ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book takes much longer to write than was originally envisaged and it has not been an easy project, changing considerably in format and contents since its first design. It turns into a single author project with a stronger political-economic, rather than cultural-historical perspective, as had initially been envisaged. The book looks at the localised effect of a newly established European Union (EU) outer border. It introduces the concept of a duality of borders as demarcation lines of territories, thus actively shaping spaces, while, at the same time, also being the product of created spatialities, as they result from implicit separations between relational spaces. The book examines the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) as an illustration of multi-level and 'composite' borderness, as it illustrates the intersection and overlaying of real and imagined borders and associated 'real' territories, and imagined or portrayed 'virtual' spaces.
