The Spatialising Politics of EUropean Political Practice: Transacting ‘Eastness’ in the European Union

Building on recent academic exchanges theorising sociospatial relations, we argue that it is not sociospatial concepts or metaphors per se that delineate the substance of such relations—rather it is the different politics by and through which these concepts are conceived, represented, and mobilised by elite actors. We make an empirically founded contribution to these exchanges by examining the context of the European Union's (EU) sociospatialities, illustrated specifically through central European elite activities in the wake of the 2004 accession to the EU. We show how central European elite assertions of sociospatial concepts were embroiled in complex ways with enactments of these sociospatialities—that is, how the assertion and performance of concepts such as space, territory, and positionality by elite actors created novel forms of politics which, subsequently, have become pivotal to the reconfiguration of contemporary EUropean space.