Melting Borders: An Ethnography of the Movement of Peoples, Goods, and Symbols in Border-areas between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia.

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The project investigates the porous nature of political and economic boundaries between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. Although the two countries have been engaged in a political dispute over Macedonia's name, there have been massive economic exchanges and the border areas have experienced unprecedented movements of goods and people. Instead of viewing the dispute between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece as an insurmountable problem, as a political or moral challenge to the international community, our research aims to provide a detailed ethnographic account of the specific places and social realities within and beyond the border areas of the two countries. Our primary research objective is to offer a new approach to understanding how borders, grounded in the neoliberal context and currently experiencing the world-wide economic recession, affect different actors, take on, lose or shift people's senses of national distinction, social difference, historical legitimacy and material inequalities. Our theoretical objective is to offer a new approach to understanding the relationship between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia by focusing on relationships across the border rather than on the political dispute. Instead of taking the border between these two countries for granted and treating it as a barrier to interaction, this project will focus on the economic, social, moral and material aspects of border-crossing, and will thus offer a deeper understanding on how the logic of neoliberal sovereignty affects nation-state loyalties and people's senses of belonging and national sentiment in times of severe financial crisis on the border area between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece.