Граници, мобилност и реконструиране на територии
Borders, Mobility, and Reconstruction of Territories

Summary/Abstract: This article develops the idea of the dynamic relations between borders and territories in the context of the changes impacting on Bulgarian society after Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union. The analysis concerns the development of a „border community“ as part of hierarchically constructed spaces shared by states. The focus is on the creation of ties between the territory of social action and the territory of the experienced - in anthropological terms. In referring to the example of Ivaylovgrad, the article discusses the meaning of Bulgarian membership in the EU as experienced and perceived at regional and local level, and how people „feel Europe“ in connection with the changing boundaries and the reconstruction of territories. After checkpoints were opened on the Bulgarian-Greek border in the last decade, the personal experiences from the wars, from the refugee waves and migrations that affected several generations in the past, are used as the basis for rebuilding past ties and interaction. The process of reconstruction of the district of Thrace as an integral whole spanning both sides of the border creates new relations with the national territory but also with the political space of the European Union. At this level, Thrace, understood as a set of significant sites and landscapes, functions as a symbol representing a larger territory with which people identify – it is part of the national state, a perception of the fatherland, yet different from a fatherland as it lies outside the country’s political boundaries; it is part of Europe, in the context of the rethinking of boundaries and historical divisions.

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