Bordering and Borderwork: Protecting the Danish Border and National Identity

Abstract

The establishment of a Euroregion across the national border between Denmark and Germany at the end of the 1990s went unnoticed by the German public but mobilized widespread popular resistance on the Danish side led by Sønderjyllandskomiteen [the Committee for Southern Jutland]. The committee organized resistance towards European integration at the local level. Its discourse of protest was built around the key points that borders are inevitable in protecting national sovereignty, that in general European integration threatened the nation and the national identity and, specifically, that their German neighbor was regarded with circumspection because of the country’s historical legacy and traumatic past. The lessons learned from this case contribute to providing the groundwork for a more substantive critical approach to political currents, especially the populist political discourse that has predominated in European border debate in recent decades.