Melting Borders

This is a project to investigate the porous nature of political and economic boundaries between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. Although Macedonia and Greece have been engaged in a political dispute over Macedonia's name since the independence of the Republic of Macedonia in 1991, there have been massive economic exchanges between the two countries. Greece is the largest investor in Macedonia's most important economic sectors, while the border areas have experienced unprecedented movements of goods and people. Although we plan to build on earlier analyses of the naming dispute and of each country's quest for historical legitimacy/justice in claiming the name of Macedonia, our inquiry will be informed by literature on neoliberalism and the changing nature of nation-states. We will therefore focus on the economic interests that bypass national boundaries and affect the actual and symbolic construction of borders. Our primary research objective will be to offer a new approach to understanding how borders, grounded in the neoliberal context and currently experiencing the world-wide economic recession, affect different actors, take on, lose or shift people s senses of national distinction, social difference, historical legitimacy and material inequalities.