Borders in Post-Socialist Europe: Territory, Scale, Society

The issues of 'borders' have attracted considerable attention in the public and academic debate, in light of the impact of globalisation and, in Europe, of the collapse of the communist states. This debate has stretched beyond the strictly formal, statistic approach to 'borders', and includes concern with more invisible, imagined borders as expressions of social and societal values, historic legacies, practices and separateness. Both types of borders occur at different spatial scales, from international to sub-national to sub-local. European integration and expansion show how various spatial scales come together in the changing geographies of inclusion and exclusion. This has become particularly pronounced in the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Urban-rural contrasts in economic development and westernisation, intra-urban division, generational differences between pre- and post-1990, all contribute to the deconstruction and reconstruction of divisions and mental borders.Using empirical case studies from post-socialist European countries, this book combines the main strands of the 'borders' debates in terms of their meanings at these different scales, and concerning their varying qualities and nature. By considering both fixed 'conventional' borders and imagined, cultural ones, and then investigating these at different spatial scales, the book considers whether there are links between scale and perceived immediacy and closeness, and thus the impact of borders on people's perception and action.