The dynamics of remembering and forgetting offer important insights into multiscalar conflicts within memory processes of Europeanization, which address local, regional, and national remembrance - particularly with regard to the memory of a divided Europe and its socialist past. The German - Polish border region is a revealing case in this respect: while it presents itself as a European region with a shared memory, it continues to be shaped by profound cultural and economic asymmetries and by the legacies of violent twentieth-century transformations. Moreover, memories of (post-)socialism in both the GDR and Poland continue to be marginal within broader European narratives. Adopting a socio-spatial perspective, this paper examines how memories of socialism materialize through spatial knowledge at the Polish–German border and how these memories are valued. The research draws on a multimodal data set constituted of go-along and narrative interviews, mappings, and document analysis of local memory projects, analyzed through a multimodal discourse approach. Focusing on the spatial embeddedness of local (post-)socialist histories, the paper explores how valuations of memory intersect with practices of remembering the border. Drawing on theories from the sociology of space, memory studies, and nationalism studies, the paper investigates which narratives of socialist pasts are preserved and communicated through spatial knowledge and how they are positioned within a European memory framework. By foregrounding space as a constitutive dimension of border memory, the paper contributes a critical perspective on processes of group formation in border regions, highlighting the role of language, access, and spatial knowledge. It argues that spatiality is central both to the resilience of borders and to the constitution of borderland subjects.

The Czech-Polish-German borderlands are a European region shaped by border shifts and population exchanges in the aftermath of World War Two, and the legacies of these changes are visible in the region, called The Borderlands, in Czech, even today. The presentation is a case study derived from a larger research project that examines how current Czech inhabitants deal with the formerly German materiality in regions that are considered peripheral and disadvantaged in the Czech imagination. In this region, which was heavily industrialised in the late 19th century and served as an industrial hub of Czechoslovakia before its collapse, it is the industrial heritage (dominated by German-speaking inhabitants in the past) that plays a central role in the memory cultures of current local communities. The presentation provides an overview of several case studies of former industrial enterprises and their roles in shaping the past and future of surrounding cities. While some factories have been turned into museums, funded by national and supranational sources to celebrate the region's industrial traditions and create a vision of a multicultural past, many more are vehicles for industrial, often anti-liberal, nostalgia. This paper adds a novel theoretical framework to the established field of post-industrial nostalgia in post-socialist Central Europe. Hauntology is a research framework that enables us to focus on how the past returns in various ways and shapes the imagination of the future. Framing the data collected during the ethnographic research in the region within theories of hauntology enables a focus on the role industrial heritage plays in identity-building in a post-displacement region and on how imaginaries of the past are used in both critical and conformist interpretations of the region's current position as a production semi-periphery of the EU.

Hardly any other policy area within the EU reflects the unravelling of established certainties as clearly as border policy, particularly at the Union's eastern fringes. Since 2015, the EU and its Member States have struggled to agree on uniform standards amidst escalating threats and geopolitical confrontations. This paper examines the handling of borders as a central area of tension between the EU’s drive for standardisation and the Member States’ insistence on sovereignty. Focusing on Poland as a crucial case study, the research analyses the implementation of border management standards at the sensitive external borders with Belarus, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation (Kaliningrad). These borders have become focal points of ""systemic uncertainty,"" where migration processes, hybrid threats, and the realities of war necessitate rapid state responses. Utilising a multi-level governance framework, the paper investigates how national preferences and political debates in Poland shape (non-)compliance with EU standards. It argues that the divergent national approaches to these high-stakes border zones increase pressure on the EU’s regional order and compromise its ability to act as a cohesive regional actor. By examining regional resilience strategies and their impact on state institutions—such as border protection agencies—this contribution reveals how the management of Poland’s outer frontiers is reshaping the political and security architecture of the entire European project.