Encounters with Otherness: Implications of (Un)familiarity for Daily Life in Borderlands

Abstract

While the European Union aims to diminish and remove borders as obstacles for integration, state borders continue to mark differences between countries. People living in borderlands may feel near to and familiar with “the other side” but far away and unfamiliar at the same time. Scrutinizing the concept of (un)familiarity promises intriguing insights into understanding how people perceive and interpret differences and similarities in borderlands, their implications for cross-border leisure and labor practices, and related attitudes towards sameness and otherness. With a relational perspective on borders, this paper therefore aims to unravel the complexity of the (un)familiarity concept by attempting to find an answer to the question how familiarity and/or unfamiliarity come into being and develop during daily encounters in borderlands? Our examination of the (un)familiarity concept reveals dynamic and interrelated dimensions of (un)familiarity—i.e. experiential, informational, self-assessed and proximate. Depending on the ways in which people perceive and interpret sameness and otherness, different degrees and forms of (un)familiarity are at play, resulting in cross-border attention, interaction or avoidance in everyday life.

Acknowledgments

This paper draws on research which is part of a collaborative project entitled “Unfamiliarity as signs of European times: scrutinizing historical representations of otherness and contemporary daily practices in border regions” (www.unfamiliarity.eu).

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Funding

We would like to thank the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO [grant number 231-50-002]) and the European Science Foundation (ESF [grant number 09-EuroCORECODE-FP-009]) for providing the financial support for the research.