Coping with marginality: to stay or to go

Abstract

By definition border areas are at the margins of the nation-states. In addition to the geographical marginality, people living there are often also marginalised politically, socially and economically. In some of the European border regions, 'unwanted' people, minorities (Sinti, Roma), the disabled, or expatriates have been settled there. In others, 'confident' citizens have been positioned and isolated along the borderline. We focus on the strategies people in the border areas deploy to cope with their marginality and the question of whether they should stay or leave. In contrast to much existing research about migrants, we investigate this issue from the viewpoint of those who have remained and how they legitimise their decision to stay. Their main arguments are: love of the country/home; moral obligation; lack of alternatives. We also explore their view on those who have left. Here, too, their reasoning can have different dimensions, such as: emigration to escape from the poverty of the periphery (economic marginalisation); refuge from political marginalisation; migration for educational or professional reasons. We differentiate between the views of different generations, genders, and the specific visions and contexts of the different communities east and west of the former Iron Curtain. Finally, we study the strategies people use when talking about their future.

National and transnational borderlanders’ attitudes towards the security fence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority

“…In interviews with Jewish residents, differences emerge in the views of veteran residents of the region and those who came later. This finding corresponds to the conclusion of Wastl-Walter et al (2003) that there is a difference in the level of commitment to residing in a borderland between veterans, who usually feel more committed than members of younger generations. The veterans are puzzled by the question itself and do not see any connection between establishing the security fence and feelings about their feelings of belonging there.…”

“…He related that despite strong ties with the city of Nazareth, where his wife's family lived and where his children went to school, he would not think of changing his place of residence. According to Wastl-Walter et al (2003), immigration for economic reasons constitutes one of the classic characteristics of borderlands, together with a feeling of lack of room to develop, mainly among the younger generation. At the same time, they contend that borderlanders ascribe great importance to their moral commitment to remain and live in the place.…”

“…Disputes over the location of fences and borders are common, and thus an important element in peaceful relations between neighbors is an acceptance of border locations and a shared understanding of the role of a given border or fence (Hasson 1996;Williams 2003;Wastl-Walter et al 2003;Van Houtum 2005).…”

Becoming Good Neighbours in Cyprus: Civic Action and the Relevance of the State

“…These were the borders where the three Western European states of Germany Austria and Italy -all part of Schengen terri tory and the Eurozone, and thus effectively 'debordered' -met with their Eastern European neighbours, all applicants for EU-membership but still waiting in line for accession. These borders often marked divisions between different ethnolinguistic national groups which had come about as a result of involuntary population movements in the aftermath of the Second World War, as was the case in Guben/Gubin and Görlitz/ Zgorzelec on the German-Polish border (Meinhof and Galasinski 2005;Galasinska and Galasinski 2003;Galasinska et al 2002) or Bärenstein/ Vejprty on the German-Czech border (Holly 2002;Holly et al 2003), or in the aftermath of the First and then again the Second World War, as was the case in Moschendorf/Pinkamindzent on the Austrian-Hungarian border ( Wastl-Walter et al 2003). Other borders also divide the same ethnolinguistic groups as is the case with Slovenians in Eisenkappel and Zelezna Kapla on the Austrian-Slovenian border and Gorizia/Nova Gorica on the Italian-Slovenian border.…”

Informational support for management decision-making in peripheries of region: problems and development prospects

“…According to D. Wastl-Walter, M. Váradi and F. Veider [1], peripheral and border areas are the same. M. Tykkyläinen gives the following definition: "the frontier area of socio-economic activity, either booming or regressing, is sparsely populated in most cases" [2].…”