A Borderless Europe?

Summary

Conference held at Department of Border Region Studies, SDU, 30th of September – 2nd of October 2010

The conference “A Borderless Europe?” was co-organized by the Department of Border Region Studies, University of Southern Denmark, and the Saxo-Institute, University of Copenhagen and sponsored by the Department of Border Region Studies, University of Southern Denmark and Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES), University of Copenhagen.

Organizing committee:

Dorte Andersen, Assistant Professor, Department of Border Region Studies, SDU: doa@sam.sdu.dk, Martin Klatt, Associate Professor, Department of Border Region Studies, SDU: mk@sam.sdu.dk, Marie Sandberg, Assistant Professor, Saxo-Institute, University of Copenhagen: sandberg@hum.ku.dk

The question mark after the title A Borderless Europe? was an ever present symbol in the conference’s motley theoretical landscape. Thus, throughout keynotes and workshops the notion of the borderless space was addressed, questioned and interrogated on multiple levels. The importance of borders to the construction of identity and culture was an essential subtext accompanying the discussions led by researchers from a rich variety of national and academic backgrounds, hereunder anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, philosophy, art, history, ethnography, nationalism and immigration studies.

On September 31st, keynote speaker Thomas M. Wilson addressed the theoretical divides in border studies and urged researchers to analyse both the academic borders that part disciplines as on analysing the physically and legally constructed borders dividing Europe internally and externally. Making a distinction between frontiers and borders he emphasised that border studies traverse the fruitful unoccupied theoretical interiors claimed by the fixed academic external framework.

In workshop I researchers carved out their own trails in the hinterlands. From the historical conflicts deeply imbedded in the (trans)national legacies keeping old borders alive to the new borders being erected by means of cultural artefacts in cyberspace and from Castles´ ethnographic representation to architecture establishing a transnational mediating space. Just as the notion of external borders, mental as well as physical, was put into question both from within and from the outside. Workshop II addressed the Portuguese-Spanish borders´ move from political to cultural borders, how borderlands are narrated in written words, provided an analytical framework for the structuring of everyday life in border regions and looked into the folkBaltica festival as a cross-border festival in Flensburg.

After a delicious lunch in the Alsion complex, workshop III dealt with border regions´ identification with Europe as well as the sovereignty aspects of EU´s border security. Workshop IV interrogated communication in the light of the cultural turn in European border areas, investigated why certain local governments may or may not join Euroregions, looked into the EU´s cross-border policies and finally the potential and limitations to education as the construction of bridges over cultural barriers was developed. After a coffee break with very lively and engaged exchanges workshop V looked into how border images and memories have re-bordered Europe, and followed the “green channel” explicating aspects of the Belarus-Lithuania borderlands. In workshop VI it was asked whether the German minority in Denmark was united or not and whether one can talk of remedievalisation on a regional level when it comes to certain areas in Europe.

In the evening the talk of borders were put into perspective by the city of Sønderborg, whose council has decided to let the title Borderless grace their efforts to become the European capital of culture in 2017. The evening thus offered a unique insight into the way a city that has traditionally rested in the identity of resting on a border, now sees the potential in taking on the identity of being exactly the opposite, namely borderless, as a site for ongoing cultural exchange which will surely make for interesting case studies in the years to come.

On Friday October 1st, Professors Michael Keating and Ulf Hedetoft gave two very stimulating keynotes. Keating offered insights into a long range of theoretically and historically founded borders and how they have transformed as a result of socio-economic changes and political interests and even presented the concept redrawing Europe in order to make life more friendly and logical, for instance by placing Switzerland in Scandinavia. Ulf Hedetoft continued by critically addressing the political discourse on immigrants, which he categorised as a discourse on angels and demons arguing that identity politics were currently transforming into interest politics, resulting in borders between people who contribute to society and people who do not fit into the notion of constructive citizens.

After a coffee break workshop VII looked into how German-Polish and German-Turkish twin cities were creating a transnational European space, the crucial role that minorities play when building capacity in border regions, applied an institutional-pragmatic view on social alienation and highlighted the permeability of institutional space in the cities of Zgorcelec/Görlic. In workshop VIII life beyond the border in the Upper Adriatic Sea was accounted for, and the Polish-Ukranian crossing point in Medyka was seen from the perspective of “ants” - the many people whose daily jobs consists of composing the flux of smugglers of goods and favours over the border. On a more general level the interplay between migrants and borders within the European Union bordering process was looked into and finally, it was asked whether the EU borders are an (in)visible wall or a Fortress.

After the workshops the conference participants were guided by Dr.  Martin Klatt on an interesting and vast-spanning excursion into the Danish-German borderlands. On a bus they were taken to see Dybbøl Battlefield and the Dybbøl Mølle, drove along Fjordvejen and attended a fascinating presentation by the Head of the Frøslev Prison Camp Museum, Henrik Skov Kristensen who gave a fascinating account of the history and development of the Danish-German concentration camp during world war II. The tour ended in Flensburg where participants were free to explore the German city before the evening ended with a rustic conference dinner at Hansen Brauerei.

The final day of the conference, Saturday, October 2nd. started out with two keynotes by Professors Jouni Häkli and Doris Wastl-Walter. Häkli spoke about the discourses surrounding attempts to build a transnational space in the Finnish-Swedish twin towns of Haparanda and Tornio at the Tornio River. Häkli interestingly problematised municipality discourses with youth attitudes across the border thereby problematising the ‘På Grænsen-Rajalla’ project, while allowing for the possibility that it will succeed. Doris Wastl-Walter thereafter presented a most disturbing yet illuminating analysis of the forms that the EU´s increasing securitization of its external border-space take. She related it to the amount of fatalities in the Euro-African borderlands as well as taking account of the effect that border control has on those predominantly young men being set to control the European frontier space.

This was followed by workshop X where the geo- and biopolitics of EU asylum polices were addressed through an analysis of the financial, material and virtual flows underpinning the EU´s externalisation of border control, an account of the shifting mental and legal involved in the changing European policies of labour migration and finally an analysis of the local effects of European border policy on the Italian island of Lampedusa. In workshop X the consequences of the legal and European boundaries for human rights law-making was laid out, the Dublin II regulation´s balancing between human rights and sovereignty concerns conceptualised and the cultural processes of European citizen construction highlighted. After this, the participants enjoyed a final lunch where many ideas were discussed and networks created before the conference at the Alsion complex came to an end.

The Borderless Europe? conference thus offered a truly unique chance to examine how the bordered and so-called borderless space are constructed strategically, mentally, historically, individually and institutionally. It showed the persistence of historical memory, discourse and imaginings in maintaining European borders and offered ways of theoretically as well as methodologically conceiving and conceptualizing the complex character of European borders – both its positive and negative effects. And last but not least it provided the researchers with up-to-date academic knowledge that can only be gained by transgressing borders, mentally as well as physically.

Nanna Bonde Tylstrup PhD Student, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Martin Lemberg Pedersen, PhD Student, Center for the Study of Equality and Multiculturalism (CESEM) Institute for Media, Cognition and Communication University of Copenhagen