Everyday Territorial Identities in Romania and the Republic of Moldova: A Case Study on the Impacts of Territorial Representations from Above

Abstract

The Romanian-Moldovan state border is today embedded in numerous conflicting territorial representations at the regional, national, and international scales. These representations from above depict the Romanian-Moldovan state border as the external border of the European Union, the physical border between the Romanian and Moldovan nations, or the western border of the historical region of Bessarabia. Yet, several representations bridge the current state border by referring to the historical Moldavian Principality or Greater Romania. This chapter asks how these conflicting territorial representations shape people’s everyday self-representations. Based on everyday narratives gathered during field research in Romania and the Republic of Moldova, the chapter shows that conflicting territorial representations from above can result in numerous overlapping imagined communities in everyday life. In the case of Romania and the Republic of Moldova, several of these imagined communities are socially constructed by following patterns of representation on higher scales, such as Nesting Orientalism. However, due to every person’s autonomy in creating them, they also entail imagined communities that are absent in representations from above. Hence, the paper suggests that research may yield alternative in-depth insights into territorial identities by focusing on the analysis of everyday narratives.