BORDERS OR BRIDGES? THE CURRENT CHALLENGES OF REVISITING THE CONCEPTS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY AND TRANSNATIONAL CULTURE

Borders or Bridges? The Current Challenges of Revisiting the Concepts of National Identity and Transnational Culture. The current paper aims to revisit the concept of national identity in relation to that of border and bordering as well as with the notions of otherness and othering. The current paper thus discusses the idea of borders and isolation as opposed to that of intercultural communication and cultural dialogue. Culture is discussed as an essential environment for identity development and in the same time as a transnational phenomenon. Another dimension of the debate proposed by the paper is related to the challenges of teaching the topics of national identity, diversity and bordering within the current educational environment, characterised by the increased internationalisation of higher education. This also takes into account the author’s experience of teaching these topics to international groups of students and is supported by a survey conducted with Political Science students on the issue of the perception of otherness and internationalisation.