Refugee Research Centre

EUBorderscapes

Bordering, Political Landscapes and Social Arenas: Potentials and Challenges of
Evolving Border Concepts in a post-Cold War World

EUBorderscapes, financed though the EU’s 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, is a new international research project that tracks and interprets conceptual change in the study of borders. It is a large-scale project with a consortium that includes 22 partner institutions from 17 different states, including several non-EU countries. The EUBorderscapes project will study conceptual change in relation to fundamental social, economic, cultural and geopolitical transformations that have taken place in the past decades. In addition, major paradigmatic shifts in scientific debate, and in the social sciences in particular, will also be considered. State borders are the frame of reference, rather than ethnographic/anthropological boundaries. However, this approach emphasises the social significance and subjectivities of state borders while critically interrogating “objective” categories of state territoriality and international relations. The research proposed here will, furthermore, not only be focused at the more general, at times highly abstract, level of conceptual change. This project will also compare and contrast how different and often contested conceptualisations of state borders (in terms of their political, social, cultural and symbolic significance) resonate in concrete contexts at the level of everyday life.

CMRB's Role

CMRB's Prof. Nira Yuval-Davis is co-ordinating work package 9 of the project - Borders, Intersectionality and the Everyday. The central objective of the work package is to promote hitherto neglected areas of border research agendas that address lived, experienced and intersectional (e.g. gender, age, ethnicity) aspects of state borders. The bordering perspective will thus be developed in terms of discursive, practical and interpretational categories that reflect issues of citizenship, identity and transnational migration. This work package will also explore how borders affect groups with regard to gender, race, citizenship, socio-economic status and sexuality. The comparative perspective will encompass in-depth case studies that involve internal Schengen borders (UK/France) and the external EU border (Finland/Russia). In addition, an urban case study (London) of intersectionality and bordering will be carried out.

Working alongside Prof. Yuval-Davis will be:

Dr. Kathryn Cassidy, Senior Research Fellow (k.l.cassidy@uel.ac.uk)

Dr. Georgie Wemyss, Senior Research Fellow (g.wemyss@uel.ac.uk)

Dr. Jamie Hakim, Research Assistant (j.hakim@uel.ac.uk)

All can be contacted on + 44 (0) 208 223 2399

Twitter: @CMRBEUBorders

Facebook: CMRB EUborderscapes

Partners
University of Eastern Finland • Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen Centre for Border Research • Middle East Technical University, Center for Black Sea and Central Asia • Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences • Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona • University of Tromsø • The Queen’s University of Belfast • Ben Gurion University of the Negev • Umeå University • University of Bergamo • University of Gdansk • V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National
University • Leibniz-Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning • Centre for Population, Poverty and Public Policy Studies, Luxembourg • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Pacte / Université Joseph Fourier • Research Centre for Economic and Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences • Centre for Independent Social Research, St. Petersburg • University of Helsinki • Centre for Advanced Study Sofia

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© 2013