Between Security and Mobility: Negotiating a Hardening Border Regime in the Russian-Estonian Borderland

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 27th Feb 2015, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1015408Since the end of the Cold War order post-Soviet borders have been characterised by geopolitical tensions and divergent imaginations of desirable political and spatial orders. Drawing upon ethnographic research in two border towns at the Russian-Estonian border, the article makes a case for a grounded examination of these border dynamics that takes into account how borders as sites of ‘mobility and enclosure’ are negotiated in everyday life and shaped by the differentiated incorporations of statecraft into people’s lives. Depending on their historical memories, people interpret the border either as a barrier to previously free movement or as a security device and engage in correspondingly different relations to the state – privileging local concerns for mobility or adopting the state’s concerns over security and sovereignty. Analysing these border negotiations and the relations between citizens and the state, articulated in people’s expectations and claims, can provide us with a better understanding of how people participate in the making of borders and contribute to the stability and malleability of political orders

Confronting 'Uncivil Society' and the 'Dark Side of Globalization': are Sociological Concepts up to the Task?

International terrorism is frequently categorized as one element of 'uncivil society' or as the 'dark side of globalization.' The paper examines these concepts, finding them unhelpful in understanding the context for the September 11 attacks in the US. Their weakness derives in large part from the uncritical usage of the terms 'civil society' and 'globalization' characteristic of much contemporary sociological work. In consequence, sociology is in danger of being marginalized from public debate about the most important issues of our day.Civil Society; Dark Side Of Globalization; Globalization; International Terrorism; Uncivil Society

Thinking about European Spaces

Nowadays Europe is unfamiliar territory: pan-European spaces coexist with national territories, borderlands soften the sharp outer edges of the EU, and networks are indifferent to borders as they connect Europeans to each other and to the wider world. Borders have undergone dramatic changes, not only in terms of their extent and range: enlargement has massively lengthened the EU's borders and projected them beyond the former Iron Curtain. On some accounts, Europe has been rebordered; the external borders of the EU protect a borderless single market within which internal space mobility is greatly enhanced. On other accounts, borders are themselves networked, mobile and diffused throughout society. These changes have also impacted upon structures of pan-European governance, which combine the management of genuinely European spaces and Commission-sponsored Euro-regions with more traditional levels of national governance. These shifts point to important transformations in the relationship between European spaces, borders, and governance. The EU can no longer simply be viewed as a Europe of nationstates or a putative supra-state. It is also a multi-levelled or networked polity, a borderless internal market, or a 'Europe of the regions'. The spaces of European governance -and particularly the relationship between spaces, borders, and governance -have never been so complex, nor in need of thorough academic reappraisal. The spatial novelty of Europe, and attempts to apprehend and understand this novelty, can be seen very clearly in the terms and concepts with which contemporary Europe is described and analysed. In the past few years, a whole new lexicon of spatial politics has been incorporated into EU studies: polycentricity (multiple centres and diffused growth rather than core-periphery distinctions); 'network Europe' (an EU characterized by connectivity and mobility); territorial cohesion (the balanced distribution of economic activities across the Union); multi-level governance (partnerships between E

Do we need a core curriculum in European studies?

This paper is a post-print of an article published in: European Political Science: EPS 3(1) 2003. Thedefinitive version is available at:http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/publications/eps/onlineissues/autumn2003/trainingandteaching.htmUmbach and Scholl’s (2003) intervention on the benefits of a core curriculum in European Studies contains much of interest, particularly their emphasis on the need for EU studies to be interdisciplinary and international, an emphasis which is gaining increasing recognition. There are however two issues that we wish to raise. The first is the idea of a core curriculum, the need for which we resiststrongly. The second is to point out that Umbach and Scholl suppose that no core curriculum exists at present in EU studies: this is incorrect. We dissent from the proposal for a core curriculum, however worthy the idea. Acore curriculum contains inherent limitations or constraints on the academicimagination. Introducing a core curriculum would mean that an opportunity forlively debate, contestation, and increased multidisciplinary dialogue on themeaning of integration - as well as how to move beyond it in the study of the EU -would be lost. Rather, we need to embrace greater diversity in discussions on newand refined theories, and attempt to develop new approaches to EU studies thathighlight issues of, for example, social contestation and legitimation/delegitimation.We are already benefiting from the end of the ‘permissive consensus’regarding elitist decision-making. Let us not fall into the trap of a permissive consensus of elitist academics. Let us encourage our students to engage, debate, question and examine the meaning of European integration. Re-examining the origins, processes and objectives of integration studies in a global and multiperspectival manner will reap more rewards than a core curriculum ever could

Many Europes: Towards a Multidisciplinary and Sociohistorical Perspective

Many Europes embodies a commitment to expanding multidisciplinary analyses of contemporary European politics. The essays in this collection are not united by a core set of methods or disciplinary debates. Rather our collective intent is to proliferate knowledge on the organization and practice of political and sociocultural power in contemporary Europe. The contributors accomplish this by posing novel questions and answering these through innovative forms of inductive research. This special issue is decidedly not concerned with improving or building upon the explanatory accounts in the mainstream EU Studies. In contrast, it advocates for more robust historical, ontological and global readings of European transformations. We conclude by arguing that Many Europes also offers a path to reinvigorating older modes of comparative inquiry that would help in contextualizing an increasingly complex and hybrid Europe