To build strong relationships with one’s neighbors has been widely perceived as a crucial motif of the post-1945 European development as a way of preventing conflict. One such example of cross-border collaboration (CBC) has been between civil society organizations (CSOs) between Czechia and Germany – countries whose borderlands have been economically and socially weakened as a result of the Nazi occupation of the Czech lands and the post-war forced displacement of German-speakers from Czechoslovakia.
While research on European CBC is extensive, limited attention has been paid to the role of civil society organizations in cross-border cooperation despite the fact their facilitation of people-to-people interactions are been found to be the best way to generate trust and normalize neighborly relations between countries burdened by a troublesome past.
To adress this gap, Karel B. Müller, Jana Urbanovská and Zuzana Lizcová conducted semi-structured interviews with representatives of CSOs, specifying how “border effects” are mediated through the cross-border valuation and convertibility of different forms of capital, and why many people-to-people initiatives remain institutionally fragile despite decades of European integration. While economic and social capitals are easily transferable across borders, cultural and symbolic capitals are less transferable across borders and remain strongly anchored in national fields. The analysis also shows that project-based, short-term funding causes organizational fragility and is among the main hindrances to institutionalization of CBC activities. It also reveals a discernible asymmetry between Czech CSOs on the one side and German on the other, where CSOs enjoy more supportive economic and symbolic capitals.