Drawing on observations from the Polish-German borderland, critically Essay

Drawing on observations from the Polish-German borderland, critically examine the effects which Europeanisation - or EU-isation - Essay Example Once this has been done, the impacts that Europeanisation has had upon the Polish-German borderland will then be highlighted and both the advantages and disadvantages of closed borders will be discussed. Applicable text books, journal articles and online databases will be accessed by conducting both a library and online search. Once the evaluation has been made, an appropriate conclusion will then be drawn, demonstrating that Europeanisation does significantly affect the borderness nature of Eastern Europe. Main Body Europeanisation is a process of change whereby a non-European subject adopts various European features. This has been defined as â€Å"a process involving; construction, diffusion and institutionalisation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms and shared beliefs† (Cini, 2007: 407). The European features are initially defined and consolidated within the policy process of the EU and subsequently incorporated into domestic structures. This effecti vely creates a borderless world which was identified by Ohmae (1990: 172) when he stated that; â€Å"national borders have effectively disappeared and, along with them, the economic logic that made them useful lines of demarcation in the first place.† Despite this contention, borders are still greatly important in helping to develop regions that are divided by state boundaries and also for analysing modern geography relating to politics and economics (Nelles and Walther, 2011: 6). They also form part of an ideology and help to demonstrate the limits associated with territorial ownership and control (Herrschel, 2011: 173). They have a significance beyond economics, since borders in all areas of life affect the ways that people perceive themselves and their role in the world: â€Å"Borders are integral to human behaviour – they are a product of the need for order, control and protection in human life and they reflect our contending desires for sameness and difference, f or a marker between ‘us’ and ‘them’.† (O’Dowd, 2002: 14-15). Borders are therefore vital in helping to distinguish different identifies, and yet since the 1989 Revolutions; borders within the EU have undergone some important transformations. Both the re-bordering and de-bordering of the EU has taken place and these processes vastly complicate the ways that people view their own local, regional and national identities. Whilst this proliferation of identities may seem contradictory, greater flexibility now exists for people to step outside both the mental and physical limitations of previous decades. As the example of the Russian-Finnish border has shown, some dimensions of border transformation are relatively easy to implement, while others remain relatively impervious to new rulings, even at the national and international level. This is because â€Å"boundaries are understood as institutions and symbols that are produced and reproduced in soci al practices and discourses† (Paasi, 1999:669). It is this level of symbolic meanings, passed on from person to person through social interaction that is so vital for the successful advance of Europeanisation. Without this level of social engagement to aid with transformation of the deeper significance attached to the border location, any amount of administrative