The uncertainty of waiting: the liminality of the Western Balkans in the process of EU enlargement

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article deals with the concepts of time and temporality in the context of EU enlargement. It offers a critique of the prevailing understanding of time as linear, objective and abstract, unilinear flow of time and based on the exclusivity of its use as a universal measure. Accordingly, the article examines the EU construction of time as linear, objective, neutral and universal and in relation to progress and modernity. It argues that the EU’s understanding of time in terms of the temporal singularity of linear time creates temporal borders in the enlargement process by situating the EU and the candidate countries in different temporalities, thus demanding temporal synchronisation as a practice of shaping time. This article focuses on the Western Balkans as a region aspiring to EU membership. It examines how the EU shapes the time of the Western Balkans in the EU enlargement process by establishing temporal borders for the Western Balkans that define where progress occurs and consequently, how waiting is introduced as a means of temporal synchronisation.