Border between West and East of Europe in the mental maps of European university students
Abstract
The paper addresses the issue of dividing Europe into two sub-regions, West and East, which are monitored and defined through the method of cognitive mapping. The first section reviews basic approaches to this division of Europe, focusing on the concept of duality, analysing its causes, manifestations and perception in the form of the West-East division. The following empirical part presents the results of an international research conducted in the form of a questionnaire survey distributed among university students from nine European countries. Respondents were asked to define the border between the European West and East based on their subjective perceptions. The results were subsequently analysed and aggregated into map outputs using GIS tools. Although the respondents were young, the findings show that the perceived boundary between West and East still largely aligns with the Cold War-era division of Europe, with Central Eastern European countries, except Slovenia and Czechia, often classified as East. The mental maps also showed partial differences in the views of individual nations. The final part of the study is devoted to the interpretation of the results and their reflection in terms of the presented theoretical concepts and assumptions.
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