[FR] Timişoara, a construction site for identity on the edge of Europe

‘We Romanians have always dreamed of “joining Europe”. We have always looked to the West, from which we have remained separated by an inexorable divide for subjective but also, and above all, objective reasons – the Turks, the Russians, communism.’ [Ana Blandiana, interview with Notre Europe, May 2008].

Twenty years after the revolution that brought an end to Ceauşescu’s regime, are these words by the poet Ana Blandiana becoming obsolete? Did their country’s accession to the European Union on 1 January 2007 enable Romanians to realise their age-old dream of integration into the West? How are they experiencing their new status? Have they adjusted the map of familiar places they learned from school textbooks during the communist era to fit the dimensions of the new Europe? Through a journey to western Romania, in the Timişoara region, this case study, carried out as part of the ‘Factories of Europe’ project, examines the identity upheavals caused by Romania’s integration into the post-Cold War European order.