Materialising sovereignty: European space industries in the Europeanisation-nationalism nexus

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, the fields of political economy and economic sociology have seen the emergence of research focussed on the ‘political work’ of industries: industrial products can embed domestic policies and feelings of national belonging. This article analyses the way in which space industries materialise national expression among European states as examples of the tensions between Europeanisation and nationalism. Three roles that are endorsed by space industries are discussed. First, space industries act as a support to an idealtype of Europe, shared by the two institutional frames of European space policy: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Union (EU). Second, while the ESA and the EU maintain relationships characterised alternately by independency, division of labour, or competition, this bicephalic framework leads to the deployment of a European claim to sovereignty and autonomy on the international stage. Third, space industries affiliated with an ESA member state can also be turned into instruments of national leadership at the expense of European unity. While space industries remain overlooked in the literature on European policies, emphasising industries illustrates that ‘unity in diversity’, claimed in the will of Europeanisation by European institutions, reinvents itself through an industrial sector where nationalist strategies remain strong.