Schengen Europe in State-national Museums: Immobile Europeans, Immobilized “Others” and the Meaning of Borders

Museums are central places for participating in the territorial building of the nation-state. They can also play a key role in proposing a spatial structure of the European Union. Certain museums sponsored by member states of the EU have organized exhibitions that refer to the Schengen Treaty and its geographical implications in Europe. However, are these exhibitions promoting a territoriality based on the cross-border mobility of EU citizens favored by this Treaty? Based on a comparative analysis, the research shows that the representation of European integration in these museums can be above all the intensification of state-managed territoriality, meaning the expression of a public power that filters access in space through border controls. This representation can be explained by the specific context within which curators define their contents.