Journal ArticleDOI
The Changing Significance of European Borders
TLDR
The European Union state borders have become more flexible, differentiated and salient as the Single European Market has re-configured the borders of the European Union (EU). Internal and external border regions have become sites of extensive cross-border cooperation promoted by a multiplicity of local governmental and non-governmental agencies, their respective national governments and the European Commission as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
The accelerating globalization of economic and cultural life and the growing density of international and supranational institutions have led many to assume the decreasing significance, even practical redundancy, of state borders. Yet, the case for redundancy is weak. Far from disappearing, state borders have proliferated with the break-up of the Soviet bloc. They have become more flexible, differentiated and salient as the Single European Market has re-configured the borders of the European Union (EU). Internal and external border regions have become sites of extensive cross-border cooperation promoted by a multiplicity of local governmental and non-governmental agencies, their respective national governments and the European Commission. While the number of state borders is increasing, their changing functions and meanings are becoming manifest through issues such as environmental pollution, animal diseases, crime, immigration, refugees, asylum seekers and the de-regulation and re-regulation of the global economy. Yet, academics and key policy have often seen them as marginal to both disciplinary and policy concerns. The scale of recent border change, however, has encouraged a substantial growth in research on borders across a range of social science disciplines and a renewed policy interest in border regions by the EU and its member states (see for example, Hansen, 1983; Sahlins, 1989; Eger and Langer, 1996; M. Anderson, 1996; O’Dowd and Wilson, 1996; Newman, 1998; Paasi, 1998; Sparke, 1998; Wilson and Donnan, 1998; Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999). This renewed interest has been accompanied by a growing recognition of the fundamental importance of boundaries in social life. Wallace (1992: 14), a leading analyst of European integration, notes that the question of territorial boundaries is central to the study of political systems, legal jurisdictions and socio-economic interaction. The Indian sociologist, T.K. Oommen has even suggested that the ‘rise and fall, the construction and deconstruction of various types of boundaries is the very story of human civilisation and of contemporary social transformation’ (cited in Paasi, 1998: 83) This essay attempts to provide an overview of the changing significance of EU state borders as a contribution to the analysis ofread more
Citations
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Territories, boundaries and consciousness: the changing geographies of the Finnish-Russian border
Book
The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory
TL;DR: The authors argue that cosmopolitanism has a critical dimension which offers a solution to one of the weaknesses in the critical theory tradition: failure to respond to the challenges of globalization and intercultural communication.
Journal ArticleDOI
Introduction: Citizens and Borderwork in Europe
TL;DR: A broadsheet newspaper carried the story that the UK security and intelligence service MI5 had been training supermarket checkout staff to detect potential terrorists (Goodchild and... as mentioned in this paper, 2007).
Journal ArticleDOI
Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States
TL;DR: The challenge to the nation-state: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States as discussed by the authors, a volume on immigration and immigration policy in the U.S. and countries of the European Union.
Journal ArticleDOI
Modelling cross-border integration: : the role of borders as a resource
TL;DR: In this paper, the role played by the border as a resource is analyzed and a theoretical framework based on two contrasted models of cross-border integration is developed to understand the strategic behaviour of actors who actively mobilise borders as resources.
References
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Book
The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht
TL;DR: The choice for Europe as mentioned in this paper is the choice of Europe and the choice for the future of the European Union, the Treaties of Rome, 1955-1958 and the Maastricht Treaty, 1988-1991.
Book
Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1990
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe how war made states, and vice versa states and their citizens lineages of the national state the European state system soldiers and states in 1990, and the European states in world history.
Journal ArticleDOI
Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees.
Book
Europe: A History
TL;DR: From the Ice Age to the Cold War, from Reykjavik to the Volga, from Minos to Margaret Thatcher, Norman Davies here tells the entire story of Europe in a single volume as mentioned in this paper.
Book
Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the role of the Finnish--Russian Boundary in the institutionalization of Vartsila and the construction of local experience in the Finnish-Russian boundary.
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