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Rebordering Europe: external boundaries and integration in the European Union
Abstract
The crises of the European Union and the geopolitical shifts in its international environment have generated a backlash against the post-Cold War ‘debordering’ of European integration. Whereas integration theories focus almost exclusively on the EU’s internal boundaries and developments, this framework paper conceptualizes and theorizes integration as a process of internal debordering and external rebordering. It sketches the history of European integration in a bordering perspective and proposes general assumptions about the EU’s bordering process. Accordingly, rebordering pressures result from widening boundary gaps at the EU’s external borders, exogenous shocks to cross-border transactions, growing community deficits of debordering, and their politicization. Whether external rebordering succeeds and how it interacts with internal boundary formation, depends on EU-level boundary negotiations and the relative costs and benefits of external vs. internal rebordering.
... Politically, the legal identity of people living in border areas is an essential aspect to ensure the welfare and security of people in border areas, especially in carrying out the process of interaction and communication (Sabuna, 2020). Therefore, geographical, political, and legal factors are important aspects that cannot only determine territorial boundaries (Sassen, 2020;Jessop, 2020;Barbour, 2023;Schimmelfennig, 2021), but also regulate how people in border areas behave, interact, and communicate in compliance with legal provisions (Rokhanyah et al., 2023;Encarnacao et al., 2022;Uly et al., 2023;Mauk et al., 2023;. However, the interaction and communication of people living in border areas must also be recognized as a vital socio-cultural aspect beyond political and legal perspective (Suwartiningsih & Purnomo, 2020;Ida et al., 2023), as local wisdom in these areas plays a key role in maintaining harmonization between border communities (Hasnan & Pakri, 2021). ...
The contestation of the state and Indigenous people at the Indonesia – Timor Leste border has formed a distinctive pattern. The state’s contestation represents sovereignty, while Indigenous people reflects socio-cultural integrity. The dynamics and strategic issues of the border area in Indonesia – Timor Leste are interesting topics of the study, especially those related to the resistance between the state and customary institutions. Conflicts often arise due to contestations over political and cultural boundaries, shaping the relationship between the state and local communities. This topic is significant as it involves two parties: state institutions and customary institutions. Moreover, there is a strong common thread connecting these interactions. This research examined the forms of political and cultural contestation and analyzes the factors driving the contestation between these two entities. Furthermore, it explored the implications of these contestations for the role of customary institutions in Indonesia-Timor Leste bilateral relations. This research applied an ethnographic approach, relying on the acquisition of primary and secondary data collected for analysis. The forms of contestation between the state and customary institutions include conflicts over identity, struggles regarding the formal spatial concept of the state and the socio-cultural space of customary institutions, and disputes over ownership claims. A key factor driving these contestations is the restriction of customary participation which is restricted by the government through regulations and marginalization of customary institutions. The contestation has implications for regulation, including compromises between the state and customary practices, the provision of new customary spaces, and the evolving relationship between Indigenous communities and transnational cultures.
... Internal and external instabilities from the Euro crisis of 2010s through to Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic (Ferrara & Kriesi, 2022;Schimmelfennig, 2021) have challenged European integration. These crises have brought the discussions about European disintegration to the forefront (Patberg, 2021). ...
... Generally, deborderization makes boundary inhibitory gaps narrower, thus increasing transnational opportunities and transactions. Schimmelfennig (2021) warns that debordering could negatively impact the collective security of bordering nation-states, exposing them to transnational crimes, espionage, and military invasions, as well as external political interference. Essentially, "pervasive debordering," involving rapid expansion and invention of new boundary routes, weakens the traditional competencies of nation-states (Schimmelfennig 2021, 312). ...
This article argues that the European biometric ID installations and securitization practices at West African borders harm African migrants and compromise the security goals of Europe and Africa. Using Niger's experience, I contend that migrants' poor adaption to the biometric border processes is closely connected to their identity conflicts, as well as their atomization and weakening of their social integration. The new border security measures are implicated in the state's criminalizing and dehumanizing practices which migrants and borderbrokers experience every day. I coin two concepts, namely, biometric reborderization and agentic deborderization, to draw close attention to ways by which the European biometric projects are significantly reconfiguring African borders. These borders now represent both a dynamic space for migration control, and contested sites of biometric circumvention and subversion by biometric noncompliant migrants who constantly negotiate alternative means for mobilities. Moral mobility agents contest/circumvent European biometric reborderization via the use of parallel border routes.
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... Moreover, these initiatives also demonstrate that some are organized as exclusive clubs, while others adopt more open organizational forms. This distinction highlights which borders are considered insurmountable and which can be more easily negotiated (Schimmelfenning 2021). ...
This article examines the evolving landscape of European security cooperation with partners outside the Euro-Atlantic theater, focusing on the Indo-Pacific region. Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European threat assessments prompted a re-evaluation of security policies, highlighting the importance of partnerships with like-minded countries. This shift has introduced complexities in European security dynamics, including updated bilateral engagements, novel minilateral formats, and some revisions to multilateral cooperation. This article critically assesses who, how, and in what way is organizing these new and updated security partnerships. Focusing on the phenomenon of cross-regional cooperation, the article examines fundamental questions related to the organization of European security. First, the article investigates the beneficiaries of European security initiatives (who benefits) and the extent to which European actors have a clear vision for such engagements. Namely, whether they have been acting as architects, bricoleurs, agnostics, or spoilers. It also examines the mechanisms employed to ensure security and identifies the threats targeted by these measures (how), particularly regarding collaboration among multiple revisionist states. Lastly, the article explores how existing and newly formed cooperation modes impact European security architecture (in what way), arguing that some contribute to the existing “shopping malls” and others to the “tree houses.”
Purpose
Supply chain disruptions caused by geopolitical risks or global disasters negatively impact high-tech exports. However, the absorptive capacity (AC) of information systems can mitigate these negative impacts. This research aims to address the research question: “ How does information technology absorptive capacity (ITAC) moderate the relationship between unemployment and high-tech export performance (HTEP) ? ”
Design/methodology/approach
A research model, including the proposed relationships, is presented to address the research question using the practice-based view (PBV) as a theoretical lens. The collected data consist of 270 samples, including a 10-year panel dataset from 27 countries, to examine the adverse impact of supply chain disruptions. This research employs panel regression models with fixed and random effects estimators to evaluate the impact of unemployment on HTEP and explain the moderating impacts.
Findings
The results show that unemployment negatively influences HTEP. However, ITAC significantly mitigates this negative effect on export performance during supply chain disruptions.
Originality/value
This research contributes to literature by introducing ITAC as an influential moderator in high-tech export resilience. We contribute to the PBV by introducing a new moderator. Moreover, this research addresses gaps in the literature regarding how firms can adapt to global crises by building innovative capacity.
The governance of international borders has evolved into a contentious issue of political competition along the cosmopolitan-nationalistic divide. Despite a strong polarization over the level of border openness, many border security policies are carried by a strong cross-partisan support base. This puzzle suggests that public preferences toward border security might be more context-dependent and prone to framing strategies than previously assumed. We develop a theoretical argument that explains under what conditions citizen preferences over borders are more likely to polarize or to converge, and we examine the effect of concrete border security measures, their justification, and the neighboring country to which they apply. We test our argument with a novel open-ended question on border mental associations and a conjoint experiment among 4,700 Germans. Results show that people attach very similar meanings to the concept of border, and that securitization frames and joint EU border guards are a first-rank choice leading to lower levels of polarization. Greater agreement is driven by left-leaning respondents shifting toward a more favorable view of border closure in response to such proposals. Building fences and migration-related justifications polarize the most across different subgroups. These results contribute to our understanding of the polarization potential of border policies and have important implications for the freedom-security trade-off.
The refugee crisis is rooted in the host‐home schism, a fundamental disconnection between the host (the EU) and home (refugees' country of origin). This schism is generated by the EU's migratory policies resulting from the struggles between different political camps, and the resulting compromise between the far‐right/exclusive camp and the liberal camp. To assess this schism, we have conducted an in‐depth analysis of Syrian refugees' perceptions with focus groups. Our findings demonstrate that this schism between home and host countries shapes the everyday experiences of the Syrian refugees in the EU. The divide between home and host countries is reflected in their experiences, limiting their agency and distorting their identity. As a result, this schism renders their integration into European countries ineffective. Moreover, it creates multiple dilemmas for their positions in their host societies as they find themselves entrapped inside multifaceted contradictions that they cannot escape from whatever they do. We propose that the host‐home schism could be bridged by institutionalizing both refugees' transnational activities and responsibility towards home. We label this proposal as a functional place.
Das Working Paper zeigt Kooperationsprofile der Governance-Analysen des CoBo-Projekts (Cohesion in Border Regions), das vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung gefördert wurde (2021-2023). Hierin werden die Grenzregionen mit deutscher Beteiligung aus verschiedenen institutionellen Blickwinkeln beleuchtet und deren Themen, Akteure und Governance untersucht.
Current debates on the future of the European Union tend to privilege statist perspectives according to which geopolitical challenges and internal politicization either spur disintegration, or drive the EU towards more federalist, centralized and externally bounded features. Starting from the EU’s multilevel and polycentric architecture, this article investigates how far such federalist dynamics reach out to task-specific, functionalist EU institutions, such as regulatory agencies. Enjoying a certain degree of autonomy from the EU’s central, politically encompassing institutions, regulatory agencies have established close ties with third country regulators to tackle interdependence. Based on the comparative analysis of six regulatory agencies representing varying patterns of international interdependence, sectoral politicization and regulatory authority, we show that functionalist pressure for international cooperation indeed sustains fluid boundaries. However, EU central institutions such as the Commission and the Parliament have increasingly claimed control over agencies’ external ramifications. The result is enduring functionalist de-bordering, but federally controlled.
Enlargement is the most significant debordering policy of the European Union. In an analysis of debates in the European Parliament and a sample of member state national parliaments, this article examines whether EU enlargement discourse has been characterized by a politicized rebordering process since the mid-2000s. We find that enlargement discourse has become more ‘rebordered’ in the course of the 2010s. Moreover, enlargement has lost salience and become more contested. In a regression analysis of enlargement positions and frames, we further show that the enlargement discourse is systematically politicized along cultural partisan lines. Members of culturally conservative and nationalist parties are more opposed to enlargement and use more restrictive frames. Finally, we observe that cultural boundary gaps based on the dominant religion of potential member states reinforce the cultural divide in the discourse.
This article assesses the consequences and implications of the rise of European populist parties for European defense cooperation. Focusing on six of the most prominent populist parties in Europe today, we examine their positions along three important defense-related issues: recommended national force posture; integrated military forces; and main national security threats. To determine their position on these three issues, we examine every party manifesto and, if available, official party document on security and defense policy since 2010. We argue that the rise of populism in Europe does not represent an inflection point for the future of European defense cooperation. Instead, our analysis reveals the following three findings: European defense cooperation will continue to be essentially ad hoc, functionally driven, and issue specific; populist parties' attitudes and preferences regarding European defense cooperation both overlap with and diverge from those of other populists and non-populists in the EU; and populism over time may contribute to a shift in domestic preferences toward a Europe that more readily embraces military power.
We present the reaction of the EU and eight member states to the refugee crisis 2015/16 as a case of ‘defensive integration’. In the absence of a joint EU solution, the member states were left to their own devices and took a series of national measures that varied from one country to the other, depending on their policy heritage, and the combination of problem pressure and political pressure which they were facing. As a result, debordering responses prevailed at first. Only in a second stage a set of national and EU measures aiming at internal and external re-bordering were introduced. At this stage, destination states proved to be the most important drivers of a joint solution, with Germany taking the lead. The overall outcome is an example of ‘defensive integration’, aiming squarely at joint solutions to stop the refugee flow outside the EU but not to manage it inside the EU.
The idea that internal inclusion requires external exclusion features prominently in many theoretical accounts of modern statehood and citizenship. In a similar vein, it has been argued that internal freedom of movement in the European Union requires strict immigration control at its external borders. This article sheds light on the relationship between internal de-bordering and external re-bordering, making two main contributions. First, we theorise the idea of an integration-demarcation conditionality based on the European Union's symbolic legitimacy and functional needs. Second, we test the common belief that public support for free movement within Europe depends on a restrictive border regime for non-European immigration. For this purpose, we assess how the external shock of the 2015 refugee crisis shaped the bordering preferences of European citizens. We find that the crisis primarily increased citizens' support for external re-bordering, and did not substantially undermine their support for internal free movement. Thus, the large-scale arrival of refugees has not led to a general backlash against open borders and immigration but has, rather, increased public support for the European model of combining internal freedoms with external controls.
I discuss the collective action problems associated with different kinds of joint external bordering and highlight specific aspects of the European Union which I argue make it particularly ineffective at supplying (many) forms of external bordering. Applying this framework to the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, European Immigration Policy, and European Neighbourhood Policy I explain why each of these areas are subject to chronic under-provision. I conclude that a ‘Fortress Europe’ is unlikely to materialize, giving rise instead to national re-bordering as a reaction to growing pressures on the Union’s internal and external borders.
Postfunctionalism posits a tradeoff between the functional scale of governance and the territorial scope of community: functional scale is large and transnational for efficiency reasons; community is small-scale and (sub-)national for reasons of social trust and collective identification. COVID-19 has turned this tradeoff upside down: it has shrunk functional scale to the (sub-)national level in the name of security, while lifting expectations of community to the grand transnational scale in the name of solidarity. This reversal of scales has resulted in a rapid rebordering of the Single Market and the Schengen area on the one hand, and a significant debordering of fiscal risk and burden sharing on the other. We reconstruct the evolution of this double-movement from January to August 2020, contrast it to historical trends in the scale-community tradeoff of European integration, and discuss implications for postfunctionalist theory.
This study focuses on the historical configuration of territorial borders and functional boundaries of the European nation states, and interprets integration as a process of transcendence, redefinition, and shift of those same boundaries that alters the nature of the nation states’ domestic political structures. The core of the argument concerns the relationship between the institutional design of the new Brussels centre, the boundary redefinitions that result from its political production, and the consequences of both these processes on the established national and emerging European political structures. The EU is interpreted through three key conceptual tools: ‘centre formation’, ‘system building’, and ‘political structuring’. The ‘centre formation’ — with limited administrative and fiscal capabilities and strong regulatory and judicial capabilities — is not accompanied by ‘system building’ in the field of cultural integration, social sharing institutions, and participation rights, that is, by institutions forcing its components to stay within it beyond the mere instrumental calculations. Given that for any new centre a balance must exist between its system building capacity and the scope and reach of its political production, the argument is that the ambitious political production of the EU is clearly out of balance with its weak system building capacity. As far as the ‘political structuring’ is concerned, this work argues that the institutional design of the Union and its weak system building militate to date against any stable form of political structuring for its representative actors, while its growing political production tends to undermine national mechanisms of political representation and legitimation. Under these conditions, any institutional democratization without political structuring may turn into facade electioneering, at best, or dangerous experiments, at worst. In the view of classical sociology — that takes the existence of a certain overlap between social identities, political boundaries, and social practices as a precondition for establishing political agency and a ‘rational’ political order — the EU is both a source of problems but also a possible solution to them. It can be seen as a project for regaining some degree of coherence between extended social practices, social identities, solidarity ties, and rules of deliberation at the European level. Most of the ideas expressed in this book show how problematic this project is believed to be.
The Brussels Effect challenges the prevalent view that the European Union (EU) is a declining world power. It argues that notwithstanding its many obvious challenges, the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image through a phenomenon called the “Brussels Effect.” The Brussels Effect refers to the EU’s unilateral power to regulate global markets. Without the need to resort to international institutions or seek other nations’ cooperation, the EU has the unique ability among nations today to promulgate regulations that shape the global business environment, elevating standards worldwide and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce. Different from many other forms of global influence, the Brussels Effect entails that the EU does not need to impose its standards coercively on anyone—market forces alone are often sufficient to convert the EU standard into the global standard as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. In this way, the EU wields significant, unique, and highly penetrating power to unilaterally transform global markets, including through its ability to set the standards in diverse areas such as competition regulation, data protection, online hate speech, consumer health and safety, or environmental protection.