Narrating Europe from the Borders: A Media Analysis of European Integration

This is the introduction to a special section “Narrating Europe from the Borders” in which we examine how European integration is discursively constructed in regional media located in internal EU borderlands. Drawing on research from the Horizon Europe project B-SHAPES, it compares four regions—the Franco-German Upper Rhine, the German-Polish-Czech triangle, the Danish-Swedish Øresund region, and the Slovak-Hungarian borderlands—through media analysis covering 2019–2022. The special section argues that borders are not merely territorial facts but also narrative and symbolic constructions, continuously produced through public discourse. By focusing on local and regional media rather than elite or national arenas, it highlights how Europe is narrated “from below” through everyday experiences of mobility, crisis, cooperation, and disruption. Particular attention is paid to the tension between bordering and debordering during the COVID-19 pandemic. The section shows that regional media reveal both common patterns and region-specific variations in how the EU, European integration, and Euroscepticism are framed at the Union’s internal frontiers.