Le funzioni narrative dei confini nelle politiche di cooperazione transfrontaliera in Europa

Transborder cooperation has acquired an increasing relevance in Europe in the last fifty years, while it has not been equally effective in its implementation. In order to understand the diffusion of these practices, in this article, we propose an analysis of the recurrent narratives that characterize the evolution of transborder cooperation, through a critical reading of texts produced within the Council of Europe and the European Union. We will investigate, moreover, the relation between transborder cooperation, new regionalism and multi-level governance. This perspective allows us to evaluate, more generally, the relevance of the discourse on borders within the territorialisation process of the European Union, in its material and symbolic dimension, and to stress some of its implications and of its paradoxes.