Borders and Border Regions in Europe: Changes, Challenges and Chances

摘要

This fascinating volume could not have come at a more apposite time than the present, discussing as it does, the politics, perception, permeability, vulnerability and philosophical nature of territorial borders in the modern world. It comprises 12 distinguished essays set mainly in the European context and resulting from a Franco/German scholarly collaboration which is wide-ranging, elegantly written and sustained by multi-disciplinary scope, profound insights and understandings. Border studies as an academic discipline have emerged only in recent years, prompted perhaps by the fall of the Berlin Wall, rapid globalisation and the expansion of the European Union (EU). Whilst we have conventionally thought of borders as territorial lines drawn between nation states and other political entities, modern political forces have made them increasingly permeable for people, goods, capital, ideas and co-operative ventures. On the one hand they have lost much of their salience as separators and dividers, often becoming the sites of political co-operation and cultural interaction; on the other hand they create uncertainty about the destabilising effects of economic competition, migration and multiculturalism.