Linking Borderlands: Dynamics of Cross-Border Peripheries. Conceptual and empirical insights from an interdisciplinary perspective

The articles presented in this working paper provide an insight into tentative research results in the project’s five mutually related focal areas:

In “Policy Borderlands: borders and governance in political science,” Stefanie Thurm, Peter Ulrich, and Georg Wenzelburger exemplify the perspectives of politological research on border regions, distinguishing between realist, liberal, and postmodern approaches to some advanced forms of cross-border cooperation. In light of the governance debate they introduce concepts of multi-level governance, before turning to an empirical analysis of borderland strategies, specifically those of the Saarland toward France and Lorraine toward Germany, and the mutual strategies of Brandenburg and its Polish neighbor. It becomes clear from the analysis that a policy transfer has occurred, the eastern borderlands borrowing from the experience of the west. In both cases much remains to be done if strategic goals are to be achieved as formulated.

In “Communicative Borderlands: language use and social practice in vocational training – comparing west and east,” Konstanze Jungbluth, Leonie Micka, Claudia Polzin-Haumann, Nicole Richter, Dagna Zinkhahn Rhobodes, and Sara Bonin examine different levels of language usage and multilingualism in the two border regions. Applying their concept of ‘co-constructing communicative borderlands’ (CCCBL), they shed light on the development of both shared and divergent lexical and semantic features. They focus not only on borderland language practice and policies in west and east (the latter involving a multilingual concept developed in 2021), but also particularly on cross-border vocational training. Reflecting the different timescales of EU integration, this seems to be of more one-sided interest in the east than in the west. An empirical example from a multilingual classroom illustrates the growth of intermediate spaces and innovative forms of communication with concomitant erosion of language barriers – a typically liminal borderland phenomenon.

In “Hybrid Borderlands: on borders, from borders, borderland experiences in film,” Tobias Schank, Astrid Fellner, Isis Luxenburger, and Eva Nossem deploy the concept of bordertexturing in a theoretical and methodological approach to the elucidation of borders from a cultural studies perspective. This conceives borders as complex multimodal cultural and social constructs, the product of multiple discourses, whose dynamic interweaving is revealed in their very genesis. Exemplified in films that focus broadly but effectively on border regions, the perspective aligns the creative vision of the filmmaker vis à vis border phenomena with that of the academic critic as one that not only often has to do with border discourses but also artistically enacts their complex multimodality. After all, the medium of film can itself be seen as border-transgressing experience translated onto celluloid. Viewed through the lens of bordertexturing, recent work on film phenomenology (after Vivian Sobchack) issues in a plea for complexity in scholarly practice for which the Linking Borderlands project paradigmatically stands.

In “Planning Borderlands: Conceptualizing Territorial Development in Cross-Border Regions”, Karina Pallagst, Benjamin Blaser, Kirsten Mangels, and Nino Pfundstein investigates cross-border territorial development with particular reference to services of general interest. Starting from the observation that political and social borders still possess meaning today, and that the concept of cross-border territorial development seeks to address transnational issues in border regions, the paper emphasizes the widely varying durability and permeability of borders and the impact of this on planning, especially with regard to the provision of services.

In “Energy Borderlands in comparison: on the empirical productivity of the concepts around interconnected areas and conflict zones,” Alexandra Lampke, Kamil Bembnista, Florian Weber, Ludger Gailing, and Peter Dörrenbächer address current negotiations on energy supplies in the project’s two key border regions. That common efforts at the European level cannot outweigh the strongly national character of energy policies is above all clear where dominant sources of energy clash. The French nuclear power plant Cattenom and the Polish opencast lignite mine Turów stand for such conflict zones. The hydrogen network Grande Region Hydrogen and the climate-neutral German-Polish twin city of Görlitz-Zgorzelec, on the other hand, reveal a permeability of borders and a complex interweave of structures that justifies their systematic designation as transition zones or interlinked areas. Current negotiation processes remain largely hegemonic, but possess a dynamic potential that calls for ongoing observation and analysis.

Together, the five articles show that, from its inception, the Linking Borderlands project has unmistakably demonstrated the complexities (Wille 2021) of the two borderlands under consideration. Our overall aim is to shed further light on these complexities by interrelating work, in both content and methodology, within the project’s five focal areas. This promises not only to actively link insights into the two disparate borderlands but also to develop profitable synergies between the perspectives of the different disciplines concerned. Graphically expressed in our logo (see Fig. 1), the intermeshing of focal areas and approaches is the driving impulse of our project. Exemplified in the present collection of articles, Linking Borderlands is a vital laboratory, a space of interdisciplinary experiment and dialogue. In its emphasis on pluralism and complexity it reflects the European principle of negotiating impermeable barriers.