Repositioning national borders: measuring the national border effects through the lens of cross-border cultural network

Recently, ‘Cross-Border Regions’ have been extensively analysed from various geographical, political, and economic perspectives, as well as from different theoretical and analytical starting points. In the EU, a significant focus has been on de-bordering, territorial integration, and cohesion policies. However, the negative influence of national borders on cross-border networks is only briefly analysed. This paper focuses on the reduction of the thickness of the cross-border cultural network that national borders may produce. It answers the question of how the negative effects of the national border can be captured and measured through the lens of cultural networks and in which cultural proximity contexts they can differ. Three EU cross-border regions were analysed: the Basque, Flemish, and Upper Rhine regions. The paper measures cultural networks using a new, innovative analytical tool, the ‘Interlocking Network Model’ and its extended version. Two complementary network analyses, from different lenses, were implemented to measure the ‘National Border Effect’ and its negative influence on national sides and cross-border interrelations, using outreach capacity, a mathematical rule of thumb, and repositioning the national border. This paper deconstructed the relationships between national borders, cultural networks, and cultural proximity through the lens of language and ethnicity.