PORTAL LAYOUT TEMPLATE PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies Vol. 4, no. 2, July 2007 ISSN: 1449-2490 http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/portal The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? Damian Spruce, University of Technology, Sydney The political geography of Europe has, for centuries, been based around the borders of its nation-states. The ability of the nation-state to control its territory and police its borders has been essential to the practices of war and diplomacy, the legitimacy of governments, immigration policies and trade. But processes of globalization and European Union (EU) integration have transformed the borders of Europe and the nation-states within it. While globalization theorists tend to posit an opening up of borders to global flows of capital, information and people, the changed nature of the border is itself often left unexamined and it is assumed that borders have simply disappeared. Some scholars and activists, however, are now arguing that, rather than fading away, borders are proliferating in the globalized world and their functions spreading into many different areas of society. This article examines the transformation of the ‘classical’ border of the nation-state into a number of new forms, using the work of theorists such as Balibar (2004a, 2004b), Mezzadra (2004), Rigo (2005) and Walters (2004). It then examines how these theories have been applied in recent literature, and in particular Chris Rumford’s (2006) analysis of the European Neighbourhood policy and his argument that this represents a ‘cosmopolitanization’ of European borders. The classical border The history of the modern nation-state begins in Europe in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. Borders were from the very beginning an essential component of this new political form; the key terms of the Treaty were exclusive sovereignty over the state’s particular territory, and the clear delineation of the borders between the conflicting Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? powers, the French and Swedish states and the principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. The Treaty established one of the most important aspects of sovereignty at the time, the principle of ‘cuius regio, eius religio’; that is, each state could determine the religious practice within its territory (Green 1954, 324). With the Treaty the role of the Holy Roman Empire began its decline, marking ‘the end of the medieval conception of Europe which had long been dying and the emergence of the modern state’ (Green 1954, 326). However it is not until the nineteenth century that the nation-state in Europe fully comes into being (Agnew 2003) when European nationalisms and the colonial ambitions of European states became dominant. At this time the European nation-state model is exported around the world and, Rigo (2005) argues, comes to dominate all other forms of geopolitical divisions: ‘The world-wide success of the territorial system of national states transformed every frontier of expansion into a boundary between homogenous and symmetrical political entities, overshadowing all other meanings of political and territorial borders.’ Mezzadra (2004) argues that this is the time of the ‘classical’ concept of the border, marking out a direct geophysical correspondence between nation, state, and territory. He quotes Georg Jellinek’s (1900) argument that the unitary nature of the territory of the state, that is the clarity of its borders and the absence of overlapping territories and sovereignty, is one of the essential elements of the state’s definition. The German school of political geography in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of which Jellinek was a member, took the theorization of the border as an important part of its work. One of its leading figures, Ratzel, wrote of the need to divide up and apportion territory into bordered areas: ‘Every State is a portion of humanity and a portion of territory. Man is unthinkable without land, and much less the greatest works of man on the planet, that is the State’ (1897, 2). The division and bordering of both territory and people is viewed as a fundamental component of the establishment of the nation-state. Similarly, the British imperial administrator Lord Curzon, whose work involved drawing up the borders of Britain’s colonies, argued that unitary borders and defined territories were the basis on which states were founded; indeed, ‘the integrity of its borders is the condition for existence of the State’ (1907, 2). Borders were also essential to international order and for Curzon were thus ‘the razor’s edge on which hang suspended the modern issues of war or peace, PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 2 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? of life or death to nations’ (1907, 2). Balibar argues that these types of borders are as much a product of modernity as the nation-state itself, replacing pre-modern boundary forms, such as ‘marches’ and ‘limes’ (2004b, 3).1 The nation-state drew together administrative, juridical, fiscal, military and even linguistic functions into a particular territory, controlled by a monopolistic state power. Without the border in its classical definition the nation-state as we know it would not have been possible. But despite the predominance of nation-state borders, other boundaries have also marked the European continent. The historian Ferdinand Braudel (1976) has traced the emergence of the Mediterranean as a border between the lands on its north and south shores. Prior to the sixteenth century, he argues, it had been primarily a space of connection and interaction between the countries that lie on its shores (Braudel 1976; Driessen 1998), but from the 1500s it developed into a barrier, leading to differential social and economic development that has continued into our own times. Another example of a boundary beyond the borders of the nation-state was the iron curtain, separating non-Communist Europe from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries after the Second World War. The transformation of borders After the collapse of Communism and the major advances in the integration of the EU in the 1990s, the borders of European nation-states have undergone profound changes. The work of analysing European borders, of course, is essential to the study of Europe and its relationships with the regions on its edges. But Europe’s borders have also had important impacts at a global level and their influence continues today. Balibar argues that the process of drawing borders in Europe was also, in the epoch of European colonization, a process of dividing up the whole earth, as Europe considered itself the centre of the world (2004a, 7). European boundaries were extended from Europe to cover the globe, drawing borders through territories in Africa, Asia and the Americas and assigning them to particular European powers (which themselves were defined by their territorial existence). Today, Europe’s borders continue to be an important object of analysis. Mezzadra (in 1 A march is a zone between two territories where there is interaction and assimilation between two or more peoples. I discuss Walters’s use of limes later in this essay. PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 3 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? Bojadzijev & Saint-Saens 2006) has argued that important qualities of the EU itself can be identified through its borders. He uses the work of Beck and Grande (2004) to suggest that the EU’s borders are metonymic of the EU, particularly in its move to a postfordist ‘flexible’ capitalism. In particular, he sees in the flexibility and mobility of European borders a key characteristic of the institutional architecture of the European Union itself. The transformations in its borders, then, can provide a new perspective on the direction of the EU and the integration process. Flexibility need not only be associated with postmodern capitalism. The flexibilization and deterritorialization of Europe’s borders and the blurring of the in/out, us/them, and nation-state/federation dichotomies (Outhwaite 2006) has the potential to lead to a desirable outcome, to the sort of cosmopolitan, ‘reflexive’ Europe envisaged by Beck and Grande: ‘Europe is another word for variable geometry, variable national interests, variable concern (Betroffenheit), variable internal and external relations, variable statehood’ (2004, 16). The borders of the European Union also have a more direct influence on its character, it is argued, through the way that the border regime creates the conditions of possibility for the ‘extracomunitari’ to exist inside the EU: ‘Their function is not only one of control but also of inclusive selection. Their transformation is closely related to the development of European citizenship and the management of migration flows, and the border regime itself ‘produces’ the foreigner’ (Mezzadra in Bojadzijev and Saint-Saens 2006). Borders not only block or control flows, they also produce them. Bauman (1997, 17) similarly argues that the EU’s borders produce ‘otherness,’ that the stranger is created through the mechanisms of the border. Balibar’s four geospatial dimensions of Europe Before considering how the transformation of Europe’s borders has been theorised, it is useful to consider spatial theories of Europe as a whole. One of the most compelling frameworks for understanding these theories comes from Balibar’s ‘Humboldt Lecture in Human Geography’ (2004b), in which he sets out four different patterns or dimensions to Europe and its borders. Balibar argues that in the current global age we no longer live on the edge of a simple international ‘borderline,’ as we did in the Cold War. ‘Rather we are situated increasingly in the midst of an ubiquitous and multiple PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 4 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? border’ which connects almost all parts of the world with each other, a ‘World-border.’ The territorial sovereignty of the state has been dismantled progressively over the last few decades, with some border functions being reinforced (police functions, immigration control), others weakened and separated from the borderline (e.g. monetary independence, fiscal control). In Europe this has linked up with the EU integration process: European borders have been rendered open to indefinite expansion along the current model of a confederation of states (Balibar 2004b). Balibar posits four dimensions to the European political space, each of them also being a different way of understanding the border within it. The first is that of Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis (1993), whereby the world’s conflicts largely become religious and cultural, or ‘civilizational,’ and the borders or faultlines of these conflicts lie in multicultural states. Europe itself is becoming a major faultline or intermediary zone of competition between rival civilizations. The second dimension draws on the models of Castells (1996) and Sassen (1996, 98), who propose that circulation processes (and deterritorialization) become more important than territoriality and territorialization. Boundaries are still significant, but they are always being transgressed, and diasporic and nomadic subjects start to assert their control and become the norm, rather than the rooted or embedded subjects of the nation- state. When these ideas are applied to Europe, Balibar argues, they tend to phantomize the continent: the flows of capital, population, communication and political action all go through Europe but never elect it as a permanent site (2004b, 10). Europe is deterritorialized and delocalized, becoming more part of the imaginary and less part of the real. The third dimension sees the EU structured around central states, with increasing concentric circles of belonging, moving out from France and Germany to the states that do not yet have the Euro, and to the newly joined states, candidate states, and neighbour states that are unlikely to become part of Europe, but that will always be close and economically integrated into it in some ways. The distance from the core to the periphery is a political distance rather than a geographical or physical one. Further from the centre it is harder to draw boundaries, and borders appear more and more like medieval marches or limes. In the final dimension, that of cross-over/overlapping folds, PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 5 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? there are no centres, only peripheries, the overlaps of one area (or centre, perhaps) on another. These marches are characterized by hybridity and cultural invention, and in this sense the Balkan ‘patchwork’ can be seen as the epitome of Europe rather than as an exceptional area. Walter’s analysis of the deterritorialized border Walters (2004) draws on Balibar’s work in his analysis of EU borders, examining the mechanisms and technologies used to police and control frontier spaces. He argues that while national borders remain the preeminent boundaries in geopolitics, the borders around regional blocs are also becoming geopolitically significant. He uses the idea of geostrategy to look at developments around regional borders, and identifies several important geostrategies, each of which involves a particular way of territorializing the space of the border. The first is that of the Networked (Non)border which builds on and deepens the second spatial dimension discussed by Balibar, that of circulation processes and deterritorialization. It involves ‘the removal of border controls from fixed positions along the geographical borderlines of most EU states’ and their replacement with ‘networks of control’ (Walters 2004, 679-680). The Networked (Non)border resonates with the themes of deterritorialization and visions of ‘borderless worlds’ and conforms to neoliberal principles aimed at the removal of obstacles to the free movement of peoples, goods and services. Despite this rhetoric, however, it should be recognised that the removal of border controls brings with it new forms of regulation, for example: cross-border police cooperation, mobile surveillance teams on each side of the border, exchange of information between states, harmonization of migration and asylum policy, and the recognition of common standards in border management. One example of these developments is the way that the Schengen regime replaces internal borders with external zones of police co-operation, which is to say that the old border is being dispersed or diffused, a process of deterritorialization. Deleuze and Guattari (1980, 17) argue, however, that any movement of deterritorialization will be linked with a process of reterritorialization that ‘striates, draws lines, fixes, orders, localises and segments’ (Walters 2004). So as this new geostrategy disconnects one particular territorial relationship it establishes at the same time new relationships with PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 6 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? the geophysical environment in which it is located. There is a movement of reterritorialization, a new method of policing these borders and marking out this land, and a new territory emerges from the old one, cutting across and emerging tangentially from it. The police forces on both sides of the border work together to keep the border secure, reconfiguring themselves as networks involving joint tasks that take the same networked form. Rather than a line which divides armed installations, or a zone of confrontation, the border becomes a joint responsibility and the locus of a new practice of police cooperation … The enemy is the networks, gangs, terrorists which cut across/under borders …. under this dispensation the logic is to unite the police agencies and authorities across borders in the name of a perpetual struggle or war against a postnational (and postpolitical) enemy. (Walters 2004, 682) Instead of the edge or the wall, the border becomes a strategic node within a transnational network of control. The Networked (Non)border also points away from the border as a contiguous space, a kind of skin for the state. The space of border control is disconnected from the politico-territorial borders of the state so that, for instance, there is much more concentration of border control at airports, far within the geophysical borders of the state, than there is along the physical border. March The Networked (Non)border model suggests a growth in the processes of deterritorialization in Europe, but conversely it also indicates that we should remain alert for new territorializations. The old border areas of Eastern Europe which were known as marches may well be fertile grounds for these processes. The word ‘Ukraine,’ for instance, means borderland. Eastern European states are now seen as a buffer zone or march between Western Europe and the crumbling chaos of the Soviet Union, and more generally as a barrier to the flows of refugees and economic migrants. The ‘safe third country’ provisions in European migration agreements exemplify these zones. As Mezzadra and Nielsen (2003) have explained, under these provisions ‘a number of states contiguous to the EU have been identified as “safe third countries,” meaning that if a migrant passes through one of these territories on their way to the EU, they can now be returned to that country.’ PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 7 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? Agreements are also made between these safe third countries and others further away from the ‘core’ of Western Europe: Rigo (2002) describes how agreements for expulsion between EU nations and so-called ‘safe third countries’ are in turn supplemented by agreements between these ‘safe third countries’ and nations further afield from the powerful Western European states. For example, a migrant who enters Germany through Poland can be expelled to Poland, which in turn has signed agreements with the Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. (Mezzadra and Nielsen 2003) As border technologies are exported from Europe’s west, a system of increasingly difficult border crossings is established and linked to the territories that have been integrated, or have the possibility of being integrated, into the EU. But the march can also be diffuse and detached from a territory, just as networks can. So the ever larger space, over which are stretched carrier-liability provisions, liaison officers, visa policies and other measures to intercept unwanted immigration before it reaches the border, becomes an extended march. The colonial frontier As well as the Networked (Non)border and the march, Walters turns to two strategies derived from colonialism and imperial borders to help explain the complexities of the EU’s borders. His justification for this is that as the EU incorporates more and more diverse nation-states into its territory and its borders expand, it comes to share characteristics with imperial regimes. The metaphor of the EU as empire has been taken up in many analyses, as Walters notes: With the likelihood of further enlargement, and of an asymmetrical and multi-speed integration project, ‘both NATO and the European Union may begin to look more like traditional empires, with [the distinction] between centre and periphery becoming almost as important as the distinction between members and non-members.’(Walters 2004, 686, quoting Hassner 1997) Walters argues that the ideology of the colonial frontier espoused by Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 essay, ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ (1920), can be useful in analysing current developments in the EU’s borders, particularly its expansion into Eastern Europe. While acknowledging the racialized and ethnocentric basis of Turner’s work, and its central role in justifying the westward colonial expansion of white America into Native American lands, Walters still believes that the Turnerian frontier thesis provides a tool with which to name ‘a certain kind of border strategy’ in the EU context (Walters 2004, 687). PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 8 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? The danger with Walter’s approach is that in applying the colonial American frontier model to the EU, injustices, errors of analysis and racialized and colonialist viewpoints similar to those applied on the ‘frontiers’ of the USA may be replicated in analyses of the European sphere. The qualifications that Walters applies—he is aware that Turner’s work ‘betrays many of the racial and ethnocentric assumptions of its time’ (Walters 2004, 686) but argues that once this is recognised as objectionable Turner’s ideas can still be used—might be valid if the unpalatable elements could be neatly excised from Turner’s theory. It is not possible to do this, however, as Turner’s racialized and colonialist assumptions are fundamental to his frontier thesis. As an example of this, one of the central elements in Turner’s model of the frontier is the notion that the areas through which the frontier expands are a ‘wilderness,’ occupied by ‘savagery’ rather than ‘civilization.’ Similar to the doctrine of terra nullius that was applied to Australia, this logic denies the legitimacy of Native American peoples and their claims to territory. As Turner put it, by expanding through this ‘wilderness’ space the frontier creates the new land and identity of America (Turner 1920, 3). This logic cannot be simply excised from Turner’s theory as a typical racialized and cultural perspective of his time, given that the logic itself provides a key structuring element of his frontier thesis. Indeed, that logic is what Walters introduces into his own analysis of the EU’s expanding eastern frontier; as the EU border passes through the marches of Eastern Europe and expands the EU zone, it produces a new EU. Walter’s argument is therefore subject to the same critiques as Turner’s. Positing a wilderness or blank space through which the border expands effaces and ignores the histories, cultures and societies that already inhabit the territory in question. This effacing thus enables Walters to argue that the colonial frontier ‘represents a zone where an organised power meets its outside in a relationship of transformation and assimilation. It is the setting of an asymmetrical relationship in which the expanding power assumes a right to define what is appropriate and just’ (2004, 688). A necessary critical response to this approach is to understand and bring out the importance of the people and societies that existed in these spaces prior to and during this colonising process. Despite his adoption of Turner’s model, Walters does also look at these arguments in the EU context, providing a counterpoise to the idea that the EU’s PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 9 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? expansion eastwards is a simple process of articulating Eastern European states into the EU system. Rather than passing through a zone of emptiness or ‘wilderness’ in the integration process the EU has to interact with the norms and values already in place and its expansion involves the disruption of settled regional, economic and geopolitical relations. It is not just the articulation into the new EU network that should be examined but the disarticulation from the old networks, such as the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet bloc. Eastern Europe was not ‘unintegrated’ before the EU; rather it was integrated in different systems. For instance, the Ukraine is often characterised as a state struggling to achieve democracy (through the Orange Revolution, for example) and to achieve the level of political development required for it to join the EU. Russia is depicted as an outside, undemocratic influence. However this understanding effaces the history of the Ukraine’s connection with Russia. One of the meanings of the word Ukraine is ‘outskirt,’ and the country was named in this way because of its position not as a European outskirt but as an outskirt of the Russian empire. The predominance of the EU as a regional system should not be assumed, and in the Ukraine’s case the EU must be seen as a secondary regional system to that in which the country has been enmeshed historically. Limes As well as the geostrategies described above that connect up two different areas, Walters (2004) also reintroduces to debates on European space the concept of the limes, which represents an edge, a fringe, a limit. It is between a power and its outside, in some ways like the colonial frontier described above. However, ‘whereas the expansionary frontier reflects an aspiration to assimilate, to stabilise through expansion and colonisation, the limes draws a line’ (Walters 2004, 691). Walters identifies limes across the Mediterranean, drawing a line between the North and South, between Europe and Africa. A good example is the wall built around the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on the Moroccan coast, to keep African immigrants out. In contrast to Walters, Michael Mann names limes as part of an ‘exclusive’ or PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 10 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? ‘ostracising’ imperialism (2001, 53). It is useful to keep this in mind as a counterexample to the rhetoric of the universality of globalization, with one part of the world economy dominating that of the other. The limes can be used to exclude one section of the globe from the Western globalized order, cutting it off from markets and flows of finance, technology, goods, information or labour. The problem for those on the outside, as Hirst and Thompson argue, is ‘not imperial domination or attempts to annex their resources, it is neglect and exclusion’ (1995, 419). These geostrategies are not exclusive and more than one can apply to each border, but usually one will be dominant. For example the Mediterranean border can be seen as a limes with the Euro-Mediterranean partnership strengthening the geophysical boundary between Europe and Africa. But with its zones of cooperation, and regional assistance for good government, the Mediterranean border can also be seen as seeking to transform the limes into a colonial frontier like the one gradually moving through Europe’s eastern nation-states. And the increased cooperation in policing the boundaries between North and South also has elements of the Networked (Non)border. Rumford: cosmopolitan borders In a recent essay, ‘Borders and rebordering,’ Rumford (2006) explores the analyses of the EU space by Balibar and Walters described above, and argues that the EU’s borders are being ‘cosmopolitanized.’ The concept of the cosmopolitan border is based on the argument that ‘borders and mobilities are not antithetical.’ Rather they are both intertwined: ‘Borders connect the ‘inner mobility’ of our lives both with the multiplicity of communities we may elect to become members of and the cross-cutting tendencies of polities to impose their border regimes on us in ways which compromise our mobilities, freedoms, rights and even identities’ (Rumford 2006, 183). Cosmopolitanism becomes a necessary part of these structures, understood here ‘as an orientation to the world which entails the constant negotiation and crossing of borders … A cosmopolitan lives in and across borders’ (183). At first glance the idea that borders and mobilities are not opposed to each other seems nonsensical. The increasingly sophisticated border controls implemented by states around the world are testament to the checks and prohibitions on mobility embodied in contemporary borders. It is true that Rumford does not seem to give significant weight PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 11 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? to the power of the border security apparatus, and to the obstacles and dangers that it poses for those crossing of borders without authorisation, and I shall deal with this issue more fully below. However his argument usefully shifts emphasis away from borders merely as obstacles to movement and towards borders as connections between territories. Referring to Sassen’s work (1996), he argues that ‘borders should not be thought of only as dividing lines, but as circuits which cut across two or more discontinuous systems’ (Rumford 2006, 187). Borders link up as well as divide. Rumford uses this perspective on borders to critique two models of European space and border areas, those that he terms ‘Schengenland’ and ‘Network Europe.’ In the first model, the Schengen process is deemed to have turned the EU into a space where internally borders have disappeared, while the external borders of the EU have been hardened and securitised. Such a perspective sees borders only as barriers to movement and ignores the potential for linking and connection between the EU’s Mediterranean and Eastern European neighbours through their respective border areas. The Network Europe model, on the other hand, effaces borders as it posits Europe as a place of capital, information and labour flows that are eroding the traditional boundaries of the nation- state. It is hard to justify this view of an increasingly borderless world, however, in the face of the proliferation of national and regional border controls in recent times. If borders are seen as providing connections between territories, controlling and facilitating flows as well as stopping them, then a more credible analytical model can be provided. This idea corresponds to one of the border typologies developed by Walters (2004), that of the Networked (Non)border, which highlights the way that the border is no longer just a dividing space but rather a node connecting networks inside and outside a territory. Along with his critique of Schengenland and networked Europe spatial models, Rumford argues that there is a ‘cosmopolitanization’ of Europe’s borders. The ‘proliferation of borders within (as well as between) societies’ leads to the rise of cosmopolitanism throughout these spaces(Rumford 2006, 191). As Rumford puts it, ‘The multiplicity of communities which can emerge within and between existing polities makes for a greater number of border crossings: the negotiation of borders becomes an integral aspect of both mobilities and identities’ (2006, 191). The example Rumford provides to illustrate this point is the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy, which, he PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 12 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? argues, multiplies borders between the EU and its neighbours in Asia and Africa, and confuses the categories of inside/outside that are applied to these states. The Neighbourhood Policy represents an extension of EU governance beyond EU borders: ‘countries which are not likely to become official candidates for full membership can be brought within the orbit of the Single Market and other pan-European projects’ (Rumford 2006, 186). In this way the EU projects its powers beyond its borders, integrating the countries around it into Europe without formally shifting its geophysical limits or incorporating those countries into its institutions. Thus some of the border functions are shifted outwards while others remain in their current positions, further differentiating the various levels of EU borders. The Neighbourhood Policy suggests ‘a shift away from Fortress Europe in which borderlines must be policed vigilantly towards the idea of borders as buffer zones, comprising a ring of well governed and compliant states’ (Rumford 2006, 187). This is a vision of cosmopolitan borders, of crossings and exchanges across national and regional frontiers. It envisages a network of countries ‘drawn into an increasingly close relationship, going beyond cooperation to involve a significant measure of economic and political integration’ (European Commission 2004). Rumford argues against the adequacy of the ‘Schengenland’ and ‘Network Europe’ models to explain Europe’s changing borders. Instead he argues for the idea of their ‘cosmopolitanization.’ Borders have proliferated, becoming more numerous, more frequently shifted and more mobile: ‘The multiplicity of communities which can emerge within and between existing polities makes for a greater number of border crossings: the negotiation of borders becomes an integral aspect of both communities and identities…. national borders have been supplanted by shifting EU borders and borders are diffused throughout society’ (Rumford 2006, 191). The EU’s Neighbourhood Policy exemplifies these phenomena, where fixed borders and static concepts of inside/outside and member/non-member are confused as borderlands are created. As borders become more numerous and borderlands spread, cosmopolitanism becomes increasingly necessary. Although Rumford concentrates on the European Neighbourhood Policy, another significant aspect of border proliferation occurs with the borders that are being created not on the edges or outside Europe, but within the metropolises of the EU itself. In Italy PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 13 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? this is exemplified in the growth of immigration detention centres or CPT (centri di permanenza temporanea). An article on the immigrant advocacy website Melting Pot, entitled ‘The Border Right through Us: CPTs and New Safety Devices in our Cities,’ analyses the way that CPTs allow the border to invade the heart of the city: ‘Today, the CPT is all around us, it’s made of ghettos and exclusion, of differentiated inclusion and stratifications of citizenship levels’ (Melting Pot Editorial 2007). Such a development supports Rumford’s argument that cosmopolitanism, in the sense of living on and between borders, is becoming a more and more important part of the EU structure. Border crossing is not something that happens only on the edge of Europe; it also occurs within its core metropolitan areas: ‘Ghettos, entire neighbourhoods and city areas that are inhabited by immigrants, because they are forced to, play an important role in the process of inclusion/exclusion as well …. The CPTs are an integral part of this network, strictly connected to the social context around them’ (Melting Pot Editorial 2007). Although providing an interesting perspective on the European Neighbourhood Policy, Rumford’s analysis seems to overly rely on the EU’s own description of this process. He takes at his word, for instance, Romano Prodi’s promise of integration without enlargement so that the EU’s neighbours can share ‘everything but institutions’ (Rumford 2006, 186).2 Rather than critiquing the EU’s rhetoric he focuses on the more attractive aspects of this process, that corresponding to the Networked (Non)border in Walter’s analysis (2004) and the border as linkage in Sassen’s view (1996). But, as Walters argues, borders can have many different dimensions to them, and while not denying the existence of the elements that Rumford identifies, it is also true that the limes aspect of these borders should also be taken into account. That is, the Neighbourhood Policy may create borders as a fringe or edge, a point of exclusion between Europe and its outside. Despite Prodi’s rhetoric of integration in all but name (Prodi 2002), many of the agreements with bordering countries under the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy are accompanied by highly exclusionary provisions. While at the level of heads of government, businesses and bureaucracy there may be integration across these borders, 2 In 2002 Romano Prodi famously promised to those countries bordering on the EU that became involved in the European Neighbourhood Policy that they would be given the incentive of de facto economic integration with the EU as a reward for their participation (Prodi 2002). PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 14 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? at the level of the general populace barriers may, in fact, be being raised. In return for aid and access to markets, one of the key demands of European states and the EU in their agreements with developing countries in North Africa has been the introduction of migration control measures to prevent Africans entering European territory (Andrijasevic 2006, 16). This has been the case in Italy’s agreements with Libya in recent years, which have involved the establishment of offshore detention centres to control the flows of migrants to Italy (Andrijasevic 2006, 2). These requirements have also been present in various pilot schemes for the creation of offshore processing centres in North African countries, and most recently were part of the negotiations at the Euro-African Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development in Rabat, Morocco (Noll 2006). These negotiations suggest that concealed within the more positive dimension of the networked border is a vision of the border as limes. Rumford’s analysis thus needs to go deeper in uncovering this element of the European Neighbourhood Policy. This is not to say that the harsh, anti-humanitarian side of the Neighbourhood Policy and of EU borders in general impels a rejection of Rumford’s cosmopolitanization thesis. There is little doubt that borders continue to proliferate in and around the EU and that the cosmopolitan ability to live in and across borders is more and more necessary. But it does mean that the understanding of cosmopolitanism offered by Rumford has to be deepened beyond the jet-set, multicultural citizen of the world. Rumford does point out that to be cosmopolitan means much more than this; however, his analysis does not fully engage with the difficulties faced by the disadvantaged and marginalized in their border crossing, and with the sort of tactics required to deal with those borders. One possible answer to this omission lies in Peter Nyer’s (2003) concept of ‘abject cosmopolitanism,’ a term he has developed to describe the subjectivities of the migrants engaged in struggles to assert their rights when border control mechanisms are exercised against them (and in particular the practice of deportation). The activist strategies and tactics employed in these struggles, such as those of ‘taking place’ and ‘taking speech,’ suggest that cosmopolitanism involves not just living across and negotiating borders but also challenging and contesting them. Rumford presents a valuable synthesis of the theoretical work that has been carried out in recent years on the transformation of borders at both a European and a global level. PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 15 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? The introduction of the cosmopolitan concept to the theory of the border brings a useful new perspective by emphasising the way that borders connect up diverse territories and act as bridges while also dividing and partitioning. As borders proliferate both outside and inside the geophysical boundaries of the traditional nation-state and the European Union, cosmopolitanism, as a way of living in and across borders, becomes more and more important. This is true not only for the privileged international professional elite, but also for larger sections of society, including immigrants, both authorized and clandestine, who traverse and challenge these pre-established boundaries. However, Rumford’s understanding of this type of cosmopolitanism could be deepened by dealing more with the subjectivities and experiences of struggle of those who are forced to live everyday in and between the borders he describes. The concept of cosmopolitan borders could be expanded by taking into account the ethnographies and theoretical work of scholars such as Balibar (2004a; 2004b), Mezzadra (2004), Rigo (2002; 2005) and Nyers (2003) who are engaged, both within and outside the academy, in the cosmopolitan struggle for the rights of migrants. Reference List Agnew, J. 2003, Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics, 2nd ed., Routledge, London. Andrijasevic, R. 2006, ‘The Southern Gate to Fortress Europe,’ Policy Perspectives: Islam and Tolerance in Wider Europe, ed. P. Kilpadi, Open Society Institute, Budapest, 30-50. Balibar, E. 2004a, We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, J. Swenson (trans.), Princeton University Press, Princeton Balibar, E. 2004b ‘Europe as Borderland: The Alexander von Humboldt Lecture in Human Geography,’ Institute for Human Geography, Universiteit Nijmegen. [Online]. Available: http://www.ru.nl/socgeo/colloquium/Europe%20as%20Borderland.pdf (23 July 2007) Bauman, Z. 1997, Postmodernity and its Discontents, New York University Press, New York. Beck, U. 2001, ‘The Cosmopolitan State: Towards a Realistic Utopia,’ Eurozine, 5 December. [Online]. Available: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2001-12-05-beck-en.html (26 July 2007) Beck, U. & Grande, E. 2004, Das kosmopolitische Europa, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. Bojadzijev, M. & Saint-Saens, I. 2006, ‘Borders, Citizenship, War, Class: A Discussion with Etienne Balibar and Sandro Mezzadra,’ New Formations, no. 58, 10-30. Braudel, F. 1976/1995, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, University of California Press, Berkeley. Castell, M. 1996, The Information Age: Society and Culture. Volume 1 - the Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA. Curzon, G. 1907, Frontiers: The Romanes Lecture, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Delanty, G. 2005, ‘The Idea of a Cosmopolitan Europe: On the Cultural Significance of Europeanization,’ International Review of Sociolog/Revue Internationale de Sociologie, vol. 15, no. 3, 405-421. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1981, Mille Plateaux (Capitalisme et schizophrénie, II), Editions de Minuit, Paris. Driessen, H. 1998, ‘The “New Immigration” and the Transformation of the European-African Frontier,’ in T.M. Wilson & H. Donnan (eds), Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 96-116. European Commission 2004, ‘Beyond Enlargement: Commission Shifts European Neighbourhood Policy PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 16 Spruce The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? into Higher Gear,’ IP/04/632 12 May. [Online] Available: http://www.europa-eu- un.org/articles/en/article_3494_en.htm [21 Aug 2007]. Green, V.H.H. 1954, Renaissance and Reformation, Edward Arnold, London. Hassner, P. 1997, ‘Obstinate and Obsolete: Non-Territorial Transnational Forces versus the European Territorial State,’ in O. Tunander, P. Bayev and V.I. Einagel (eds), Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe: Security, Territory, and Identity, Sage, London. Hirst, P. & Thompson, G. 1995, ‘Globalization and the Future of the Nation State,’ Economy and Society, vol. 24, no. 3, 408–442. Huntington, S. 1993, ‘The Clash of Civilisations,’ Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3, 22–49. Jellinek, G. 1900, Allgemeine Staatslehre, 3rd edn, O. Haring, Berlin. Mann, M. 2001, ‘Globalization and September 11,’ New Left Review, vol. 12 (Nov-Dec), 51-72. Melting Pot Editorial, 2007, ‘The Border Right Through Us: CPTs and New Safety Devices in Our Cities,’ Melting Pot, 14 March [Online]. Available: http://www.meltingpot.org/articolo10009.html [23 July 2007]. Mezzadra, S. 2004, ‘Borders, Migration, Citizenship.’ [Online]. Available: http://observatorio.fadaiat.net/tikiindex.php?page=Borders%2C+Migrations%2C+Cittinzenship. [26 July 2007]. Mezzadra, S. And Nielsen, B. 2003 ‘Né qui, né altrove—Migration, Detention, Desertion: A Dialogue,’ borderlands ejournal, vol. 2, no. 1. [Online]. Available: http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol2no1_2003/mezzadra_neilson.html [23 July 2007]. Noll, G. 2006, ‘The Euro-African Migration Conference: Africa sells Out to Europe,’ openDemocracy [Online], Available: http://www.opendemocracy.net/people- migrationeurope/migration_conference_3738.jsp [27 April 2007] Nyers, P. 2003, ‘Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-deportation Movement’ Third World Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 6, 1069–1093. Outhwaite, W. 2006, ‘The State (and Society) of Europe,’ New Formations, no. 58, 31-38. Prodi, R. 2002, ‘A Wider Europe - A Proximity Policy as the Key to Stability.’ Sixth ECSA-World Conference. Jean Monnet Project, Brussels, 5-6 December. Ratzel, F. 1897, Politische Geographie, Oldenbourg, Munich. Rigo, E. 2002, ‘Lo spazio commune di “libertà, sicurezza e giustizia”’ DeriveApprodi vol. 22, 157-161. Rigo, E. 2005, ‘Citizenship at Europe’s Borders: Some Reflections on the Post-colonial Condition of Europe in the Context of EU Enlargement,’ Citizenship Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 3-22. Rumford, C. 2006, ‘Borders and Rebordering,’ in G. Delanty (ed), Europe and Asia Beyond East and West, Routledge, London and New York, 181-193 Sassen, S. 1996, Losing Control: Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization, Columbia University Press, New York. Turner, F.J. 1920, The Frontier in American History, Henry Holt and Company, New York. Walters, W. 2004, ‘The Frontiers of the European Union: A Geostrategic Perspective,’ Geopolitics, vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn), 674-698. PORTAL, vol. 4 no. 2, July 2007 17 The Cosmopolitanization of the EU’s Borders? The classical border The transformation of borders Balibar’s four geospatial dimensions of Europe Walter’s analysis of the deterritorialized border March The colonial frontier Limes Reference List