#14 BIG Podcast – “Les frontières et la cohésion territoriale européenne”

featuring Jean Peyrony – Directeur général de la Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière

Les régions frontalières et transfrontalières sont au cœur de la construction européenne. La cohésion territoriale est l’un des objectifs de l’Union européenne : cette politique vise à réduire les écarts de niveaux de vie et de développement dans les régions de l’UE. La Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière est une agence française qui aide à la compréhension des enjeux des espaces transfrontaliers. Quelles sont les relations entre l’objectif de cohésion territoriale européenne et les frontières ? Quels sont les enjeux en termes de gouvernance transfrontalière ? Qu’est-ce qu’un bassin de vie transfrontalier ? De nombreuses questions sont posées et l’heure est à la réinvention de concepts et de méthodes pour des politiques publiques plus résilientes dans le contexte frontalier et transfrontalier. Une meilleure intégration transfrontalière est donc à l’ordre du jour. Eléments de réponse et de réflexion avec Jean Peyrony, directeur général de la MOT.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and the Podcast App!

#13 BIG Podcast – “Frontières internes et frontières externes de l’Union européenne”

featuring Frédérique Berrod – Professeure à Sciences Po Strasbourg, France

L’Union européenne poursuit le projet de créer une intégration juridique entre différents Etats sur le plan institutionnel et le plan matériel. Mais quels sont ses effets sur les frontières entre les Etats qui la composent ? En outre, le droit de l’UE développe une régulation juridique propre. Que sont les frontières internes de l’UE? Et que sont les frontières externes de l’UE ? Dans ce paysage complexe, avec le marché intérieur, l’espace de liberté, de sécurité et de justice, l’espace Schengen, la coopération transfrontalière, les relations commerciales de l’UE, on note la présence de facteurs qui tendent à une dévaluation juridique des frontières, et d’autres qui conduisent à une réévaluation juridique des frontières. Nous tenterons d’y voir plus clair avec Frédérique Berrod.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and the Podcast App!

#10 BIG Podcast – “Frontières et Espaces Transfrontaliers: Entre Théories et Pratiques”

featuring Grégory Hamez – Professeur de Géographie et d’Aménagement, Université de Lorraine

Les frontières sont des délimitations juridiques de territoires d’Etats souverains et jouent en principe le rôle de barrière a la coopération transfrontalière. Néanmoins, sous l’impulsion des Etats comme de l’Union européenne, on observe également l’émergence d’espaces transfrontaliers et de régions transfrontalières fonctionnelles. Comment cerner leur apparition et les enjeux qui les caractérisent ? Des régions transfrontalières émergent-elles vraiment en Europe ? Entre défonctionnalisation, approche dialectique, questions d’échelles et régimes disruptifs, nous allons en connaitre davantage sur ce sujet capital pour la consolidation de l’UE avec le Professeur Gregory Hamez.

Borders are legal delimitations of territories of sovereign States and in principle act as a barrier to cross-border cooperation. Nevertheless, under the impetus of States and the EU, we also observe the emergence of cross-border spaces and functional cross-border regions. How to identify their appearance and the issues that characterize them? Are cross-border regions really emerging in Europe? Between defunctionalization, dialectical approach, questions of scale and disruptive regimes, we will learn more about this crucial subject for the consolidation of the European Union with Professor Gregory Hamez.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and the Podcast App!

Special Issue: Confronting Borders in the Arctic

Journal of Borderland Studies | Volume 33, Issue 2 | 2018

In this thematic issue, six papers and three short commentaries investigate the evolving nature of borders in the Arctic in an era of climate change and globalization. Together, they illustrate how processes unique to the Arctic, such as sea ice melt and Inuit self-governance, tell a larger story about the co-evolving relationship of people and the environment, and the physical and constructed borders that give them meaning. Arctic human–environment relations are embedded in distinct histories and materialities in which border-making is understood as a multi-scalar arena of subnational and transnational actors, rather than the exclusive domain of the state. At the same time, the Arctic is shaped by powerful agents of change whose impacts span national borders and reconfigure environmental barriers. The papers in this issue reveal the ways in which Arctic climatic, political, economic, and demographic change amount to a transformation in thinking about Arctic borders and bordered spaces. We hope that the Arctic case will stimulate further investigation in borderlands around the world undergoing similarly transformative changes to physical and human systems.

Read the full issue here: Journal of Borderlands Studies Special Issue: The Arctic: Vol 33 No 2: Spring 2018

Contents
Confronting Borders in the Arctic by Scott Stephenson

Global Arctic by Klaus Dodds

Finding the Global Arctic by Jessica Shadian

The “Global Arctic” as a New Geopolitical Context and Method  by Lassi Heininen and Matthias Finger

Navigating Political Borders Old and New: The Territoriality of Indigenous Inuit Governance by Jessica Shadian

(Un)frozen Spaces: Exploring the Role of Sea Ice in the Marine Socio-legal Spaces of the Bering and Beaufort Seas by Kristen Shake, Karen Frey, Deborah Martin, Philip Steinberg

Rescaling Borders of Investment: The Arctic Council and the Economic Development Policies by Heather Nicol

Drawing Boundaries in the Beaufort Sea: Different Visions/Different Needs by Rob Huebert

“The So-Called 2015 Migration Crisis and Euroscepticism in Border Regions: Facing ReBordering Trends in the Danish-German Borderlands”

Martin Klatt | Geopolitics | 2018

This paper examines the role of Euroscepticism on regional cross-border cooperation between Germany and Denmark. It demonstrates that Euroscepticism, while absent from local mainstream politicians, had already caused civic unrest in the 1997 attempts to construct a return to history Euro-region Schleswig. It resulted in a re-scaling of the Euro-Region to Region and Schleswig to “Sønderjylland/Schleswig”, omitting any reference to Europe, European identity or a commitment to a closer European union in the relevant agreements. Border controls, on the agenda in 2011 and again since 2015, have demonstrated the institutional weakness of cross-border politics when faced with determined initiatives from the national center. Furthermore, the Eurosceptic Danish People’s Party had its best results in the border precincts both at the latest European and Danish national elections. Euroscepticism, even though difficult to measure on a regional level, seems to have been an ever present underneath current despite a political rhetoric of successful cooperation and cross-border reconciliation. The Danish-German case’s development might be more distinct, but nonetheless representative for European border (and cross-border) regions. While European metropolises develop into thriving cosmopolitan post-nation state societies, this is not necessary the case at Europe’s borders, where categorization and bordering remain common social practices by the large majority of national borderlanders with only a small portion of transnational borderlanders or ‘regionauts’ getting involved in border crossing social practices on a larger scale.

Klatt, Martin. “The So-Called 2015 Migration Crisis and Euroscepticism in Border Regions: Facing ReBordering Trends in the Danish-German Borderlands.” Geopolitics 23, (2018).

The Networked North: Borders and Borderlands in the Canadian Arctic Region

Heather Nicol and P. Whitney Lackenbauer | Borders in Globalization/Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism | 2017

The Networked North identifies and addresses key lenses for understanding cross-border cooperation in the North American Arctic under conditions of globalization, climate change and changing international relations. Each chapter focuses upon a particular theme influencing cross border relationships, such as historical legacies, cultural relationships, cross-border flows of people and goods, security arrangements, governance practices and sustainability challenges. Twelve short chapters systematically define the ways in which Arctic and sub-Arctic borderlands are uniquely situated within processes of climate change, devolution, globalization, resurgent indigeneity, and neo-realist geopolitical processes. All authors acknowledge how the North has been reterritorialized by each of these processes in ways that encourage the networked nature of sovereignty and territoriality.

Bordering on Brexit: Views from Local Communities in the Central Border Region of Ireland / Northern Ireland

Katy Hayward | Queen’s University Belfast | 2017

The eight Member Councils areas of the Central Border Region include Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon; Fermanagh and Omagh; Mid Ulster and the counties of Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan and Sligo. The Region has a population of approximately 850,000 in 2011. This is a predominantly rural area, characterised by a dispersed population and distance from major urban centres. Approximately one third of the population live in settlements over 1,500 population; and two thirds in smaller settlements and open countryside. The Region accounts for 20% of the land area of the island of Ireland, with high quality landscapes of coastline, lakes, inland waterways and hills.

After generations of severe social, political, and economic challenges in the Central Border Region, not to mention the experience of violent conflict, the 21st century has begun to prove the viability and value of cross-border cooperation. Unremarkably and uncontroversially, cross-border connections have become a means of overcoming the dual challenges of underdevelopment and geographical peripherality. Economies of scale, small-step exports, social enterprise, cross-community projects, tourism initiatives, even bargain hunting – in the past fifteen years, habit of cross-border movement have been developing that have brought evident and practical gain. The European Union helped to create an environment that made such contacts easier; indeed, it did great deal to encourage it, as per the logic of the Single Market, legislative harmonisation and the European Regional Development Fund. Political parties of all hues have come to encourage local communities and businesses in the Border Region to make the most of such opportunities.