ABSTRACT
The paper sets out to investigate the continuities and shifts in the concept of space and border in post-Cold War Bulgaria. It analyses how structural changes in the system of international relations after 1991 have impacted the place and the representation of Bulgaria on the mental political map of Europe and the world. In its focus is the process of politically constructing and symbolically representing Bulgaria’s territory as part of a new world geopolitical vision. It analyses the competing discourses at the intersection of ‘high’ and ‘low’ geopolitics surrounding this process, and the ways the new geopolitical identity of Bulgaria impacted policymaking, foreign policy strategies, and the country’s attitude to major regional and geopolitical processes. The chapter unravels the semantics of borders through an analysis of the EU discourse, the Bulgarian official political language, and the media debates related to specific events that had rendered ‘peaks’ in discourses on borders and border making processes.
