Cultural Bordering Beyond the State: European Cultural Initiatives and Cross-Border Cooperation

How do European cultural initiatives reshape borders and contribute to European integration? This article examines three instruments—the European Heritage Label, the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, and the European Capitals of Culture—through a triadic framework of symbolic contextualization, institutionalization, and narrativization. Drawing on comparative policy analysis and document-based meta-synthesis, it conceptualizes these initiatives as complementary mechanisms of soft de-bordering embedded in cross-border governance. Symbolic contextualization reframes borders as historically transcended; institutionalization organizes cooperation across them through governance practices; and narrativization re-signifies borders as spaces of European belonging. Together, these processes constitute a form of cultural bordering, through which borders are not removed but reworked discursively and institutionally. The article contributes to critical border studies by demonstrating how cultural governance reshapes the meaning and function of borders while leaving their material configurations intact.