Italian Borderscapes after 2020: Mapping, Unfolding, and Re-Framing Border Territories in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

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Borderlands as Resilient Laboratories Amidst a Global Polycrisis

Over the past decade, a series of interconnected socio-economic, political, humanitarian, ecological, and health-related crises – recently referred to as a ‘polycrisis’ – have profoundly affected European territories. These crises have been particularly evident in border areas, not only because such regions are often peripheral to national economic and political centers, but also due to the specific challenges arising from differences in national regulations and interdependencies among border communities. Concurrently, border regions have demonstrated their capacity to respond to these crises collectively and individually, leveraging the unique characteristics of their territories.

Against this backdrop, this project aims to explore the territorial impacts of the ongoing chain of crises and the potential resilient responses, with a focus on the Italian context as a significant case study.

The project maps the entanglement between old and novel forms of re-bordering, de-bordering, and cross-bordering in three Italian borderscapes after 2020

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New Publication

The paper “Power Relations and Border Regions in Italy. The case of Innichen/San Candido (IT) and Sillian (AT)” by Ingrid Kofler and Alessandra Volgger has been published in Power in Transformation. Creative Practices as Catalysts of Change, edited by Mustapha El Moussaoui, Kris Krois and Teresa Palmieri (Oekom Science, 2025).

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