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Abstract

During the Cold War years, the idea that political borders had somehow achieved a state of permanence and immutability enjoyed currency as an almost common-sense notion, despite lessons of history and long-durée processes of state formation in Europe and Eurasia. For countries on the frontline of the Cold War in Europe, especially on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain, the inevitable Cold War logic based on nuclear threat effectively pre-empted efforts to renegotiate borders. This situation changed with the end of the Cold War order, but not in a straightforward way. Military confrontation on European borders did ease but a new phase of unpredictability in Great Power relations emerged that was less bound to the logics of realist geostrategy. As part of projects promoting globalisation and integration, broad accord appeared for lowering and softening borders and promoting movement of people, money and goods. At the same time, the collapse of communism revealed unfinished projects of democratisation and nation-building, and new windows of opportunity opened for the renegotiation of state borders as a result of regime change or claims for self-government ignored in the past. This new perspective seemed to open spaces for replacing the harsh rules of the Cold War international order by normative principles of international law that ostensibly enjoyed common acceptance. The ultimate veto right that nuclear arms had given to the Superpowers was to be substituted by a more intangible international order which relied on rule-based multilateralism. However, the mechanisms of interpreting the rules remained complicated and contested. The bid for rule-based multilateralism did not, for example, automatically strengthen the position of the UN, and with time, it left Russia more and more unsatisfied with not being accepted as a recognised player in the new international order. As a result, a wide variety of actors and processes have influenced how post-Cold war borders have been reconceptualised. Within the EU, important changes are the result of policies of deepening integration, which have promoted institutional debordering and more extensive cross-border communication. With its programmes of regional cooperation, the EU has promoted this development also on its external borders. At the same time, development of the external borders has been more susceptible to geopolitical processes and changing patterns of migration and mobility. The Eastern border of the EU, in particular, has been affected by geopolitical shifts. Perhaps, most notably by the annexation of Crimea by Russia has raised concerns about the respect of international law, national sovereignty and territorial integrity in much of the Eastern Europe. In the post-Soviet space, the shift of administrative internal borders to state borders has been accompanied by a change in perspective to more nation-centred (borders between nations) orientation in the way borders are perceived.
Laine, J. I. Liikanen & J. W. Scott (2018). Introduction Post-Cold War Borders and Borderscapes. In: Laine, J., I.
Liikanen & J. W. Scott (Eds). Post-Cold War Borders: Reframing Political Space in the EU’s Eastern
Europe, 112. Routledge: London.
Introduction –
Post-Cold War borders and borderscapes
Jussi P. Laine, Ilkka Liikanen and James W. Scott
During the Cold War years, the idea that political borders had somehow achieved a state of permanence and
immutability enjoyed currency as an almost common-sense notion, despite lessons of history and long-durée
processes of state formation in Europe and Eurasia. For countries on the frontline of the Cold War in Europe,
especially on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain, the inevitable Cold War logic based on nuclear threat
effectively pre-empted efforts to renegotiate borders. This situation changed with the end of the Cold War
order, but not in a straightforward way. Military confrontation on European borders did ease but a new phase
of unpredictability in Great Power relations emerged that was less bound to the logics of realist geostrategy.
As part of projects promoting globalisation and integration, broad accord appeared for lowering and softening
borders and promoting movement of people, money and goods.
At the same time, the collapse of communism revealed unfinished projects of democratisation and
nation-building, and new windows of opportunity opened for the renegotiation of state borders as a result of
regime change or claims for self-government ignored in the past. This new perspective seemed to open spaces
for replacing the harsh rules of the Cold War international order by normative principles of international law
that ostensibly enjoyed common acceptance. The ultimate veto right that nuclear arms had given to the
Superpowers was to be substituted by a more intangible international order which relied on rule-based
multilateralism. However, the mechanisms of interpreting the rules remained complicated and contested. The
bid for rule-based multilateralism did not, for example, automatically strengthen the position of the UN, and
with time, it left Russia more and more unsatisfied with not being accepted as a recognised player in the new
international order.
As a result, a wide variety of actors and processes have influenced how post-Cold war borders have
been reconceptualised. Within the EU, important changes are the result of policies of deepening integration,
which have promoted institutional debordering and more extensive cross-border communication. With its
programmes of regional cooperation, the EU has promoted this development also on its external borders. At
the same time, development of the external borders has been more susceptible to geopolitical processes and
changing patterns of migration and mobility. The Eastern border of the EU, in particular, has been affected by
geopolitical shifts. Perhaps, most notably by the annexation of Crimea by Russia has raised concerns about the
respect of international law, national sovereignty and territorial integrity in much of the Eastern Europe. In the
post-Soviet space, the shift of administrative internal borders to state borders has been accompanied by a
change in perspective to more nation-centred (borders between nations) orientation in the way borders are
perceived.
The present contribution to the Routledge Borderlands Studies Series is a product of comparative case
studies carried out within the framework of the EUBORDERSCAPES project.
i
EUBORDERSCAPES
investigated evolving concepts of borders as an important reflection of political, social and cultural change
and possible responses to this change (see especially Brambilla et al 2015; Liikanen, Scott and Sotkasiira 2016;
Scott and Kolossov 2013). Accordingly, the chapters that follow focus on the differences that state borders
make in societal terms – to the opportunities, aspirations, dignity and recognition of groups and individuals,
as well as the emerging epistemologies of how state borders are perceived, understood, experienced and
exploited as political and social resources. A particular focus was on conceptual change in understanding
borders and the ways in which they not only condition but are at the same time conditioned by different
institutions and actors. In all, this book demonstrates that important connections can be uncovered between
borders as a ‘challenge’ to above led projects of national consolidation or integration and borders as framings
of social, political, economic and cultural spaces from within.
This volume strives to understand the various ways this complicated setting has shaped realities of and
imaginaries attached to borders in countries along the old Iron Curtain throughout the post- Soviet space. We
pay special attention to changes in political language and rhetorical strategies used to legitimate, or challenge,
existing borders. Within this context, the concept of ‘borderscapes’ plays an important role in our
conceptualisation of borders for it expresses the (geo)political and epistemic multidimensionality of the border,
enabling a productive understanding of the processual, de-territorialised and dispersed nature of borders and
their ensuing regimes in the era of globalisation and transnational flows.
In the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis, borders within the post-Soviet space have become a hot spot of
international relations and public political debate. Contested interpretations of the legitimacy of the borders is
crystallised in frozen and open armed conflicts that invite viewing post-Soviet borders in terms of military
preparedness and confrontation. In most of these cases, it is ethnic relations and divisions that are presented as
the root cause of border disputes. Behind territorial conflicts, we recognise, however, broader shifts in great
power relations and regional balance of power as well as contested interpretations concerning sovereignty and
framing of political space that concern more broadly borders in post-Cold War Europe. The renegotiation of
borders in the context of the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union created a number of situations where
legitimacy of regime shift or right to self-government was contested by the parties involved or by the Great
Powers. This lack of capacity and mechanisms for multi-lateral decision-making has led to one-sided action,
open or frozen conflicts and competing interpretations of the right to self-government or the legitimacy of
regime change.
In the post-Soviet states more broadly, the impact of the dissolution of the Soviet Union continues to
influence understandings of borders which themselves are objects of competing projects of integration. For the
newly independent countries, the issue of state sovereignty and related ethnic and national claims of self-
determination are particularly acute. At the same time with EU enlargement and its policies of Eastern
Partnership, Russia’s policies of multi-level and multi-speed reintegration have been gaining strength in the
post-Soviet space. However, what is seen as mutually beneficial forms of integration has often been perceived
by the leaders of post-Soviet countries as constraints on their own sovereignty, in both economic and political
sense. They complain that they have been forced to choose sides in a geopolitical setting that promotes internal
division between pro-European and pro-Russian parties. Under the burden of these external and internal
pressures, it is evident that borders have become a key issue of international relations in that they directly
reflect both the post-Cold War invitation for national sovereignty and self-government and the strengthening
waves of globalisation and competing projects of integration and, thus, the new unpredictability of the
international order.
This book aims at understanding negotiation, redefinition and conflicts concerning borders in countries
along the old Iron Curtain and in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood. The different case studies analyse in detail
discussions concerning sovereignty and the right to self-government and interpret their variations in the context
of post-Cold War politics and international relations. By identifying competing strategies of legitimising and
challenging borders, the chapters strive to identify and understand broader changes in post-Cold War
international order. Although formal state boundaries serve as the main reference point in discussions of this
book, the approach seeks to cover its various representations. The recent developments have deeply changed
the power of borders by modifying the relation between the borders’ fixed nature and their constantly changing,
fluid regime as well as by framing the impact of borders on human activities in a new way. Borders not only
have a different meaning for different actors but are a manifestation of power relations in society at different
scales and reflect the normative power and the power asymmetries of the actors concerned. A more holistic
and multidimensional concept of borders is thus adopted in order to move the discussion beyond the mere
territorial confines to include also the political, social and cultural distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Through comparative case studies, this volume examines changing conceptualisations of political space
and country specific variations in negotiation and conflict over East European and post-Soviet borders. Many
of these trends are crystalised in the so-called Ukraine crisis, and many of the chapters will pay special attention
on the origins of the contested conceptualisations of borders that evolved in the course of the crisis. Shifts in
Russian and Ukrainian political discussion are studied in detail from the time of the collapse of the Soviet
Union until the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis. More broadly, the book identifies changes in sovereignty
concepts and spatial imaginaries attached to post-Soviet borders in the context of competing projects of nation
building and integration. From this angle new light is shed on the political rhetoric of the EU and the Russian
Federation in the context of their pursuit of a stronger international role. By offering a broad comparative
analysis of changes in political and every-day discussions on borders, the book will uncover rhetorical moves
and variation of arguments in defining borders in terms of ethnicity, religion, earlier treaties, international law
etc. At the same time, the book will offer new perspectives to bigger questions of change and continuity in
post-Cold War politics and uncover historical layers in present-day strategies of legitimising or challenging
borders within and around post-Soviet space.
Structure of the book
The chapters in this volume bring various perspective on the processes of conceptual change that condition the
production of geographical knowledge and representations of regional and cultural spaces that are used to
frame social arenas and political landscapes. Advocating for a more complex understanding of state borders
and challenging the received notions of how states, state territories, citizenship and identity relate to each other,
they seek to provide a nuanced and critical re-reading and understanding of borders and their everyday
negotiation. The analysis of individual country cases is based on the identification of major debates on borders
and in-depth analyses of discussion peaks according to a common comparative research design. The results of
the country-specific case studies are analysed in the context of major shifts in international relations and border
related policies of the European Union and the Russian Federation. Together, the articles shed new light on
negotiation and conflict over European and post-Soviet borders in the context of competing projects of building
the international roles of the European Union and the Russian federation. Ultimately, the book aims at a new
interpretation of broader changes in international order and shifting conceptualisations of sovereignty and
territoriality in post-Cold war Europe.
Part One: Reframing political space in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood
Ilkka Liikanen and Jeremy Smith begin this first section by assessing the constitution of European Union’s and
the Russian Federation’s international roles. They argue that in the wake of the Ukraine crisis earlier
developments have often been analysed in terms of the failure of ‘soft’ EU neighbourhood policies and an
ultimate indication of the determinedly ‘hard’ geopolitics to which the Russian Federation is committed. Their
chapter seeks to sketch an alternative perspective to the stereotypical research designs that analyse the
constitution of the international roles of the EU and the Russian Federation as a bipolar process. With the aim
to move beyond a board-game setting in analysing the interplay between international actors, they strive to
grasp better the interdependency between external and internal policies. By analysing major conceptual shifts
in political statements related to borders and cross-border interaction Liikanen and Smith show that
essentialised understandings can be misleading. In fact, both the EU and Russia were working out new foreign
policy approaches in the 1990s and as foreign policy actors, both were dealing with works in progress. Liikanen
and Smith’s analysis brings evidence to their argument that both the EU and the Russian Federation, as major
international actors, have contributed to the shaping of new understandings of borders, sovereignty, and the
global order. However, they also indicate that the two powers have never succeeded in creating a balance
between these notions in a frame of functioning multilateral international order, but rather instead, they have
developed as actors within ever-changing contexts shaped by an array of competing rationales.
Hans-Joachim Bürkner posits that the recent geopolitical involvement of the EU in its Eastern
neighbourhood has not only changed international political relations but also the EU’s perspectives on non-
EU regions. His chapter takes up the issue of scaling under the condition of the geopolitical re-framing of
borders, by paying particular attention to the case of cross-border petty trade between Ukraine and Poland as
an example of the need for re-conceptualising the nexus between geopolitics and everyday bordering. By
relying on scale theory, he seeks to provide a clearer theoretical integration of everyday practice and political
framings, and to achieve a better understanding of the ways in which individuals and groups accommodate
(geo-)political shifts, create altered resources, and face changing constraints, by continual rescaling. Without
in-depth analysis of scale relations, and without focused theoretical conceptualisation of the intertwining of
geopolitics and everyday social practice, Bürkner argues, the flexible nature of bordering can hardly be
reconstructed analytically. However, what these tentative reflections on the emergence of potential scales yield
is a call for further explorations of the flexibility, fluidity and transgressive nature of scaling in the context of
bordering and borderscapes. Since the category of power is extremely important for the analysis of the
implications and effects of geopolitics, the search for apt concepts must go on. The solution that Bürkner
proposes seeks to relate scaling of the ‘flat ontology’ type back to the intrusion of political power into everyday
lives; i.e. to retrieve the category of power without losing touch with the flexible emergence and fluid nature
of scaling that informs the evolution of borderscapes.
This is followed by Ilkka Liikanen’s analysis of the territorial imaginaries of EU policies in the context
of the discussion about the role of the EU as a new kind of international actor. He pays a particular attention
to the changing significance that has been given to the concept of neighbourhood in the process of elaborating
alternatives to the Cold War confrontation between east and west. His investigation focuses on the level of EU
institutions and the emerging policy frames for external relations elaborated as part of cross-border cooperation
policies. His work suggests a gradual line of development from bilateral programmes of interregional
cooperation towards Commission-led policies covering European territory and extending beyond the
boundaries of the EU. Liikanen suggests that the introduction of the concept of the European Neighbourhood
marked a grand momentum of political innovation by simultaneously introducing a new sovereignty concept
and a new framing of policies. Analysis of later EU policy documents shows, however, that this has not led
automatically to fundamental changes in international relations or marked a definitive end to east-west
division. Rather than merely addressing the question of the spatial imaginaries of today’s EU policies as a
choice between a post-Westphalian notion of neighbourhood and east-west imaginary reflecting a return to the
Cold War, he suggests there to be a need to recognise the competing rationales of EU policies and to openly
discuss their attached conceptualisations of territoriality.
In the last chapter of Part One, Vladimir Kolossov, together with his co-authors, offers post-Soviet
Russia as a fascinating case of shifting political border discourses, providing evidence of both top-down and
bottom-up processes of border-construction. Building on a critical geopolitics approach, their chapter
investigates the changing themes and content of Russian border discourses at the federal level, examines the
relationship between the main political issues and challenges and the process of bordering along different
sections of the Russian borders, and finally compares the official, hegemonic discourse with those developed
by the opposition. Based on the conducted newspaper analysis they suggest there to be two major political
challenges that directly affect de- and re-bordering in the post-Soviet space. The integration vector concerns
either association with the EU or participation in Eurasian unions under Russia’s auspices. They argue that the
‘old’ borders Russia inherited from the USSR reflect the balance between the two Russian foreign policy
vectors – slow and difficult rapprochement with the west or the quest for an independent approach and alliances
with non-western powers in the east, especially China. However, he same neighbour can be at the same time
interpreted as a privileged partner and a threat. Despite the negative changes in relations between Russia and
the west, cross-border cooperation with neighbouring EU countries continues, the sides have entered a new
programme period, and the number of border crossings is again increasing.
Part Two: Redefining post-Cold War borders
The second part of the book is opened by Olga Davydova-Minguet, who discusses the intersections of Russian
memory and diaspora politics with the mediascapes that form around Russian-speaking residents in Finland.
Her analysis, based on her long-term research of the immigration of Russian-speakers to Finland, focuses on
the intersection of the media with memory politics in the activities of some civic organisations implementing
Russian mediatised diaspora and memory politics. Davydova-Minguet draws our attention to the Russian
Victory Day, which was celebrated with a march of the Immortal Regiment for the first time in in Helsinki in
2017. Although the media usage of Russian-speaking immigrants is versatile and contextualised by their
everyday social positioning, Daydova-Minguet contends that the march made visible the involvement of
Russian-speakers in mediascapes largely produced in Russia or resonating with a sense of Russianness.
Although Russian informational and ideological influence on Russian-speakers is visible and horizontal
networks of Russian-speakers can be mobilised for transient actions in physical public spaces, their everyday
lives still happen in their countries of residence. If democratic participation is to be developed and Russian-
speakers are eventually to be involved in the Finnish or European multi-ethnic public sphere, she concludes,
Russian-speakers must be made visible – more present in civic society and the Finnish media.
Olga Brednikova and Elena Nikiforova continue discussion with a study of the construction of Russia’s
borderscapes with Estonia and Finland indisputably familiar others for Russia. A long and complicated
history connects Russia to both countries, but their relationship with Russia and the grounds for bordering
differ significantly. Their chapter analyses the public debate about the Russian-Estonian and Russian-Finnish
relationships as reflected in Nezavisimaia Gazeta, a socio-political Soviet-Russian daily newspaper. By relying
on the concept of orders of justification elaborated by Boltanski and Thévenot, they investigate changes in the
relationships between Russia and Estonia and Russia and Finland, and identify the compositions of orders for
a given borderscape and trace their transformations through time. Their analysis proves that while the two
cases differ significantly, several common trends can be identified. In the Russian-Estonian and Russian-
Finnish borderscapes of the 1990s the domestic and civic orders dominate. In both cases, the civic order has
been less prominent since the early 2000s as the rhetoric of partnership has become replaced by one of
competitiveness and confrontation, establishing the enforcement order as central to cross-border relations. The
main common trend in the debate about Estonia and Finland, they argue, is the change in their orders and
constellations. The long and complicated history of relations affects each side’s contemporary perception of
the other and suggests possible future trajectories.
The chapter by Miika Raudaskoski and Jussi P. Laine departs from the premise that state borders are
not merely the territorial lines of a state’s sovereignty, but also important building blocks of national identity
and integrity, limiting and defining nation-states’ existence but also manifesting themselves tangibly both
symbolically and mentally. Their analysis reflects contested attempts to politicise and reconceptualise the
border in times of political shifts in seeking to explore how and by whom the border between Finland and
Russia has been politicised and (re)conceptualised during the major discursive events. Raudaskoski and Laine
then identify the main conceptual families and border discourses as they appear in the texts of the leading
Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. Rather than reproducing the hegemonic discourses, their chapter
illustrates the contested nature of the Finnish-Russian border, shedding light on its various, and occasionally
contrasting, conceptualisations. The border has continued, they assert, to be conceptualised in terms of
sovereignty and territoriality throughout the post-Cold War period, and this has also affected the more general
understanding of borders. Nation-states have unquestionably lost elements of their former sovereignty, yet this
chapter suggests that the Finnish-Russian border has not been conceptualised only as a post-territorial border
of encounter and cooperation, but even in the post-Cold War era continues to represent a forceful territorial
concept of the border as having a dividing function.
The final chapter of the second part, by Diana Mishkova and Tonka Kostadinova, puts emphasis on the
idea that concepts of border and territoriality, in their traditional Westphalian sense, have returned to both the
political agenda and everyday language in many parts of Europe. Consequently, relationships between borders
and national sovereignty also remain important to the research debate. Sovereignty assumes and justifies an
alignment between territory, identity, and political community, whereas discourses on sovereignty, security,
and identity are at the basis of the territorial state. In their chapter, Mishkova and Kostadinova investigate the
continuities and shifts in the concept of space and border in post-Cold War Bulgaria and analyse how structural
changes in the system of international relations have affected Bulgaria’s place and representation in the mental
political map of Europe and the world. Bulgaria’s geopolitical and cultural identification reflect the shifts in
border conceptualisation through the country’s evolving re-positioning in the mental map of Europe. Their
analysis suggests that Bulgaria’s geopolitical and cultural discursive identification remains highly contested
along party-political and ideological lines. Bulgaria’s commitment to the west has remained generally stable
against a backdrop of territorial change and security challenges, while the country has reaped considerable
dividends from its compliance with the policies of the EU and NATO. Relations with Russia remain sensitive
and a politically instrumentalised division line in domestic debate. Tensions between the EU and Turkey, then,
have added to the Bulgaria’s strategic importance as an external border of the EU, but also to its heightened
sense of insecurity as a frontline with two powerful destabilising neighbours, Russia and Turkey.
Part Three: Changing spatial imaginaries of bordering Europe
Gelinada Grinchenko and Oksana Mikheieva instigate the third and final part of this book by exploring
transformations of border concept in Ukraine. Through an analysis of political statements, official documents,
mass-media reports, but also of more everyday conceptions and practices of the new borderland reality.
Grinchenko and Mikheieva’s analysis sheds light on the attitudes to Ukraine’s official state borders, the
conflict’s ethnicisation in terms of belonging or not belonging to the ‘Russian world’, and everyday problems
related to the crisis. Prior to the crisis, they elucidate, the debate in Ukraine focused on the post-Soviet
statehood on the Russian-Ukrainian border. The events of Euromaidan and increasing Russian aggression
made the border issue more tangible as the border inhabitants suddenly found themselves living in a new
context of delimitation and largely powerless without a clear understanding of the ownership of their territories
or even safe options for crossing the border. Based on the conducted interviews, they assert that in a crisis
situation the value of a political border becomes emphasised and as the people strongly accepting the reality
of the actual border is important. The ability to adapt to new conditions depends on the individual but is also
influenced by the general informational context. In the Ukrainian case, both of the two key information models
(pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian) deepen social divisions and fix positions that are not only contradictory but
often mutually exclusive.
Miika Raudaskoski continues in a similar vein but shifts the focus to Finland, where the struggle between
east and west has traditionally been significant in historical narratives and identity politics. Russia has been
the most significant ‘other’ for Finnish nation-building, whereas affiliation with Europe and the Nordic
countries has served as a reference or target group. Raudaskoski argues that this traditional setting was
challenged, and public political debate seized, by multiple territorial imaginaries through which attempts were
made to remap Finland in Europe during the post-Cold War period. He argues that the Finnish-Russian border
has been repeatedly politicised during periods of political crisis and transition, regardless of any connection a
crisis may have with the border, and that the border has also been used as a prism through which the European
political space has been constructed and Finland’s place within it defined. He concludes that the discussion
cannot be projected as a simple question of belonging to one supranational sphere or another, but that it is
precisely its position between East and West that has been used repeatedly to frame discussions of Finland’s
identity and place in the world. Arguments for and against decisions related to post-Cold War borders have
been sought and produced by politicising the multidimensional attachments of Finland’s politics, economy,
and social and cultural life with the shifting spatial imaginaries of larger supranational spheres.
Zóltan Hajdú approaches conceptual change and spatial imaginaries from the perspective of territorial
changes following World War I and their consequences for the new nation-states of Central Europe. As Hajdú
shows, these territorial shifts created a series of problems for academic research and geography in particular.
Between 1920 and 1945, the sustained focus of Hungarian geography on the Carpathian Basin was justified
by a general view that a certain form of geographic determinism, which stressed the unity of the Carpathian
Basin, would provide a scientific foundation for the restoration of historical Hungary. In the newly created
states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia as well as Romania the main focus of research necessarily shifted to
investigation of the geo-historical contingency of national emergence. This provided ample grounds for a
confrontation between research cultures and a lack of integrative regional approaches within Central European
geography. Under State Socialism, research focusing on the Carpathian Basin was marginalised, limited to
geology, hydrology and natural geography while the analysis of political and social processes was basically
taboo. From 1988 onwards, the renewed social relevance of geography contributed to a reanimation of the
Carpathian Basin as a socio-spatial reference point for Hungarian research. However, this was not the case in
neighbouring states which either rejected, completely ignored or perceived the Carpathian Basin as something
’external’. The problems of the Carpathian Basin, including extreme core-periphery imbalances and a lack of
forceful interstate cooperation, remain unresolved, despite the opportunities provided by European integration.
Furthermore, Hungary, situated at the lowest point of the basin and sharing common borders with all countries
is not only most vulnerable to environmental threats, such as flooding, but could serve to functionally reconnect
urban networks within the region. However, a basic problem lies in reconciling Hungarian ethnopolitical
interests with more integrated economic and environmental development. If the ‘organic’ development of the
Carpathian Basin as a coherent territorial unit within the European Union is to be taken seriously, joint
legitimation on behalf of all constituent states is required. Rather than the rather nationalistic scenarios of a
natural Hungarian stewardship for the region, alternatives oriented towards multilateralism need to be explored
more fully. Here, the Danube-Strategy, neighbourhood relationships, cross-border sub-systems and
cooperation between Hungarian settlement areas as well as EU-inspired regional cooperation could provide a
realistic possibility for the future.
Diana Mishkova and Tonka Kostadinova also trace change and continuity in the conceptualisation of
meso-regional borders. Here, they focus on an analysis of the specific regional framework adopted by the EU
and the major political actors in Bulgaria in the aftermath of the 1999 war in Kosovo, namely the Stability Pact
for Southeast Europe, which spearheaded Bulgaria’s accession into the EU. Underlying it is the understanding
of space and borders as not so much related to their material morphology, but to the premises of their social
production and the ideological underpinnings of this production, and the various forms of interpretation and
representation it embodies. Mishkova and Kostadinova’s analysis is premised on Koselleck’s approach which
involves three interrelated methods of conceptual history. With the help of this approach they examine
situations and events that make the political and social meaning of border concepts historically derivable. Their
study then reflects on the new semantics of border concepts, and the background against which they were
acquired. The reconceptualisation of Bulgarian borders and identity, they postulate, affords interesting insights
into the changing spatial imaginaries of the European neighbourhood and the implications of the EU
transformative processes for the margins of Europe. These imaginaries owed their existence to several major
international and domestic actors, evolved around several markers, and were related not only to national but
also supranational registers of bordering.
By way of conclusion and based on the preceding chapters, Jussi P. Laine and James W. Scott reiterate
the book’s underlying thesis regarding major trends and shifts in political language of post-Cold War borders
and borderscapes. They outline how changes in conceptions of borders can in the first place be associated with
shifts in international relations, changes in geopolitical power relations and related rhetorical strategies for
legitimating political projects of sovereign rule, integration or self-government. At the same time, however,
conceptions of state borders are affected by ‘domestic’ framings of social and political arenas and how
territoriality is attached to projects of legitimising and challenging power in the name of the ‘people’.
Culturally and symbolically, the significance of borders is constantly reconstituted as part of every-day
institutional and discursive practices, strategies of survival and challenge as well as related identities and
identity politics. In considering future developments and possible policy responses, Laine and Scott maintain,
it is important to distinguish between various roles that the EU plays in different borderscapes, as well as
different border context. EU’s geopolitical involvement in Eastern neighbourhood, particularly in Ukraine, has
been a controversial issue with greatly differentiated responses across the EU and in the post-Soviet space.
The possible scenarios as well as policy recommendations that emerge from the differently positioned actors
in this regard are inevitably complex and sometimes contradictory.
References
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Borderscaping: imaginations and practices of border making, 1–9. London: Ashgate.
Liikanen, I., J. W. Scott, and T. Sotkasiira (2016). The end of Wider Europe: the EU, changing borders and
spatial imaginaries of post-Soviet space. In: Liikanen, I., J. W. Scott, and T. Sotkasiira (eds), The EU’s eastern
neighbourhood: migration, borders and regional stability, 1–16 London: Routledge.
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Funded by the EU’s 7th Framework programme for Research and Technological Development. Contract number FP7
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Recognising the close interrelationships between social change and paradigm shifts, this book contributes to an interpretation of conceptual change in the study of borders. In so doing, the book responds to the challenge for generating different ways of conceptualising borders, thereby offering a chance to cope with the ‘real danger of a growing disjuncture between the increasing complexity and differentiation of borders in global politics on the one hand, and yet the apparent simplicity and lack of imagination with which borders and bordering practices continue to be treated on the other’ (Vaughan-Williams, 2012, p. 7). Taking up James Sidaway’s point (2011, pp. 973–4) that, ‘now is the time for a deeper contribution of a focus on borders/bordering within wider social and political theory’, contributions in this volume draw attention to a multiplicity of bordering processes and practices as a relevant lens to illustrate changing configurations of the social and the political. While borders continue to have considerable relevance today, there are ways in which we need to revisit them in light of constantly changing historical, political and social contexts, grasping their shifting and undetermined nature in space and time. This involves a double gaze, simultaneously directed to the changing role of political borders in the globalised world and to a theorisation of the varying relations between borders and society (Rumford, 2006). The second focus is particularly addressed towards a better understanding of the contemporary shapes, configurations and re-configurations of the social and the political in an age of globalization.
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The paper is based on first results of the EUBORDERSCAPES project supported by the 7th European Framework Programme and revisits a number of major themes and concepts that have been important for the development of border studies in recent years. It also investigates emerging research perspectives that appear to be important drivers of conceptual change from the perspective of human geography. The authors stress that the present state of debate indicate that contemporary border studies question the rationales behind everyday border-making by understanding borders as institutions, processes and symbols. A particular attention is paid to the process of reconfiguring state borders in terms of territorial control, security and sovereignty and to the nexus between everyday life-worlds, power relations and constructions of social borders.
The end of Wider Europe: the EU, changing borders and spatial imaginaries of post-Soviet space
  • I Liikanen
  • J W Scott
  • T Sotkasiira
Liikanen, I., J. W. Scott, and T. Sotkasiira (2016). The end of Wider Europe: the EU, changing borders and spatial imaginaries of post-Soviet space. In: Liikanen, I., J. W. Scott, and T. Sotkasiira (eds), The EU's eastern neighbourhood: migration, borders and regional stability, 1-16 London: Routledge.