Borderscapes of external Europeanization in the Mediterranean neighbourhood

Abstract

In this paper, we conceptualize external Europeanization as a multi-situated and selective process of differential inclusion. The aim is to contribute to recent research on the reconfiguration of “normative power Europe” through a more proper consideration of the dialogical positioning of different typologies of both recipients and transmitters of European external policies, and local economic actors, in particular. We show how the idea of the Mediterranean as a borderscape of differential inclusion allows for an analysis that extends beyond the restrictive inside/outside binary typical of many current interpretations of the Euro-Mediterranean and the European Neighbourhood Policy. This view is especially crucial in times of decreasing European Union leverage, internal crises and geopolitical turmoil in the Mediterranean and beyond. The attempt is, therefore, to shed light on the complicated geometries of Europeanization while also emphasizing the ways in which they entangle both symbolic projections and material interests. Such a conceptualization is then applied to a case study of the border between Italy and Tunisia.