Our team leaders Alice Buoli, Raffella Coletti, and Ingrid Kofler have been invited to participate in the workshop “European inequalities across borders: dividing and integrating processes.” The event is part of the research project Excelleenzlabor Europa 2025 and it is coordinated by Dr. Ulla Connor and Prof. Dr. Carola Fricke (Universität des Saarlandes, CEUS—Cluster for European Studies, Saarbrücken), in collaboration with Villa Vigoni.

The workshop aims to examine persistent inequalities in Europe’s internal border regions, with the goal of understanding the complex interdependencies and interconnections among coexisting forms of inequality, which both shape and result from cross-border integration processes.

Contributions explored the paradox of simultaneous integration and division, investigating the socio-economic, spatial, and political dynamics that drive these processes. Multiple forms of cross-border inequality have beeen analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective, including sociological, legal, historical, and related approaches.

The workshop addressed key questions such as: How have inequalities evolved across borders? Which social, spatial, economic, political, and historical processes contribute to division or integration in cross-border contexts? And how can situated and comparative approaches enhance our understanding of cross-border inequalities from a European perspective?