Cross-Border Cooperation and Everyday Practices in Italian Borderscapes

Since the beginning of the 21st century, a series of interconnected crises have affected borders and borderscapes, reshaping them into contested and volatile areas where economic instability, climate change, and health crises intersect with political struggles over sovereignty and mobility. The aim of this article is to explore the trans-scalar entanglement between top-down institutional responses and discourses related to such crises (in particular state-led initiatives), and the local everydayness (perceptions, spaces, and practices) of border communities. The contribution discusses three multi-scalar case studies of EU territories across Italian land boundaries: Italy− Austria, Italy−France, and Italy−Slovenia. Those areas have suffered, from structural changes in institutional and political landscapes; socio-demographic and economic distress; ecological and climate change, and the growing diffusion of border securitization. Simultaneously, they are beneciaries of EU programmes and initiatives of cross-border cooperation on different scales. The article is grounded on consolidated and ongoing border debates and theories on the link between borderscapes, (poly)crisis, and cross-border cooperation, and builds on qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted at regional and local scale in the rst half of 2024. By employing an interdisciplinary approach, the article explores the simultaneous impacts of different crises and changes on border communities and cross-border cooperation, relating everyday practices and imaginaries with the wider political and cultural framework and shedding light on the coexistence of different understandings of borders within and across different scales.