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Defence date: 16 September 2002 ; Examining Board: Prof. Michael Keating, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Jeremy MacClancy, Oxford Brookes University (External supervisor); Prof. Joseba Zulaika, University of Nevada; Prof. Bo Stråth, European University Institute ; First made available online on 10 April 2018 ; Following the dismantling of most border controls within the European Union as a consequence of the 1985 Schengen Agreement, many communities located in border zones have had to reassess their socio-cultural, economic and legal relationships with neighbouring communities on the other side of state frontiers. This has been true, among others, for the inhabitants o f the towns of Irun and Hondarribia on the Spanish side of the Franco-Spanish frontier and o f the nearby town of Hendaia on the French side. Since the late 1980s, Irun, Hondarribia and Hendaia have sought to strengthen their relations with each other. This led, in 1999, to the launching of the Bidasoa-Txingudi Cross-Frontier Consortium - Bidasoa-Txingudi Mugaz Gaindiko Partzuergoa in Basque - formalising at the level of their municipal administrations the ties between the three towns that form the area now known as Bidasoa-Txingudi. For more than a decade, the promoters of cross-frontier co-operation in Bidasoa-Txingudi have been active in setting up cultural and social projects with the aim of encouraging the population of the three towns to develop a common sense of local belonging. This thesis will examine the ways in which the Bidasoa-Txingudi Cross-Frontier Consortium attempts to win legitimacy in the eyes of the local population, including a particular emphasis on 'culture'. Reflecting the dominant influences of the states of which they form part, the communities on either side of the frontier operate within different social and cultural contexts. But they also share a common Basque cultural and linguistic heritage, thanks to their location in the Basque-speaking region that straddles the Franco-Spanish border at the western end of the Pyrenees. The result is an environment in which contrasting and sometimes conflicting issues of identity, nationality, language and culture mingle and interreact. This thesis is intended as a contribution to the ongoing debate in the social sciences concerning the concepts o f identity and ethnicity. It will examine the different ways in which identity, as experienced by different inhabitants of Bidasoa-Txingudi, is constructed and expressed. In doing so, it will challenge notions of fixed identity among members of groups often perceived as homogeneous. By illustrating the varying expressions of self that can be observed in the area, it will seek to build on current debates on the relationship between collective and individual identity and contribute to the analysis of relationships between culture and identity in changing border areas throughout Europe. By way of conclusion, the thesis will point to the problems and challenges associated with attempts to forge a new sense of common belonging in the complex sociocultural and political contexts of the Basque Country. By highlighting the discrepancies between the theoretical objectives of initiatives such as the Bidasoa-Txingudi Cross-Frontier Consortium and the realities of identity formation and expression at grass-roots level, it will attempt to shed light on issues of identity and selfhood in this and other border communities whose inhabitants are subject to potentially conflicting identity allegiances.