The enduring importance of national identity in cooperative European Union Borderlands: Polish university students' perceptions on cross-border cooperation in the Pomerania euro-region

Abstract

European integration, through euro-regions, voluntary zones of cooperation across national borders, and the eastward expansion of the Schengen Zone have transformed Europe borderlands into sites of bi-national collaboration. This study evaluates how a group of Polish university students living in the Pomerania euro-region view the new ease of cross-border mobility and the types of cross-border activities they engage in. If the experience of students in the border city of Szczecin is reflective of other European borderlands, than cross-border cooperation has not diminished the importance of the border as a mental marker of nation-state boundaries or the importance of national identity.

Keywords:

• European integration
• national identity
• euro-regions
• Polish–German border

Notes

1. The opening of a exhibition in Berlin in 2006 to showcase the hardships suffered by the Germans expelled from what is today Western Poland and other twentieth-century European conflicts, ignited tensions between Polish and German governments over the representations of the victims and aggressors of World War Two (BBC, 2006).

2. Although, it was beyond the scope of this study to interview Germans borderlanders about their cross-border activities, an understanding of the areas in which Germans cooperate with Polish borderlanders and the types of mental barriers they maintain, would contribute to a more holistic understand of this particular border.