EUrope and its “other”: bordering processes and crossborder relations along the EU’s southern and eastern frontier

Since the year 2003, the European Union is devoting considerable resources to the management of political and economic relations with its neighbouring countries. The strategy is aimed, on the one hand, at increasing cooperation and crossborder relations along the EU external frontier, being based on the idea of a “wider Europe”: an imaginary of a multi-scalar and post-national geography with blurred borders. On the other hand the EU is accused, on the contrary, to promote the construction of a “fortress Europe” and to reinforce, rather then to blur, its external frontier, through means of military, institutional and cultural bordering. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, to show how strategies of bordering and crossbordering do indeed coexist within EU politics toward its neighbouring countries, in order to reflect upon which specific border regime is in the making. Second, our aim is to go beyond the apparently homogeneous and standardized approach that EU is proposing to its neighbouring countries, in order to identify differences among the EU’s discoursive strategies toward its southern vis-à-vis its eastern external border. The object of the analysis will be mainly political texts, produced at different scales: ENP action plans, ENP strategy papers and crossborder cooperation programmes. The discussion is based on recent geographical research that investigates the changing spatiality of contemporary borders, and the special case of the EU’s external frontier, from the perspective of institutionalism and constructivism.