Borders have been a long-standing theme in European studies. Much ink has been spilled about regions at the EU’s internal borders functioning as laboratories of European integration, about de-bordering and re-bordering, all with significant implications for cross-border mobility. In particular, the border closures during the Covid-19 pandemic have raised questions about the European idea of bringing nations and people together. In short, borders are frequently at the forefront of academic and policy debates about the future of the EU and can serve as a useful barometer of the state of European integration. Yet, conceiving of border regions as laboratories risks demoting them to test cases of broader top-down theories about the influences of European integration on the ground.

In contrast, an emphasis on ‘place attachment’ represents a chance to reverse the perspective and to analyse how locals’ identification with a place, its history and culture in turn influences their responses to the European idea from the bottom up. Border regions are not neatly bounded, and cross-border mobility means that borders – especially the internal borders of the EU – are frequently transcended. This does not mean that place attachment is absent, but rather that meaningful places can sometimes span state borders, at least for some locals.

This panel takes place attachment as its starting point and analyses how local narratives about the relationship between people and a meaningful place interact with narratives about the EU as an abstract space. For example, narratives about the effects of cross-border mobility on local ways of life may in turn impact narratives about the benign or harmful effects of European integration on a place. Elsewhere, EU institutions and rules may be seen as protectors of a shared landscape. Alternatively, in narratives about border regions as a space that is shared between two countries, the EU may be written out of the story altogether in the public imagination. Through a series of four case studies, we examine these dynamics.

The Danish-Swedish border region around the Oresund strait has been studied relatively extensively since the 1990s. This is due to significant policy attention to cross-border cooperation and joint region-building before and after the inauguration in 2000 of the 15-km combined bridge and tunnel uniting the Danish Sjaelland Island with Scania, the most southern region of Sweden and the Scandinavian peninsula. The region has often been promoted as a best practice of cross-border integration, but recent research frequently highlights the enormous strain caused by the political events of recent years (migration, Covid-19). This paper adds to the literature with a comparative case study of how place attachment, cross-border mobility and narratives about macro-regional processes interact. The study comprises a media analysis centered around two sites: the Danish Island of Bornholm, which connects to the Danish mainland primarily through a ferry connection through Sweden, and Helsingborg-Helsingor, twin cities connected by a 20-minute ferry ride across the narrowest part of the Oresund strait. The macro-regional processes refer both to European integration and Nordic integration, analyzing the relationship between people and a meaningful place interact with narratives about both EU and Scandinavia as abstract spaces.

The region of Lusatia is located by the Polish-German-Czech border triangle, where the three countries meet, and where cross-border mobility is high. On the German side, the term ‘Lausitz’ is often used without reflecting on the contingent attachment between historic names and places and their contemporary affiliation with a modern state, specifically because the Lusatia region stretches across the border into Poland.

In contrast, there has been ample reflection on the fact that environmental, health or economic challenges do not stop at the border. The local effects of broader problems such as the Covid-19 pandemic or large-scale people smuggling, as well as more localised ones such as an outbreak of swine fever or local environmental degradation due to coal mining, have driven home the message that the inhabitants of Lusatia and of the border triangle region more broadly share a common fate. This message is broadly congruent with the European ideal of Europeans forming a community of fate, but Lusatia is also home to a strong current of Euroscepticism, as seen in the electoral success in Eurosceptic parties such as Alternative for Germany.

This paper connects place attachment to Lusatia with Euroscepticism through an analysis of newspaper articles from two regional newspapers, the Sächsische Zeitung and Lausitzer Rundschau, between 2019 and 2023. It traces narratives of Lusatia as meaningful place and links these to four main Eurosceptic narratives in newspaper reporting, namely a narrative of a 'European ideal' not realised; one on EU bureaucracy; one on the EU’s failure to understand local needs; and one on perceived double standards when comparing this Central European regions with Western Europe.

Minorities have a special perspective on place attachment in border regions. This paper studies the effect of re-bordering processes on how people belonging to national minorities perceive borders and a European Union in which cross-border mobility is affected by bordering processes. It draws on a comparative thematic analysis of almost 1,000 articles published in minority language daily newspapers in Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Slovakia and investigates whether and how their narration of borders and the European Union changed during two key bordering events: the 2015-2016 summer of migration and the 2020 Covid-19-pandemic. A number of central narratives in the reporting on borders are identified and analysed in detail: the border as bridge, the border as a threat (to the local economy, to the territory, to minority identities) and the narrative of a European Union in crisis. By focusing on the often invisible narratives of minorities in Europe’s borderlands, the paper goes beyond an often nation-centric approach to the study of both borders and the European Union, and sheds new light on the interplay of de-bordering and re-bordering processes, and the role of borders within a changing European Union.

In the communication laying the ground for the European cross-border mechanism, the European Commission presents border regions as “the places where EU integration should be felt the most positive” as “working, getting, doing business beyond borders is possible on the daily business” (EC, 2017:2-3). To which extent does the practice of living in a borderland influence the perception residents have of the EUropean project? The notion of place attachment considers both the emotional and/or physical bond between people and their environment. Using 60 walking interviews conducted with residents (i.e. commuters, students, pensioners) in the Alzette Belval border region (France-Luxembourg), the presentation sheds light on citizens’ experience of the EUropean integration, and whether it contributes to change/affect their relation to place. The presentation demonstrates that in a region where the border is used as a resource to produce value (Sohn, 2014), border disparities increase, and so do disparities between social groups. As residents think that EU-associated rights and opportunities contribute positively to their functional attachment to place and the broader region, their emotional attachment varies greatly, depending on personal circumstances, and to a large extend on their effective capacity to benefit from these EUropean rights and local opportunities. The presentation concludes by identifying paths for future research. The presentation draws upon data collected between 2021 and 2022 in the framework of the research-art REMIX PLACE project (European Capital of Culture Esch2022).

References

EC European Commission. (2017), Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament - Boosting growth and cohesion in the border regions of the European Union, Brussels. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/fr/ALL/?uri=CELEX:52017DC0534

Sohn, C. (2014): Modeling Cross-Border Integration: The Role of Borders as a Resource, Geopolitics , 19:3, pp.587-608