ABSTRACT
In the twentieth century Europe was a factory of state borders as its great multinational empires and many of its multinational states fragmented, often violently. The project of European integration may be seen partly as a response to this fragmentation and as an attempt to develop a more negotiated and consensual approach to border change in its geographical, functional and symbolic forms. The central argument of this chapter is that the study of what is happening to, and at, state borders is a sine qua non for an adequate understanding of the EU as an emergent transnational polity.1
