Borders and Border Regions in Europe: Changes, Challenges and Chances

Abstract

This fascinating volume could not have come at a more apposite time than the present, discussing as it does, the politics, perception, permeability, vulnerability and philosophical nature of territorial borders in the modern world. It comprises 12 distinguished essays set mainly in the European context and resulting from a Franco/German scholarly collaboration which is wide-ranging, elegantly written and sustained by multi-disciplinary scope, profound insights and understandings.Border studies as an academic discipline have emerged only in recent years, prompted perhaps by the fall of the Berlin Wall, rapid globalisation and the expansion of the European Union (EU). Whilst we have conventionally thought of borders as territorial lines drawn between nation states and other political entities, modern political forces have made them increasingly permeable for people, goods, capital, ideas and co-operative ventures. On the one hand they have lost much of their salience as separators and dividers, often becoming the sites of political co-operation and cultural interaction; on the other hand they create uncertainty about the destabilising effects of economic competition, migration and multiculturalism.It is not without significance that within days of this volume appearing, a deep crisis in Ukraine was caused by the determination of President Putin of the Russian Federation to manoeuvre a redrawing of his border, leaving Ukrainian politicians under threat of armed force. This was followed immediately by the EU signing an Association Agreement with the residual Ukraine government, and with Moldova and Georgia, none of whose past is a particularly shining example of democratic practice. Since the EU is not a state and does not therefore have a 'foreign policy', the danger of actions of this kind is that all 28 member states of the EU have become involved in potential confrontations over which they have very little influence.Differing contributors to this volume sometimes reach contradictory conclusions. Some emphasise the decreasing significance of borders within the EU and the abolition of border controls as the notion of 'borderless Europe' represented by the Euro-zone, the Schengen area and moves towards completion of the single market, all adding to the process of integration. Others, however, describe attempts to tighten its external borders as having a 'barrier function', keeping out illegal immigrants, criminals and unwanted goods.However, with the creation of the EU's European Neighbourhood Policy, several contributors stress that cross-border co-operation is seen as a means to lessen the separating effect of the external border: 'Quite clearly, contradictory processes have been set in motion' (25).The reader is left with the clear impression of inconsistency, confusion and lack of cohesion in the deepest recesses of EU policy-making, which, the editors argue, parallels the contradictory theoretical positions in EU border studies. They go on in the early chapters to review the current state of academic work in th...