EUBORDERSCAPES in Calais last tuesday at the café polyglot

EUBORDERSCAPES, financed though the EU’s 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, is a new international research project that tracks and interprets conceptual change in the study of borders. The total budget of the project, which will run unto May 2016, is 6,9 Million Euros. It is thus a large-scale project and the consortium includes 22 partner institutions from 17 different states, including several non-EU countries. The EUBORDERSCAPES project will study conceptual change in relation to fundamental social, economic, cultural and geopolitical transformations that have taken place in the past decades. In addition, major paradigmatic shifts in scientific debate, and in the social sciences in particular, will also be considered. State borders are the frame of reference, rather than ethnographic/anthropological boundaries. However, this approach emphasises the social significance and subjectivities of state borders while critically interrogating “objective” categories of state territoriality and international relations. The research proposed here will, furthermore, not only be focused at the more general, at times highly abstract, level of conceptual change. This approach will also allow us to compare and contrast how different and often contested conceptualisations of state borders (in terms of their political, social, cultural and symbolic significance) resonate in concrete contexts at the level of everyday life.

That’s regarding that aspect of things that Georgie Wemyss and her colleagues came in the café polyglot last Tuesday. They came in Calais two years ago and they were interested in seeing how things are changing in Calais and especially how people experience this change. Of course most of the conversation went about the migrant issue that some people think is a big issue and sometimes a nuisance (bothering the business between France and UK , impoverishing the town because of the flee of tourists), whereas some others think it’s a chance and an opportunity to meet others cultures….
We hardly forgot to speak about our town which is definitely prettier  than two years ago . ....
Thank you to Guilaine for her help in the organizing of the meeting and all those who took part to it and conversation.
some links to know more about this research :

http://www.euborderscapes.eu/index.php?id=description

and there is even one little film to watch : Everyday borders vimeo : https://vimeo.com/126315982