Eeva-Kaisa Prokkola

Cross‐border Regionalization and Tourism Development at the Swedish‐Finnish Border: “Destination Arctic Circle”

Globalization, and especially the making of a “Europe of regions” has whittled away many restrictions that international borders have previously placed on mobility. The European Unions internal borders have been opened up both physically and symbolically, and cross‐border regions have become places for communication and interaction. This new regionalization process has opened up alternative possibilities and new challenges for tourism development, especially in the northern peripheries of Europe, which often consist of national borderlands. This paper discusses the changes that cross‐border regionalization, and especially the opportunity to link into funding for transnational co‐operation projects, has introduced into tourism development strategies in the Middle Tornio Valley cross‐border region. The analysis of this empirical case study of the construction of a cross‐border tourist destination emphasizes the role of the tourism industry in furthering regional identities and “borderless” regional images. Hence, in the context of the Finnish‐Swedish border, it can be noted that the landscape of state control is gradually becoming a landscape of tourism, even though the border still mostly defines the course of social, political and economic activities.

Territorial Dynamics, Cross-border Work and Everyday Life in the Finnish–Swedish Border Area

Borders have become increasingly complex and multifaceted in the contemporary world. In spite of accelerating globalisation, flows of refugees, efforts at lowering the internal borders within the EU and general statements on the disappearance of borders, the state-centric system of territories and their borders still channels, through inclusion and exclusion, the ways in which most human beings recognise national practices and in which their daily lives are patterned at both the individual and the institutional levels. This paper aims at contributing to the on-going debates on European regional dynamics and the shaping of territories and will look critically at the current roles of borders as objects of research. It analyses the history of the Finnish–Swedish border and the co-operation taking place there at present as a contextual example in order to look at whether national practices and meanings still structure the way in which this border is shaped in its new EU context. It will first scrutinise the historical roles of this border, which has been one of the EU internal borders since 1995, and will then look at how local people have led their daily lives in this context. The empirical observations show that, in spite of increasing interaction and co-operation, this national border still structures a certain regionalisation of everyday life and identities and provides a socio-spatial framework for organising and performing daily routines in a national context.

Unfixing borderland identity: Border performances and narratives in the construction of self

Abstract The relationship between state borders and identity has been a popular subject among border scholars. Despite this fact there is still relatively little conceptual and methodological discussion concerning borderland identities. This paper focuses firstly on the recent discussion of borders and identity, and secondly, it examines how narrative approach can contribute to our understanding of borderland identities. This is done by applying the narrative method to the analysis of individual border stories in the context of the Finnish‐Swedish border. Narrative method provides an in‐depth examination of the multidimensionality and multivoiceness in the construction of self. It is suggested that border scholars should be more critical when conceptualizing and classifying border identities in their empirical research. Identity can be linked with peoples ethnic and linguistic ties but it often transforms through various border crossing practices and life projects. Borders materialize differently for different people, in different contexts and scales.

Borders in tourism: the transformation of the swedish-finnish border landscape.

Permeability in the European internal borders has increased, challenging state-centric tourism development in the border regions. The aim of this article is to examine the development of the Finnish–Swedish border, which has been one of the European Unions internal borders since 1995, as a tourist attraction. An examination of the path of tourism development in this border region shows that the differentiative meaning of the border that has been characteristic for state-centric tourism development has diminished and some of the excitement of crossing the old east–west border has vanished. At present the significance of the border for local tourism development can be seen in the new cross-border enterprise and commercialisation of tourist attractions. Such development can have a wide-ranging influence for the reorganisation of border landscape and dissolution of mental boundaries in the region. This study contributes to an understanding of the transition in the European Unions internal border regions from the perspective of tourism.

Border Narratives at Work: Theatrical Smuggling and the Politics of Commemoration

This paper discusses how cultural and artistic work constitutes a powerful means for mediating the collective memory of state borders. The empirical case study concerns the commercialisation of a borderland culture in the form of a ‘Smuggling Opera’ in a cross-border project on the Finnish-Swedish border region where border crossing has been unrestricted for decades. This theatrical performance constructs a particular local narrative which contests the authorised representation of borders in the discourse of the nation-state. The narrative analysis method is applied to this popularised border narrative and its interpretation among local participants, leading to the conclusion that the understanding of state borders differs between authorised border narratives and the stories of borderland people for whom it represents part of the everyday surroundings, although both serve to fix the meaning and moral justification of the border or argument for its rejection. The narratives of people living in the ‘borderless’ Finnish-Swedish border region show the continuing significance of the border in peoples lives as both a barrier and a place of contact.

Technologies of Border Management: Performances and Calculation of Finnish/Schengen Border Security

This paper focuses on the Finnish Border Guard, a professional law enforcement authority responsible for the control and surveillance of the Finnish and Schengen borders, and its performances of border security. Performativity approach means that the analysis of the material, consisting of the bulletins and reports that have been published by the Border Guard service, is not merely focused on the representation of borders but the bulletins themselves are understood as performances of border security. The paper argues that new technological innovations, together with new legislation and institutional procedures, now steering the governance of the Finnish/Schengen border, are bound up with a new culture of border management in which border security is not (just) conceptualised in terms of territorial sovereignty but in terms of international cooperation, prevention and economic profitability.

Regionalization, Tourism Development and Partnership: The European Union's North Calotte Sub-programme of INTERREG III A North

Abstract This paper examines the implementation and governance of cross-border initiatives in the North Calotte sub-programme of the INTERREG III A North (2000–6), covering Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia, from the perspective of tourism. Tourism development has played a significant role in this European Union programme and has been contributing to both functional and imaginary regionalization of the North Calotte region. The INTERREG documents emphasize partnership between various governmental and non-governmental organizations; in the North Calotte sub-programme cooperation is predominantly between governmental organizations at the same level. The creation of networks amongst tourism companies is an important objective, but in reality private enterprises rarely have responsible roles in the projects. As a result, cross-border cooperation presumably remains more superficial than cooperation and partnership within a country.

Performance of regional identity in the implementation of European cross-border initiatives

The European Union’s cross-border cooperation policy is regarded as a key instrument through which to promote regional cohesion, competitiveness and identity. This paper studies performances of regional identity within the framework of the EU’s INTERREG North cooperation, and especially in the Finnish/Swedish border area. The performativity approach shifts the focus from the question of whether regional identities are fixed or hybrid, and thick or thin, toward the question of how regional identities are manifested in border regions. The point of departure in the study, based on policy documents, fieldwork and interviews with local actors involved in the implementation of the INTERREG initiatives, is that spatial identity is not a feature that regions have but something that is actively performed. Performances of regional identity in this northern border region do not create continuous and parallel sets of practices. Instead, different kinds of directions and disjunctures emerge in and between different interest groups for which local, national and transnational all serve as important scales of coming-togetherness and differentiation.

Following the plot of Bengt Pohjanen's Meänmaa: narrativization as a process of creating regional identity

This paper discusses the artistic and cultural work of one minority author and regional activist, Bengt Pohjanen, and how it constitutes a means for mediating regional identity narratives, constructing Meänmaa, the region straddling the border between Sweden and Finland in the Tornio River Valley. We will approach narrativization as a creative social action, focusing on the performative, social and political aspects of regional stories, and by this means impugning the division between territorial, bounded, and networked, unbounded, conceptualizations of regions. We will follow the narrative plot of Bengt Pohjanens Meänmaa, pointing out how an artistic and cultural region becomes part of our social reality and how regional consciousness and identity become established and constantly renegotiated within and across national borders.

Border guarding and the politics of the body: an examination of the Finnish Border Guard service

In previous studies, the question of the state control over the bodies of people at border-crossing points has been of great interest, while less attention has been given to the bodies that carry out border surveillance and control. This article introduces a new perspective on the study of the state and gender by examining the imaginations and rationalities of state border guarding and the politics of the body in the Finnish Border Guard (FBG) service. By taking the body politics and gendered relations of border guarding as an analytical starting point, this study takes a step forward toward ‘feminizing’ the study of borders and border securitization. The article scrutinizes the depictions, articulations, and conceptualizations of the work competence in border guarding and the performances of female border guards in the official media of the FBG organization, as well as discusses how the interrelations of border guarding and body politics become structured around questions concerning masculine romantics, the (in)capacities of female officers and the embodied nature of border monitoring. The study shows the pervasive, and also controversial, nature of gendered imaginations and rationalities in the domain of border guarding in contemporary societies.