Mobility, Border Ethics, and the Challenge of Revanchist Identity Politics

Abstract

The main objective of the essay is to argue that a powerful revanchist and self-referential narrative of authenticity and autonomy is influencing the securitization of mobility. Cultural nationalism, coupled with elements of a new sovereigntism that reifies national interests and unilateralism, is a direct challenge to globalist assumptions that privilege mobility and cosmopoli-tanism. Discussion begins with a consideration of securitization and the per-ceptual, socio-cultural, and attitudinal foundations of security. The concept of ontological security is particularly salient in this context, as it emphasizes aspects of national identity that are prone to radicalization as well as relates socio-political bordering processes to securitization. As recent events have made abundantly clear, democratic impulses co-exist with illiberal under-standings of belonging, citizenship, and culture. This is manifested by political and social imaginaries of security that are based on what appears to be a reinvigorated cultural nationalism, and as a direct consequence, racial and ethnic autarchy. In contrast to the Nordic examples developed in the present collection, the case of Hungary is elaborated as a perhaps extreme example of revanchist identity politics that is impacting European societies more generally. In concluding, the essay outlines potential consequences of revanchist securitization which in several ways threaten the European Union as a political and multicultural community. Desecuritization will be sug-gested as an alternative; this is understood as a means of changing the ways in which mobility and migration are discursively framed, and contextually broadening debate on the significance of open borders for European Union.