The following essay examines the concept and practice of debordering as an element of EU integration with the aid of ethnographic research on local actors’ experiences with EU cross-border programs in the Slovenian-Hungarian border region. The analysis is based on defining and distinguishing among the historical, normative, and analytical dimensions of debordering, focusing on critical analyses of its uses as an analytical concept. The author proposes a more grounded approach to debordering by contextualizing interlocutors’ narrated border experiences in a broader analytical and interpretative framework.
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