Internationalisation and Mental Borders

Abstract

Borders are barriers and barriers are to be removed. That was the basic idea of the European Commission in 1988 when publishing the White Paper, EC, 1985. The different juridical, ®scal, social, technical and economic frameworks of the European countries in the Community were believed to be a severe limitation on the growth of Europe's competitiveness. Hence, a paradoxical measure had to be taken: the institutionalisation of a free market in the European Community. The speeding of the opening up of the borders within the European market has spawned a vast amount of literature on the economic geographical consequences of the uni®cation of the various countries. Surprisingly little, however, has been written from the perspective of human agents. The focus of economic geography tends to be on the spatial impact of the opening up of borders, and the development or economic pace and potential gains of European integration for cities and regions. How individuals perceive the opening up of borders has not received a great deal of attention in economic geographical literature. Neither have the mechanisms ± by which their actual behaviour is geared with respect to matters of the economic integration process ± been studied in depth. Yet, the micro-level of the integration process might render us important insights, which could enrich meso and macro theory development and policy. This paper makes a plea for the inclusion of the psychology of the behaviour of human agents in the study of economic geographical border issues.