Bordering imaginaries and the everyday construction of the Mediterranean neighbourhood: Introduction to the special issue

Introduction

As Gerard Toal (2017: 39) writes, ‘every state or aspiring state has a geopolitical culture. This can be defined as its prevailing sense of identity, place and mission in the world’. Gradually emerging as an international actor in the late 20th century, the European Union (EU) has invested considerable effort in crafting a geopolitical identity that distinguishes it from more traditional realist thinking and hard power practices. The EU aims to be a self-proclaimed ‘force for good in the world’, furthering the pursuit of global stability through regional cooperation, development and a commitment to a multilateral world order. However, internal and external crises have recently considerably reduced what has been famously defined as ‘normative power Europe’ (Manners, 2002), as well as the attractive potential of the EU. Moreover, in crafting this identity the EU’s geopolitical actorness has increasingly reflected a basic contradiction between the principle of interdependence, security concerns and heightened political demands for more restrictive border regimes.

The ambiguities that characterize European geopolitical projection are particularly evident when it comes to the EU’s approach towards its neighbouring countries. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), in particular, has been the object of vast debate since its launch. It continues to be so because of the deteriorating geopolitical context along the Mediterranean shores and in Eastern Europe and because ENP is a test-bed for the EU as a global actor (Celata and Coletti, 2016; Scott et al., 2018). Scholars of political geography, in particular, have been close observers – and critics – of the EU’s emerging geopolitics of regional cooperation (Bachmann and Sidaway, 2009; Browning and Joenniemi, 2008; Klinke, 2012; Kuus, 2007). What their work suggests, inter alia, is that the EU’s external borders are not only political but, and perhaps more decisively, cultural, in particular due to the nature of the EU as a supranational, incomplete, normative political entity.

The EU’s external frontiers have thus emerged as crucial sites of inquiry into the symbolic transformation of contemporary borders and practices of socio-political bordering. Moreover, given its specificities, it is more or less clear why the EU needs external frontiers that are at the same time permeable and militarized, fixed and mobile, linear and fragmented. The real issue is how this is pursued. The work, among others, of Boedeltje and Van Houtum (2011), Delanty (2006), Dimitrovova (2010) and Kostadinova (2009), has shown that the EU’s external borders possess a strong symbolic dimension that influences not only the cultural identities of those who are included or excluded, but also the functioning of border management regimes and their territoriality. Following this perspective, the external borders of the EU have been widely interpreted as territorially external and/or exceptional spaces where, for example, the border spectacle of migration and human crisis is played out and mediatized. Nicholas De Genova (2013) demonstrates, in his discussion of the border spectacle, the mediated and excessive visibility of migrants as illegals, and thus as outsiders threatening ‘normal society’, which confers upon them a life without status and basic rights. Consequently, the Mediterranean border spectacle and the migration limboscapes of Ceuta (Ferrer-Gallardo and Albet-Mas, 2013) and Lampedusa (Cuttitta, 2014) very much resonate with Agamben’s ideas of ‘bare life’ and the (migrants’) camp as a space of exception (Vaughan-Williams, 2015). At the same time, this spectacle also allows for these borders to move inwards, attaching themselves to a certain figure of migrant ‘illegality’ and the politics of its containment, so as to become embodied in the daily life of ‘irregular’ and regular migrants, as well as ethnic and religious minorities.

It is also evident that the EU performs ‘bordering’ not only at its outer confines but also in the more general framing of neighbourhood relations with South Mediterranean societies (Hoh 2014, Scott, 2015). For example, as Diez (2006) has argued, the EU’s ‘normative power paradox’ results in a situation in which Eurocentric understandings of differences and commonalities – which are supposed to justify stronger cooperation across the Union’s external borders – reinforce distinctions between the EU, the outside world and its neighbours, in particular. In this special issue we develop understandings and definitions of ‘neighbourhood’ that go far beyond a concern with the ENP, both conceptually and geographically. Conceptually, our aim is to reflect not on a specific policy but rather on multilevel political discourses, practices and narratives projected over the European external borders. Geographically, the papers in the collection adopt a situated account of the neighbourhood that goes far beyond the so-called neighbouring countries and their borderlines. Indeed, because they are not only political but also inherently cultural and social, the topologies of borders are changing both within and outside Europe (Casas-Cortes et al., 2016). The EU’s visions of neighbourhood, to the East, Southeast and South, are major contributors to this reconfiguration.

However, what the collection also suggests is that the bordering concept can be an inadequate analytical tool: reduced to a discourse that creates socio-spatial and cultural divisions, it can lead us to underestimate the materiality of the processes at hand, the specific sites of border-making and the territoriality of the EU’s highly differentiated, networked and fluid border regime. Furthermore, we should also avoid a notion of bordering as a ubiquitous exercise of state power (see Burridge et al., 2017) and as a construction of rigid borderline imaginaries that separate the EU ‘inside’ from its multiple ‘outsides’. The three papers instead emphasize mechanisms of selectivity and differential inclusion (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013) that characterize European external borders as a crucial frame with which to explore the everyday construction of both the EU and its Mediterranean neighbourhood.

Our contribution to the development of a more inclusive engagement with the concept of neighbourhood involves linking geopolitical practices to socio-cultural processes and, more specifically, to socio-spatial imaginaries employed by the EU with regard to its South Mediterranean neighbours. The geopolitical salience of social and spatial imaginaries has been recognized by numerous observers of Europe, who indicate that tensions between ideational and territorial imaginations have thus been a major contributor to the ambiguity of the EU’s political role in the Mediterranean context (Bialasiewicz et al., 2013). Following Bob Jessop (2012) and Cultural Political Economy perspectives, imaginaries generate intersubjective meaning and open up horizons of action at the same time that they link symbolic and material social phenomena. Nevertheless, in order to be meaningful, a geopolitics of cooperation must project spatial imaginaries that reduce complexity and provide actors a focus ‘on some aspects of the world as the basis for becoming active participants therein and/or for describing and interpreting it as disinterested observers’ (Jessop, 2012: 72). The focus is not on the semiotic of imaginaries per se, but on their selective appropriation by specific actors as integral elements of discourse, policy-making and power-based intervention, as well as a lubricant of political controversy and contestation, with both its intended and unintended consequences. This approach also clarifies the basic definitions of imaginaries, introduces a heuristic definition compatible with the concept of border-making, illustrates the role of imaginaries within discourse and develops a critical perspective on the power relations addressed and modified by imaginaries.

Three re-bordering imaginaries: Perspectives on differential inclusion

In this special issue, EU imaginaries of relationships with South Mediterranean societies are understood as part of a complex and nuanced re-bordering exercise that continually produces shifting discourses of the ‘Mediterranean neighbourhood’ and selective forms of EU–Mediterranean engagement. Since 2011/2012 and the uprisings in South Mediterranean states, the cooperation context has indeed become more complex. In terms of its geopolitical identity, the EU had, and continues to have, great difficulty in reconciling the complex nature of socio-political struggle in the South Mediterranean with its own understanding of democratization and the role of civil society, in particular.

Accordingly, three cases of socio-spatial imaginaries that exemplify patterns of differential inclusion of the ‘non-EU’ will be explored. Mezzadra and Nielson referred to differential inclusion in their work on ‘border as method’ to indicate how ‘inclusion in a sphere, society or realm can be subject to varying degrees of subordination, rule, discrimination and segmentation’ (2013: 159). The concept may be considered also as an extension of that of ‘differentiated integration’ – frequently used with reference to the internal European space (Holzinger and Schimmelfennig, 2012) – to the European neighbourhood, where the perspectives of integration are weaker, highly differential, much more ambivalent and subordinated to European interests (Smith, 2015).

The three articles in the collection provide evidence of the highly selective nature of EU conceptualizations of neighbourhood relations and Mediterranean space. These conceptualizations generally share the ambivalent tendency to consider the sea as a region, on the one hand, and to see it as a border, on the other. Examples of the latter imaginary are frequent, and they have gained prominence over the last decade: the representation of the Mediterranean as a space of differences, as a boundary between clashing civilizations and as the locus of cross-border security threats, such as illegal migration and terrorism. European policies towards the Mediterranean, however, still try hard to balance this emphasis on security by prioritizing other goals of cooperation – to promote ‘prosperity’, to address ‘common challenges’, to promote ‘common values’, etc., making reference to a regional imagination of the Mediterranean as a historically unified space of homogeneity and continuity. The articles in this collection show how such ambivalence is appropriated, negotiated and practised in three highly paradigmatic cases.

The arguments of Filippo Celata and Raffaella Coletti mobilize the concept of differential inclusion by considered processes of ‘external Europeanization’. The authors consider, in particular, the key role played by border regions that, on the one hand, constitute the final gates to the EU, facing heavily contrasted migratory pressures and, on the other hand, are key sites for the EU-guided, multi-scalar construction of a Mediterranean ‘region’. The authors conceptualize external Europeanization as a multi-situated and selective process of differential inclusion (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013), and the Mediterranean as borderscapes (Brambilla, 2015), in order to re-materialize current perspectives on bordering, avoid overly strict inside/outside binaries and understand EU policies in the region as both the projection of material interests across European external borders and as processes of symbolic re-imagination and subjectification. Their aim is to contribute to recent research on the reconfiguration of ‘normative power Europe’ through a more proper consideration of the dialogical positioning of different typologies of both recipients and transmitters of European external policies, in particular local economic actors. Such a conceptualization is then applied to a case study of the border between Italy and Tunisia.

Bürkner and Scott’s contribution argues that the politics of differential inclusion also involves a ‘politics of in/visibility’ that promotes democratization and social modernization through structured cooperation while engaging selectively with local stakeholders. The authors develop the concept of visibility in terms of Eurocentric framings of EU–Mediterranean cooperation and, more specifically, the EU’s engagement with, and inclusion of civil society actors. In directing attention to EU readings of and responses to the ‘Arab Spring’, the authors indicate how both a simplification of the issues at stake and highly selective political framings of local civil societies have operated in tandem. Drawing on a review of recent literature on civil society activism in the southern Mediterranean, the paper deals with Eurocentric appropriations of civil society as a force for change and as a central element in the construction of the Mediterranean neighbourhood. EU support for South Mediterranean civil society appears to be targeted at specific actors with whom the EU deems it can work: apart from national elites these include well-established, professionalized non-governmental associations, and westernized elements of national civil societies. The paper suggests that an inclusive focus on civil society would reveal neighbourhood as a contact zone and dialogic space, rather than a project upon which the EU is (rather unsuccessfully) attempting to superimpose a unifying narrative of EU-led modernization.

In the third paper, Anna Casaglia analyses the impact of Cyprus’s accession to the EU on the northern part of the island and tackles the political actorness of the EU with regard to the long-lasting Cypriot conflict. A great amount of literature has critically analysed the EU enlargement process, underlying its imperialistic features and its problematic nature. At the same time, scholars have pointed out the difficulties of the EU to act as a political actor and impact on situations of ethnonational conflicts. This contribution brings together these critical aspects, by analysing them in the peculiar context of Cyprus. The paper proposes an interpretation of Northern Cyprus as an ‘inner neighbour’ of the EU, due to its anomalous and liminal status, the suspended application of the acquis communautaire, the ambiguity in the management of the Green Line border and the unresolved conflict. The article presents the opinions of Turkish Cypriot citizens about their expectations before and after 2004, when EU membership was at least partially granted, and in three different periods from 2008 to 2015. The purpose of the study is to indicate the evolution of Turkish Cypriot ideas and imaginaries related to EU membership and to Europe more generally. The focus on Northern Cyprus as an ‘inner neighbour’ also sheds light on the complicated relations between the EU and the candidate country – as well as problematic neighbour – Turkey.

Reconceptualizing neighbourhood?

A widely discussed weakness of EU relations with its neighbouring countries is without doubt its Eurocentric bias (Celata and Coletti, 2016). Such bias permeates both normative and critical debates and obscures the fact that the EU itself is being shaped by its neighbours (Browning and Chistou, 2010; Morozov and Rumelili, 2012). One aspect of the Eurocentric view, for example, is the reduction of neighbourhood to a specific policy and normative criteria of policy evaluation or ‘objectively’ existing international relations (Börzel and Van Hüllen, 2014). However, critical analyses of the EU’s evolving relations in the Mediterranean have also involved a certain degree of Eurocentrism by primarily focusing on EU-European bordering and othering practices and thus framing non-EU ‘others’ as border victims while rarely contemplating their perceptions and agency (Brambilla, 2015). Alternatively, instead of employing a priori constructed criteria that explain what neighbourhood is and what it is not, greater conceptual openness could help capture the complexity of regional relations between the EU and the other neighbours. Casas-Cortes et al. (2016), just to give an example, characterized geographies of migration across the EU’s external borders in terms of a ‘non-accession integration’ that thwarts neat territorial distinctions between EU and non-EU neighbours. Similarly, rather than as a bounded territorial entity, neighbourhood can thus be conceptualized as a borderscape of interaction and agency that is politically framed in very general terms but that in detail is composed of many interlinked relational spaces. The European neighbourhood emerges as a patchwork of relations, socio-cultural encounters, confrontation and contestation, rather than merely as a cooperation policy or border regime.

Despite the high level of alienation that characterizes relations between the South and North Mediterranean, we argue that a reassessment of neighbourhood, both as concept as well as a geopolitical project, is a necessary step in developing more productive and mutually beneficial forms of regional cooperation. This is no easy task as there is no inevitability to Euro-Mediterranean integration, and the track record of the ENP since its inception has been mixed at best. One major difference between neighbourhood as originally defined by the EU and more traditional geopolitical ‘spheres of influence’ is that of possibility. Spheres of influence are unambiguously linked to state interests and projections of power that entail some form of territorial control and domination. A normative approach is surely needed by the EU for it to operate as a global actor. However, this approach would need to be profoundly revisited. As improbable as it appears under present conditions of a geopolitics of fear and division, the Mediterranean could potentially signify new spaces for political interaction and socio-cultural dialogue at multiple scales, especially if these facilitate cooperation that is jointly negotiated around common concerns.