Schengen Europe in State-national Museums: Immobile Europeans, Immobilized “Others” and the Meaning of Borders

ABSTRACT

Museums are central places for participating in the territorial building of the nation-state. They can also play a key role in proposing a spatial structure of the European Union. Certain museums sponsored by member states of the EU have organized exhibitions that refer to the Schengen Treaty and its geographical implications in Europe. However, are these exhibitions promoting a territoriality based on the cross-border mobility of EU citizens favored by this Treaty? Based on a comparative analysis, the research shows that the representation of European integration in these museums can be above all the intensification of state-managed territoriality, meaning the expression of a public power that filters access in space through border controls. This representation can be explained by the specific context within which curators define their contents.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thanks Dr. Renata Varga (Dpt. GERiiCO, University of Lille 3) and Dr. Céline Schall (Dpt. IPSE, University of Luxembourg) for their comments concerning this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The exhibition was slightly changed in 2015 because of the perceived need to reposition the Schengen Treaty into the broader European construction of the past 50 years. It is not a change that takes into consideration the latest events in the EU. Both museums target a large audience composed of adults with different socio-economic backgrounds and children/students. Specific pedagogical visits and activities are organized for this last group of visitors in co-operation with educational authorities such as the cross-border German-Luxembourgish secondary school of Schengen for the Museum located in the Grand-Duchy.

2 The original English text displayed in the Luxembourgish and French museum are presented. An English translation of the French-only texts exhibited in the Parisian museum is also offered.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Lille-Nord de France Communauté d’Universités et d’Etablissements: [Grant from Bonus Qualité Recherche Internationale].