) new pseudo desires, material and private happiness (Ranciére, 2009); liberal democracy is rather a ‘low-intensive democracy’ where free and open political fight is allowed, while the economic realm is closed and it is exactly the economic era which decides about the lives of the people (Amin, 2004; Bauman, 2011); liberal democracy, which follows the neoliberal economic approach, gives enormous space for the executive and juridical power, thus overshadowing the parliamentary decision-making (Harvey, 2006) and/or the neoliberal institutionalism directly challenges the widespread access to social resources (Tilly, 1999). Moreover, Slavoj Žižek´s (2009) question is very relevant in our times, namely, what will happen to our (liberal) democracies when democracy is no longer seen as the engine, condition and motive force, but rather as a hindrance and obstacle of economic development, thus when capitalism and accumulation becomes more competitive without any democratic institution and dimension?

Further question could be asked, how to get away from the obsession of territorialism in a time when liberal democracy has become an unquestionable and unchallengeable political and institutional settlement? States and their abilities to fulfil their tasks are falling apart and at the same time democracy has been substantially faded away. What to do with democracy? How about transferring it to supranational structure at the EU level? Could it be a real solution, or it is rather a joke without the notion of reality since vagueness around the EU directly shatters its own attempts for full legitimacy, as Meyer and Scott (1983, 201) explicitly warn, “a completely legitimate organization would be one about which no question could be raised. [Every goal, mean, resource, and control system is necessary, specified, complete, and without alternative.] Perfect legitimation is perfect theory, complete (i.e., without uncertainty) and confronted by no alternatives.” Simply, the real question is not only how to achieve post-territorial nature, but what to do with democracy itself as a political arrangement. Democracy is neither viable in nation-states nor it is viable in connection with global capitalism, while the EU is such unidentified in its nature that it only fuels multitude and multilayer crises instead of stabilizing it and offering any future alternative perspectives for supra-national democratic establishment.

The issue of post-territorial structures raises another question, namely, what will be its legitimating principle? Nation-states have one huge asset and uniqueness in contrary to the European Union, namely it may generate democratic legitimacy through framed elections that take place within strict borders. The nation state was/is legitimated through the dêmos, but a European demos/demoi and European identity are non-existent concepts and they will not exist, thus the creation of simple European state is significantly excluded. Habermas proposed an alternative approach to the primordial or modern nation, namely, ‘constitutional patriotism’. However, political and/or identity originated through liberal democracy seems like an elite oriented approach rather than the identity of ordinary people who suffer from the ‘unholy trinity’ of uncertainty, insecurity and unsafety; when people are reduced to ‘living dead’, ‘homo sacer’ and/or ‘ugly citizen’ within the neo-liberal capitalist structure, and when the European Union functions purely on market logic, which was already highlighted by Jacques Delors (see in Olsen 1996: 151) and which perceives the still ‘new members’ as certain economic colonies. Furthermore, Bauman (2005) aptly notes “Who wants to die for Romano Prodi or Javier Solana? This is a good joke: indeed, we all laugh”, thus signalling the inability to substitute the national heroism with any kind of supranational, continental heroism, transnational, cosmopolitan and/or global heroism. In other words, one of the main weakness of post-territorialism is the inability to substitute the driving spirit. The ‘new state’ cannot be the simple bigger European copy of the nation state, as Bauman (2004: 139) notes in his book, “can´t be, the same only bigger” and Faludi is in agreement (2018: 67), “transferring competences up and down the territorial hierarchy may or may not help (…) this replicates territorialism, hence the metageography of territorialism remains in power.”, hence we need substantial re-imagination within quantitative and qualitative frames, too. “We shall be facing the challenge of having to adapt to new circumstances; in fact we are already facing that challenge. So we have to find novel way of organising space.” (Faludi, 2018: 134)

The end and/or alteration of territory has implications for spatial planning, because spatial planning works with territory as object, hence marking the area of responsibility. State, territory, borders and territorialism go hand in hand with spatial planning. According to Faludi (70), “territorialism with attendant attitudes is what has led to the emasculation of European spatial planning” and the notion of space/territory fundamentally determined planning and the European integration, hence even the EU has not surpassed territorialism; subsequently, planners and thinkers should apply less constrained thinking with neo-medieval attitudes. The pre-modern frames were less territorial and they put more attention to functional relations between overlapping centres of authority; although, it is hard to see or foretell the future of post-territorial settlement. However, the planners should try to abandon fixed borders as their primary object and to move outside of the boxes of administrative territories and thinking, and they should embrace and promote a neo-medieval frame with less constraints.

To conclude, the logic of territorialism and its concomitant democracy dominate our thinking, imaginations, beliefs and socio-normative narrations/dimensions. Both of them are presented as normal, objective, rational, positivist, modern, development-based and progressive concepts and even they are portrayed as certain Lacanian ‘master-signifier’. On the other side, state and territory could be characterized by Kuhnian ‘internalized paradigm’, where particular and specific paradigms are such internalized that it can function without noticing them and/or their internalization in our life. The book written by Professor Andreas Faludi appropriately challenges the contemporary politico-institutional establishment, European spatial planning and it explores its links with democratic control of territories and development. According to the book, our task should be to rebuild Europe into a continent, where national borders are transformed and which play much less role. In other words, the book shouts for ‘Foucault´s laughter’, i.e. to discover the limitation of our thinking and accepted norms. This book is highly recommended for the readers of professional community of social and political sciences, European studies, border studies, sociology and for those amateur readers who are interested in issues of territory, sovereignty, territorialism, neo-medievalism, state, borders and the European Union.

Teodor Gyelnik (CESCI)

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25 Years of European Territorial Cooperation. A Panorama.

Eduardo Medeiros (ed) (2018): European Territorial Cooperation. Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Process and Impacts of Cross-Border and Transnational Cooperation in Europe. Springer. Cham.

Professor Eduardo Medeiros (University of Lisbon, ISCTE-IUL) is well-known of his work combining academic knowledge and pragmatic approach by which he provides scienfically well-based methodologies for EU level policy making. His oeuvre covers large spectrum of subjects associated with territorial development policies from integrated spatial planning (e.g. Medeiros 2014b) through cross-border territorial impact assessment (e.g. Medeiros 2014; 2015; 2019b) to the delimitation of cross-border areas in order to better align the territorial scope of INTERREG A programmes (Medeiros 2019a). All these studies target the improvement of European Territorial Cooperation policy and the increase of cross-border (and thus: whole-European) territorial cohesion, territorial integration. The reviewed book has the same mission.

The actuality of the volume on European Territorial Cooperation was given by the 25th anniversary of the INTERREG community initiative providing financial support to activities in the field of cross-border cooperation – both in its narrower and broader senses. The European Commission celebrated the anniversary by a series of events, a comprehensive study written by Birte Wassenberg, Jean Peyrony and Bernard Reitel (Wassenberg, Reitel, Peyrony, Rubió 2015) and a brochure presenting exemplary INTERREG projects covering the whole territory of the EU and the 25-years history (EC 2015). Several further events were organised by local, regional and cross-border actors, the members of the “cross-border family” celebrating INTERREG „the smallest but finest piece of Cohesion Policy” – as one of the founding fathers of the European territorial cooperation policy, Jens Gabbe featured the initiative (EC 2015: [2]). Not only the practitioners of cross-border cooperation but also decision-makers of Cohesion Policy and thinkers share this view. It is a widely accepted opinion that cross-border cooperation represents a kind of laboratory of the European Union where the positive and negative effects of the integration and the Single Market as well as the impacts of still persisting barriers can be witnessed and experienced (see e.g. van Houtum 2000: 64; MOT 2017; Durand and Decoville 2018: 230). As Reitel, Wassenberg and Peyrony state in the present volume: “the INTERREG programmes introduced in the early 1990s have certainly created a direct link between border regions and European integration […]” where „the successes and failures of European economic integration can best be seen and felt” (Reitel et al. 2018: 15).

Some experts go even further. According to Scott “... the European Union’s political identity – and indeed its raison d’être – are closely intertwined with the symbolism of transcending and transforming national borders in the interests of integration and peaceful coexistence.” (Scott 2012; see also: Guillermo-Ramírez 2018: 44) Liam O’Dowd puts it similarly: “To some extent cross-border regions mirror the working of the EU itself.” (O’Dowd 2003: 24) What is more, as Popescu (2012: 132) highlights, the INTERREG programme facilitated the development of regional priorities for euroregions and it played a definitive role in the Europeanization of the Eastern Bloc countries during the accession process. Other authors add to this picture the enablement of the local actors to develop cross-border functional projects and to boost the economy of a borderland (see: Lange and Pires 2018: 142).

One can conclude that European Territorial Cooperation, especially its cross-border strand – regardless of its modest financial means – is not the less but the most important factor of the European project. The excellent experts of the book convened by professor Medeiros underpin this argument by offering a panorama on the past and the present of ETC, furthermore, they also form recommendations for the future. The 13 studies are grouped into four parts: Part I - Lessons from 30 Years of EU Territorial Cooperation; Part II - Cross-Border Cooperation in the EU. A Success Story?; Part III - Transnational Cooperation. A Cornerstone of European Spatial Planning?; Part IV - Future Scenarios for European Territorial Cooperation. However, not only the last part contains recommendations: in effect, each study includes lessons learnt and draws consequences for the future, from different points of view.

Bernard Reitel, Birte Wassenberg and Jean Peyrony analyse the barrier effects of state borders and the role that the European tool-kit of territorial cooperation played and plays in their elimination. Sara Svensson and Péter Balogh follow a similar approach when classifying the different barrier effects and showing the ways how to overcome them. Martín Guillermo-Ramírez enumerates the positive effects of cross-border cooperation on the European project and the integration of the Member States. Erik Hagen and Bjørn Terje Andersen add an “outsider view” when treating the integrative impacts of INTERREG along an external (i.e. the Swedish-Norwegian) border of the EU. Medeiros himself has two studies in the volume. By the first one he describes the European project as a gradual progress of the centre to the peripheries where INTERREG has a decisive role. However, its effectiveness could be further enhanced in order to support place-based territorial developments and cohesion. In his second study, he focusses on the way of measuring the territorial impacts of INTERREG programmes.

Thomas Lundén disposes cross-border cooperation in the context of Border Studies. Emily Lange and Iva Pires present the gradual institutionalisation of cross-border cooperation. Estelle Evrard and Alice Engl analyse the most advanced form of these cross-border institutions, the EGTC. Frédéric Durand and Antoine Decoville approach the issue from the perspective of integrated cross-border spatial planning which is unseparable from cross-border governance.

The transnational aspect of the ETC is treated by two studies: Franziska Sielker and Daniel Rauhaut give and overview on the emergence of macro-regional thinking while Rudolf (Ruut) Louwers analyses the changes in the focus of the North-West Europe transnational programme with its wider implications. The transnational strand of INTERREG is analysed in Medeiros’s studies, as well. At the same time, INTERREG C is not detailed in the volume.

The above list justifies that professor Medeiros managed to convene an excellent group of experts and to offer a wide panorama on different aspects of the topic of ETC, its history, present and prospects.

History of European territorial cooperation

The volume gives a comprehensive historic picture, how cross-border cooperation became one of the core issues of the European integration. From a bottom-up perspective, the local initiatives played the icebraking role. The very pioneer was the EUREGIO established in 1958, one year after the signature of the Treaty of Rome. As one of the founders, Alfred Mozer stated, their purpose was to cure the borders, the “scars of history” (Guillermo-Ramírez 2018: 27). However, these early (historic) years of cross-border cooperation were characterised by pathfinding without steady frameworks and sign posts. The situation has changed in the 1980s when both the Council of Europe and the European Community took important steps. “While the European Community followed rather market-driven approach and perceived borders as barriers to a common Europen economic area that should be reduced, the Council of Europe helped to legitimise and publicise sub-state cross-border cooperation efforts” (Evrard and Engl 2018: 211). As a result, the Madrid Outline Convention adopted by the Council of Europe has opened the gate to the signature of bilateral agreements and to the creation of legal solutions facilitating cross-border cooperation. (Ibid.) In parallel, the European Community concentrated on the operational conditions of the European Common (later Single) Market. In 1985, Jacques Delors set the objective to eliminate the internal state borders until 1992. (Reitel at al. 2018: 9). This statement formed the basis of the adoption of the European Single Act in 1986 and the launch of the first 14 groups of PILOT projects inaugurating INTERREG, in 1989 (Medeiros 2018a: 70). The real INTERREG initiative was opened in 1990 and it has run an exemplary carrier so far, whose budget has been multiplied 10 times and which has became one of the two goals of European Cohesion Policy. The positive impacts of cross-border programmes are listed by Medeiros (2018a): “learning, capacity building, the creation of a collaborative infrastructure […], the promotion of policy entrepreneurship, multi-level governance […], cross-border metropolitan integration […] and forms of cross-border and transborder regionalism”. (74) He also identifies the achivements of transnational programmes “in promoting the elaboration of spatial development strategies and polycentric development, and also in improving territorial accessibility and sustainable economic development” (75). By his view, the INTERREG-story can be considered as an evolution from the very beginning when the main purpose was to “prepare the border areas for the opening of the Single Market” (81), to the present programmes whose aim is to „tackle common challenges identified jointly in the border regions and exploit the untapped growth potential in border areas, while enhancing the cooperation process for the purposes of the overall harmonious development of the Union” (ibid.).

In parallel with this evolution, the tool-kit has also been developing. On the one hand, multi-level governance mentioned for the first time in Single European Act (Sielker and Rauhaut 2018: 155), has became a core topic of territorial cooperation, creating innovative governance solutions: “What we see is a progressive institutionalisation of the cross-border region, a process started by these Euroregions and now continued into EGTCs of multiple forms, including macro-regional settings. In this sense, the EGTC has gone further than its original purpose – to facilitate the management of structural funds […] – and actually functions as a multiple purpose tool for various settings.” (Lange and Pires 2018: 140)

On the other hand, the EU has also developed the tool-kit of cross-border integrated developments by creating the theoretical and methodological background of ’spatial planning’ (see the ESDP in 1999) resulted from the amalgamation of different national European legacies of territorial planning. The examples of territorial observation and integrated cross-border strategies show the positive effects of this innovation (Durand and Decoville 2018: 235–238). What is more, the efforts made by the European Commission in terms of impact assessment when publishing guidances and supporting several ESPON projects, provided us with methods targeting the evaluation of the tangible and intangible impacts of territorial cooperation (Medeiros 2018b). The latest developments can be observed in the field of legal permeability of the borders expected from the European Cross-Border Mechanism (see: Reitel et al. 2018: 18; Svensson and Balogh 2018: 129).

At the same time, the real actors of territorial cooperation are always challenging the frameworks established by the EU. It is the reason why Evrard and Engl differentiate between the “policy formulation” and “policy implementation” of the EGTC tool and concentrate on the latter one (Evrard and Engl 2018: 210). Sielker and Rauhaut draw the attention to that regardless of the “Three No” rule of macro-regional strategies (i.e. no new institutions, no new funding, no new regulations), “the four existing macro-regions have developed a dedicated governance structure, which is often funded through ETC programmes. Macro-regions are not Operational Programmes by themselves, but they are reflected in other legislation and are supported by existing funds, and have reached smaller budgets, such as support through Parliamentarian budget lines.” (Sielker and Rauhaut 2018: 167)

These examples show that ETC is not a completed building but a permanently evolving reality shaped by local-regional, national and European actors.

Prospects and recommendations for the future of ETC

The summing-up of the history and the achievements would provide significance to the volume, by itself. However, the recommendations drafted by the authors makes the book even more valuable. As Reitel et alii underlines, new, unfavourable phenomena can be detected in Europe. The trend of securitisation endangers the “ambitious project of the Single Market” and reinforces “the ’separation’ effect of the border” (16). Lange and Pires quotes the results of an Eurobarometer survey from 2016 according to which the EU citizens considered the issues of terrorism, security and migration the second most important challenge of the EU (following unemployment). The climate is not in favour of more intense territorial cooperation. At the same time, it is precisely territorial cooperation which can improve this climate by showing good practices of trust building and positive impacts of the four freedoms.

The authors of the volume are committed to enhance and intensify cooperation. At cross-border level, the recommendations are concentrated around the reduction of the barrier effect of the border and the exploitation of territorial capital of the borderland (Medeiros 2018a; Hagen and Andersen 2018). Medeiros makes even a concrete recommendation on the share of the INTERREG budget among the two main issues: he would spend 70% for the management of the obstacles and 30% for the valorisation of the territorial capital of the borderlands.

Reitel et alii locate the question into a wider context differentiating between its “political and societal logic” which necessitates the building up and functioning of networks; the “functional logic” insisting the elimination of the legal, administrative and technical obstacles; and “the economic logic” which requires the maintenance of the openness of the borders. “The toolbox should address the three logics in the following manner: first, via the construction of cross-border territories and their governance systems; second, through cross-border coordination of national policies; and third, by funding of and support for CBC.” (18)

Svensson and Balogh suggest to calculate the costs related to the barrier effects because it can provide arguments underlying the human side of the challenges. Lange and Pires, as well as, Evrard and Engl highlight the significance that cross-border governance can play in creating social cohesion and ownership; but for this purpose, the legal-administrative instruments offered by the EU are not sufficient. The territorial integration of a borderland depends also on its sociocultural and economic cohesion presupposing the existence of a “shared identity” (Guillermo-Ramírez 2018: 38). This shared identity is unimaginable without the resolution of “the ’old problem’ of population acceptance” (Lange and Pires 2018: 146). As Durand and Decoville put it, cross-border planning can have a positive effect on the development of population acceptance: “to develop a feeling of sharing a common cross-border living area, and […] to underline the international dimensions conferred by the border.” (234)

Even more, according to Svensson and Balogh, the awareness of those not involved directly in CBC should be created (131) in order to strengthen the visibility of the territorial challenges.

Additionally, Louwers and Medeiros provides also methodological suggestions in order to improve the effectiveness of ETC programmes. Medeiros presents the concept of the CBC TARGET TIA, his own new tool to assess territorial impacts of INTERREG programmes and makes recommendations on the reform of the transnational programmes, their geographic pattern and thematic focus (with a special emphasis on spatial planning). Louwers would fundamentally renew ETC: “A thorough reshaping is needed, starting with one unique, common goal. In line with the Lisbon Treaty, it should be territorial cohesion, understood as the reduction of territorial disparities, the reinforcement of a sense of belonging to the European project and solidarity among European citizens.” (203)

The above recommendations are given special importance by the fact that the book was published at the beginning of the design process of the next Cohesion Policy package. Consequently, its benefit can be tested in the near future, when approaching the 30th anniversary of INTERREG. Medeiros’s message is looking forward to open ears:

“In conclusion, [the book] calls for an enlarged strategic and financial role for ETC programmes for the post-2020 EU Cohesions Policy period, in view of their positive impacts in promoting territorial development and integration, over the last 27 years.” (Medeiros 2018a: 89)

Gyula Ocskay (CESCI)

External references

EC (2015): 25 years INTERREG cooperation across and beyond borders. European Commission INTERACT, Brussels.

Medeiros, E. (2014a): Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA). Concept, Methods and Techniques. Centro de Estudos Geográficos da Universidade de Lisboa (CEG) – Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território (IGOT), Lisbon University, Lisbon.

Medeiros, E. (2014b): The ‘europeanization’ of spatial planning processes in Portugal within the EU cohesion policy strategies (1989-2013). Revista de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território, No. 6, pp. 201-222.

Medeiros, E. (2015): Territorial Impact Assessment and Cross-Border Cooperation. Regional Studies, Regional Science. Vol. 2. No. 1, pp. 97-115.

Medeiros, E. (online version, 2019a): Delimiting cross-border areas for policy implementation: a multi-factor proposal, European Planning Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2019.1687654

Medeiros, E. (2019b) Spatial Planning, Territorial Development, and Territorial Impact Assessment, Journal of Spatial Planning, 34:2, 171-182.

MOT (2017): Cross-border territories. Europe’s laboratory. Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière, Pàris.

O’Dowd L. (2003): The Changing Significance of European Borders. In: Anderson, J., O’ Dowd L. and Wilson, T. M. (eds.): New Borders for Changing Europe. Cross-Border Cooperation and Governance. Routledge, London and New York, pp. 13–36.

Popescu, G. (2012): Bordering and Ordeting the Twenty-first Century. Understanding Borders. Rowman & Littlefield, Plymouth (UK).

Scott, J. W. (2012): European Politics of Borders, Border Symbolism and Cross-Border Cooperation. In: Wilson T. M. and Donnan H. (eds.): A Companion to Border Studies. Wylie-Blackwell, Chichester, pp.83–99.

Wassenberg B., Reitel B., Peyrony J., Rubió J. (2015): Territorial Cooperation in Europe. A Historical perspective. European Commission, Luxembourg.

Table of Contents

Editorial board

Contents

Scott: Developing Research Perspectives on Borders, Cultural Dialogue and Cooperation

Anna Casaglia: On Border-Making and Politics of Borders

Jussi Laine: Observations on Borders as Social Fact and Ethical Problems

Victor Konrad: Relating Borders to ‘Belongingness’: Some Observational Evidence

James W Scott: Urban Borders, Urban Neighbourhoods and a Cognitive Approach

Alicia Español: Everyday Psychological Boundaries: Evidence from the Ceuta-Tétuan Borderland

Krisztina Keresztély, Hayley Trowbridge: Voicitys: Living with Diversity in European Cities

Goran Bandov, Bruno Antonio Erdeljac Cunha: Portuguese-Africans: in Practice a True ethnicity

Research Note: Alla Sanchenko: Current Institutional and Legal Framework for Ukraine’s Participation in Cross-border Cooperation

Research Note: Michal Šindelář: The Pomoraví/Weinviertel/Zahorie Euroregion

Book Review: Andreas Faludi (2018): The Poverty of Territorialism: a Neo-Medieval View of Europe and European Planning, Edward Elgar Publishing. (Teodor Gyelnik)

Book Review: Eduardo Medeiros (ed) (2018): European Territorial Cooperation. Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Process and Impacts of Cross-Border and Transnational Cooperation in Europe. Springer. Cham. (Gyula Ocskay)