Mapping the Idea of Europe : Cultural Production of Border Imaginaries through Heritage

Abstract

In contrast to recent reinforcements of Europe's internal and external borders due to the refugee situation on the Mediterranean and the Covid-19 outbreak, talk of European borders has in the past decades focused on the freedom of mobility guaranteed by the Schengen treaty. In many senses, free intra-European mobility has become a recited truth in the EU discourse: a phrase that hides under its repetition the gap between its implied content and empirical realities of many of those who are affected by European borders’ exclusive tendencies. Through the concept of borderscape, this article focuses on the role that cultural products – especially maps exhibited at heritage sites – have in reciting ideas of European borders. In this context, ideas of European heritage are approached as a bordering practice – as an active process of creating, sustaining and challenging cultural border imaginaries and the many in/exclusion they imply. Empirically the article is focused on the European Heritage Label (EHL), a recent heritage action of the European Union (EU). The article asks what is the relationship between national and European representations of space; how are Europe's external borders represented; and what kind of cultural power hierarchies can be identified behind these representations?