Geographies of Privilege by Winddance Twine France Gardener Bradley

Author:Winddance Twine, France, Gardener, Bradley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

B/ordering and Othering the EU

How then can the EU's current border regime be understood keeping the above generic approach on b/ordering and othering in mind? If we look at the entity of the EU then through this border lens, what is most significant perhaps is the rapid change of the bordering, ordering, and othering developments. After the opening of the internal borders of the EU, the political and policy attention shifted more and more, and swiftly so, to the protection of the external borders of the EU. Because of the new and heavy emphasis on the external borders, many argue that the EU is also changing how it is or should be perceived and understood. In this context, early commentators optimistically pointed to the many faces the external border of the EU had in terms of its distinct and noncongruent geopolitical, institutional/legal, transactional, and cultural spaces (Friis and Murphy 1999; Hudson 2000; Smith 1996). To wit, some have argued that the external borders of the EU are to be understood as “fuzzy” (Christiansen and Jorgensen 2000; Zielonka 2001) and that the EU as a bordered entity will resemble a “maze” or “sieve” (Brown 2002; Christiansen and Jorgensen 2000). Yet, over the last few years, and especially with various authors within the constructionist and post colonial wings of the research front, the discourse has become dominant that the EU is increasingly constructing colonial-like lines or frontiers, boundaries of a self-perceived superior imperial power, often then seen as the soft imperial sister of the United States.

At the frontiers of the EU then, which are often defined as Europe and not the EU, these authors typically claim that the EU sees for itself a civilisational mission, often typified as othering, to Europeanise or at least downscale the “radicalisation” of perceived inferiors or others (the “Barbarians”) in both the East and the South (Anderson and Armstrong 2007; Boedeltje 2007; Tunander 1997; Walters 2002, 2004; Zielonka 2001). For some, this latter neocolonial, empire style is most visible in one of the most striking extraterritorial development plans of the EU of the recent years; that is, the development of a New Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument destined to implement the Commission's European Neighbourhood Policy as laid down in the Wider Europe Communication and the Strategy document on this European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The goal of the ENP is, according to the EU, to share the advantages of the 2004 enlargement of the EU by fostering stability, security, and prosperity among all parties. The Neighbourhood Policy is said to be developed to prevent new lines of division between the enlarged EU and its neighbours and to offer new possibilities to engage in the diverse activities of the EU by means of enlarged political, security, economical, and cultural cooperation (see also Emerson 2004). The EU Commission sees the border “management” as one of the core goals of the ENP:

Border management is likely to be a priority in most Action Plans as it is only by working together that the

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