Estonia's “Return to Europe”: The relationship between neoliberalism, statelessness, and Westward integration in post-independence Estonia

Abstract

Following Estonia's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country engaged in a fast-paced neoliberal transition to secure its alliance with the West. Simultaneously, the newly independent state decided to exclude the 500,000 Soviet migrants living in Estonia from its citizenry, thereby making a third of its population stateless. The aim of this article is to explore how the three political projects of independent Estonia – that is, creating and maintaining the ethnonationalist citizenship regime, the country's neoliberal transition and Estonia's Westward integration through a “Return to Europe” – have converged, mutually reinforced each other, and become irrevocably intertwined. To this end, the article traces the historical, material and discursive production of statelessness in Estonia. The initial exclusion of Soviet migrants from citizenship was justified on the basis of “restoring” Estonia to its pre-USSR demographic composition. While many left, those who stayed have been treated as a disposable population and face a disproportionally high incarceration rate. This article contributes to the literature on the intersections between ethnonationalism and neoliberalism by demonstrating how the continued mistreatment of the stateless in Estonia has been justified through neoliberal rationality, which casts the domain of the political into an economic register through the valorisation of individual responsibility. We further show how the emergence of neoliberalism has been linked with Orientalist narratives that simultaneously framed the country's economic reforms and ethnonationalist citizenship regime. As such, the Estonian post-independence experience demonstrates how neoliberalism is inherently compatible with ethnonationalist policies, especially when mediated through Orientalist logics.