Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
terms of identity/territory/sovereignty, as many insightful academic studies on this have
shown us, is often done through the use of geopolitics (the politicisation and discrim-
ination of spatial differences) and chronopolitics (the politicisation and consequent dis-
crimination of time differences), expressed by terms like
development
,
underdevelop-
ment
,
lagging behind
,
speed
,
race
,
modernity
,
postmodernity
, and
a-modernity
. What is
also critical in this process of othering, and of much significance to the understanding
of the modes of border control of a certain sociospatial container, is the regime of ac-
cess—the dominant beliefs or ideology by which a sociospatial order manifests itself
in a certain configuration of the biopolitical, geopolitical, and chronopolitical regime of
accessathand.Theconfigurationofthisregimeinturnshapeshowaccesstotheorderis
sustained and hence how, through which border tactics, the other is stratified, immobil-
ised, anddislocated atborderlines that arenolonger,ashasbeenarguedbymanyschol-
ars now, necessarily found at the territorial end or beginning of nation-states but can be
found increasingly everywhere, such as in airports, public spaces, and traffic roads: the
omnipresence of a diffused border (see Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2009).
B/ordering and Othering the EU
How then can the EU's current border regime be understood keeping the above generic
approach on b/ordering and othering in mind? If we look at the entity of the EU then
through this border lens, what is most significant perhaps is the rapid change of the bor-
dering, ordering, and othering developments. After the opening of the internal borders
oftheEU,thepoliticalandpolicyattentionshiftedmoreandmore,andswiftlyso,tothe
protection of the external borders of the EU. Because of the new and heavy emphasis
on the external borders, many argue that the EU is also changing how it is or should be
perceived and understood. In this context, early commentators optimistically pointed to
the many faces the external border of the EU had in terms of its distinct and noncongru-
ent geopolitical, institutional/legal, transactional, and cultural spaces (Friis and Murphy
1999; Hudson 2000; Smith 1996). To wit, some have argued that the external borders
of the EU are to be understood as “fuzzy” (Christiansen and Jorgensen 2000; Zielonka
2001) and that the EU as a bordered entity will resemble a “maze” or “sieve” (Brown
2002;ChristiansenandJorgensen2000).Yet,overthelastfewyears,andespeciallywith
various authors within the constructionist and post colonial wings of the research front,
the discourse has become dominant that the EU is increasingly constructing colonial-
likelinesorfrontiers,boundariesofaself-perceivedsuperiorimperialpower,oftenthen
seen as the soft imperial sister of the United States.
At the frontiers of the EU then, which are often defined as Europe and not the EU,
these authors typically claim that the EU sees for itself a civilisational mission, often
typified as othering, to Europeanise or at least downscale the “radicalisation” of per-
