Reinventing European identity: globalization, glocalization and the new politics of borderlands

This research proposal intends to analyze the process of reconstructing the European identity through the intervention of a set of key factors such as the globalization process and its subsidiary effect, the glocalization response. The new politics of borderlands is strongly marked by the presence of a dual phenomenon. The reconfiguration of the European cartography was conditioned by the presence of multiple identities and alternative societal models. In this context, the study is build around two major hypotheses. The first one sustains the fact that European identity supported an essential influence under the process of East European integration, while the second work hypothesis claims that East European members are confronting with some unfinished political processes, which transformed them in periphery actors. The study uses the term of border in a metaphorical sense and remains essentially connected with the dimension of a conceptual reconstruction. Assuming the existence of some symbolic limitations inside the European identity is an intermediary step in explaining the presence of multiple shades and frames inside a complex construction, which generates some unexpected contemporary dilemmas.