1st Edition
Cross-Border Cooperation as Conflict Transformation Promises and Limitations in EU Peacebuilding
Has European integration helped to build peace in Europe and its neighbourhood? The book addresses this question through theoretically and empirically informed case studies that explore the successes of, and the challenges to EU cross-border cooperation as a tool for conflict transformation.
Conceptually, the contributors link the question of transforming conflict to changing understandings of borders and bordering. Empirically, the contributions represent case studies of practices and discourses of EU-sponsored cross-border cooperation, and challenges to it. The case studies encompass the multiple geographical perspectives of the EU internal boundaries, its (sometimes disputed) external borders, and borders involving third countries. From a thematic point of view, the collection focuses on the intersection of two levels at which bordering processes unfold and are enacted: the level of governance, devolution and international intervention and that of grass roots or civil society efforts, including cultural cooperation and artistic production. The collection thus offers a kaleidoscopic view of border politics and conflict that zooms in and out of the EU frontiers and their geopolitics of peacebuilding, security and cooperation.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Geopolitics.
Introduction - Cross-Border Cooperation as Conflict Transformation: Promises and Limitations in EU Peacebuilding
Maria-Adriana Deiana, Milena Komarova and Cathal McCall
1. The Irish Border as a European Union Frontier: The Implications for Managing Mobility and Conflict
Milena Komarova and Katy Hayward
2. Small Diplomacy: Cultural Cooperation As a Factor Alleviating Societal Tensions. The Case of Lviv and Its Polish Partner Cities
Klaudia Nowicka, Iwona Sagan and Dominika Studzińska
3. The Glocal Green Line: The Imperial Cartopolitical Puppeteering of Cyprus
Rodrigo Bueno-Lacy and Henk van Houtum
4. EU’s Cross-Border Cooperation and Conflict Transformation at Contested Borders in the European Neighbourhood: Lessons from the Turkish-Armenian Border
Gökten Doğangün and Yelda Karadağ
5. On (In)Definite Topography: National Identity and European and Regional Imaginaries in the Post-1989 Croatian Literary Narratives
Ivana Trkulja
6. Re-Thinking Border Politics at the Sarajevo Film Festival: Alternative Imaginaries of Conflict Transformation and Cross-Border Encounters
Maria-Adriana Deiana
Biography
Maria-Adriana Deiana is a lecturer in International Relations at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Her research deploys feminist and other critical IR perspectives to examine the interrelated issues of war, peace and security. Her publications include Gender and Citizenship: Promises of Peace in Post-Dayton Bosnia & Herzegovina (2018).
Milena Komarova is a sociologist and UK in a Changing Europe Initiative Research Fellow, based at the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Her work intersects the fields of border, conflict and urban studies, including Brexit and the Irish border.
Cathal McCall is a professor of European Politics and Borders. He has published widely on the theme of European Union cross-border cooperation and conflict transformation, including The European Union and Peacebuilding: The Cross-Border Dimension (2014).
