Where Are Europe’s New Borders? Ontology, Methodology and Framing

Abstract

What do we refer to when we talk about European borders? What, for that matter, do we mean when we talk about borders more generally? Asking the question ‘where are Europe’s new borders’ orients researchers to consider what important European bordering currently looks like, where these often contradictory bordering processes can be found and the implications of this bordering on the way we think about Europe more generally and its place in the world. At the same time, looking for new borders necessarily facilitates fresh insights into bordering more generally, particularly in relation to their symbolic importance/function/meaning, how they continually transform and how they are maintained in novel and less obvious or immediate ways. This introduction, and indeed special issue, frames and advances the general debate by staking a claim for the need to question the established importance of some European borders over others. To do this, we must continually offer multiple frames of reference upon which to understand and deconstruct Europe and European bordering (a broad approach reflected more specifically by the individual contributions).