Coopération transfrontalière et fabrique identitaire : le cas catalan

The interest of a survey about European surrounding spaces follows from the transformations affecting the borders since the 1980's : even if the transnational movements of different natures seem to take no heed of them, even if there's a tendency to turn their physical marks invisible, and even if the political promotion of cooperation at a community level tend to overcome them. Among the border belts, those having a common history afford a real heuristic interest ; the analysis of the economical, political and institutional relation development as well as social relations maintained by border belts couples with an interrogation about the continuity of identity links over the border. Since the beginning of the 2000's, in the Pyrénées-Orientales departement, the appeal for Catalogne has been resulting by two concomitant phenomenoms : whereas cooperation plans have increased and diversified,political and social protagonists have undertaken to revive the feeling of belonging to the local place. The survey tends to show that the interaction intensification hasn't resulted in an integrated cross-border space advent and that identity actions don't seem to change the territorial allegiance channel. Everything is going as if, counter to the preconceived idea of a no border Europe, the territorial limits were still playing an important part in the representation structures and management tendency. Keywords : Transborder