Abstract:
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.
