Borderscapes - The linguistic de/construction of borders as an everyday practice

The overarching rationale of the project is to generate new understandings of borders as everyday practices that we engage with, as internalised conceptualisations of spaces of belonging (and of exclusion), and as mechanisms that crystallise othering processes. The different parts of the project draw on the border as both a theoretical approach and a methodology. This perspective informs the academic outputs, the pedagogical tools used with secondary schools and the project's dissemination through impactful activities.
In this framework the role of language is key and Linguistic Landscape Studies (LLS) enables the investigation of bordering practices as generated by language and other artefacts that construct and activate meaning-making processes (semiosis).
The methodologies for information gathering include digital images of signs and semiotic artefacts, interviews with originators and readers of signs, discussion groups about perceptions of, and participation in, the linguistic construction of the public space, and interactions with educational establishments - important agents of border setting/unsettling processes. A decolonial approach to data collection is inspired by the principle that methodologies cannot be disentangled from knowledge production and, therefore, knowledge needs to be co-produced with the relevant communities.
The project is underpinned by over 10 years of research into border areas in Italy and beyond. Building on the PI's own work uncovering processes of border identity construction, the monograph will highlight the relevance of the border beyond consolidated principles of territoriality.
This multidisciplinary study will draw on scholarship ranging from Border Studies (Scott, 2020) through to cognitive perspectives (Varzi, 2016) linking pervasive bordering practices that naturalise borders as an inherent quality of all that surrounds us. This phenomenon also affects our perception of time, and timelines assume a spatio-visual dimension in that they are drawn on the basis of bounded events and happenings. Spatial (territorial) and temporal (historical) legacies framed within a border perspective consolidate discourses of separation and dissimilarity. At a time when public debate is dominated by institutional discourses of exclusion affecting understandings of citizenship, national belonging and mobility, and when present conflicts are often a legacy of border-making practices rooted in ideologically weak persuasions, it is fundamental to adopt a critical perspective towards, and denaturalise, borders. Extending this debate through international collaborations, and incorporating it into educational curricula, broaden its reach and transformative potential.
The project will expose the profoundly social and cultural nature of bordering practices, and uncover historical processes consolidating views about the fixity of borders, disregarding the lived experience of the border and the inherent hybridity of cultural and social border contexts. Bordering ideologies are closely interconnected with views of identity as a given and permanent component of the self. Views of identity as fluid and multiple, however, pose that it is contingent on the specific actions through which it is performed, therefore facilitating change. Borders can thus be deployed as resources facilitating interactions; they can prompt social change and counter perceptions, and self-perceptions, of peripherality and marginalisation.
Through conference presentations, a monograph, a Special Issue, collaborations with international partners, public-facing events co-organised with local stakeholders and workshops with secondary school pupils and teachers, the research seeks to transform and expand multidisciplinary scholarship on the border by exposing the normative power of border making and proposing novel perspectives that promote a view of borders as fluid and changeable spaces of potentiality.