How to Bound Open Spaces

My recent work is situated within a multi-year project, titled How to Bound Open Spaces: Borders and Security in the European Neighbourhood Policy. The project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), focuses empirically on European Union policies toward its immediate neighbours to the east and south. I argue that the European Neighbourhood Policy is animated by a key political dynamic of our day—the pursuit of tight borders that close off space in an effort to secure it, simultaneously with attempts to forge open and inclusive spaces that facilitate cross-border flows of goods, people, and ideas. In an effort to delineate how this dynamic works, I examine the ways in which the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is bound up with geographical definitions of Europe and non-Europe, security and threat. In particular, I attempt to unpack how such definitions vary among different actors. Approaching policy-making as an unpredictable process of negotiation that pivots on flexibly interpretable objectives, I go beyond the customary review of a few speeches and strategy papers to carefully incorporate the perspectives of those who actually conduct the ENP on a daily basis. In so doing, I seek to offer a more ‘peopled’ or agent-centred view of geo-politics in Europe.