EUROPE’S BORDERS AND NEIGHBOURHOOD: GOVERNMENTALITY AND IDENTITY

Jan Grzymski

doi:10.12955/cbup.v6.1218

Abstract

This article argues that the EU's neighbourhood policy is deeply entrenched in the Eurocentric spatial imaginaries of the EU as the universal core of and pole of attraction to its neighbours. This is especially clear in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and Eastern Partnership (EaP) concept of an asymmetrical partnership and neighbourhood. The ENP and EaP constituted the EU as a fully European core, while simultaneously othering its neighbourhood as not-fully European with an uncertain status of being between the inside and outside. This article attempts to expose how the ENP and EaP's practices draw a border for the EU/Europe and its neighbourhood with the use of specific EU policy instruments, which are not just technical or professional tools. To the contrary, these instruments hold some potential power in constituting and envisioning the EU's closest outside neighbours. This article will move beyond application-oriented research and draw on critical social theory, especially the already-existing governmentality research as well as Michel Foucault's theory of power. The article concludes with the exposed mechanisms of constructing the political and cultural space of neighbourhood (and ultimately Europe too) through the ENP and EaP's governmental rationalities of their border practices.

Highlights

The ongoing crisis over Ukraine (Kushnir, 2018) and the current influx of refugees (Anderson, 2014; Carr, 2015; De Genova, 2017; McDoland-Gibson, 2016) have raised several questions regarding Europe’s borders and the limits of EU soft power
Concerning the problem of Europe’s borders, Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality (Burchell et al, 1991; Foucault, 1991; Dean, 1994, 1999; Barry et al, 1996; Walters and Haahr, 2005; Walters, 2012; Rose and Miller, 2010) offers a critical political analysis as it allows one to ask several unconventional questions, such as how Europe and its borders and neighbourhood are being imagined, how they are being governed by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), and how neighbouring countries are imagined, governed or governing themselves with the ENP and EaP (Eastern Partnership)
This article employs the governmentality approach and addresses how neighbouring ENP and EaP countries were made knowable and governable as Eastern or neighbouring social, economic and political spaces that lagged behind European norms and values

Summary

Introduction

The ongoing crisis over Ukraine (Kushnir, 2018) and the current influx of refugees (Anderson, 2014; Carr, 2015; De Genova, 2017; McDoland-Gibson, 2016) have raised several questions regarding Europe’s borders and the limits of EU soft power. Instead of creating the ring of friends with prosperous and well-governed countries, the EU’s neighbourhood has, experienced more instability since the end of the Cold War, mainly in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. This instability may indicate more about the EU and the failure of the European Neighbourhood Policy’s (ENP) instruments than the neighbours’ capacity to be prosperous and peaceful – or to put it in the ENP’s rhetoric – ‘resilient’. It is relevant to consider the noticeable input, if any, that critical social theory research can bring to the mainstream discussion on Europe’s borders and neighbourhood; Zimmermann and Favell note that most of the critical scholarship on Europe goes largely unheard (2011; 490-491)

Critical European Studies and Governmentality

European Identity of Neighbourhood in Question

Conclusions