Original scientific paper
NEW CONFIGURATION OF BORDERS – NEW DIVISION OF EUROPE? MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF SLOVENIA'S ACCESSION TO THE SCHENGEN REGIME
Karmen ERJAVEC
; Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana
Melita POLER KOVAČIČ
; Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana
Abstract
The article's goal is to present media representation of the
new regime of the Slovenian borders, introduced in
December 2007. Critical discourse analysis of news items,
published by all major Slovenian media between the
beginning of December 2007 and the end of January 2008,
reveals that there was no single homogeneous representation
of the border included by all the media. Instead, there are
four discourses: discourse of borderlessness, discourse of the
Iron Curtain, discourse of the Schengen fortress, and
discourse of everyday life problems. All discourses are
fragmented, neglecting political and social contexts, but only
the last one, which appeared in the regional media only,
critically represented the new regime on the Schengen border.
The elite Slovenian media also have thoroughly changed the
dominant representation of the Slovenian borders. What used
to be "an Iron Curtain" was reconfigured into "borderlessness",
and what used to be "borderlessness" was reconfigured into
"a fortress" and "a problematic border". They also reproduced
a clear division, with Europe/Europeans and
Slovenia/Slovenians on one side and the region and people
behind the southern Schengen border on the other.
Keywords
border; media representation; European Union; Schengen regime; Slovenia
Hrčak ID:
45777
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2009.
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