Beyond the European Union’s Neighbourhood: Liberation Geographies in the Mediterranean

ABSTRACT

The notion of a Mediterranean Neighbourhood points to how a specific geopolitical space is scripted, imagined and then translated into practice through the European Union’s foreign policy towards this region. I contend that the Arab Spring took place within this European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) framework contesting many of its underlying principles. This wave of social upheaval across a marked EU vs. non-EU space enabled a series of geographical imaginations and spatial practices able to rethink the Mediterranean region otherwise. This paper introduces three concepts developed by Hamid Dabashi to the geographical debates rethinking Europe’s contours through a post/de-colonial analytical lens. Drawing from the spatial thinking that characterises Dabashi’s recent work, this paper contributes to the rich critical literature on the ENP’s macro-regional imaginary. Concretely, building on Dabashi’s notion of “liberation geographies”, I emphasise how recent organising as well as ongoing migratory movements in the region constitute serious geopolitical interlocutors able to produce alternative Mediterranean spaces.

Notes

1. European External Action Service (EEAS) interview 1: February 2011.

2. This field research took place between 2010–2015 as part of NSF Grant No. BCS-1023543.

3. Examples of these other engagements by geographers with Dabashi include: Sidaway’s (2012) critique of Area Studies; Gregory’s (2015) comments on the Fall 2015 terror attacks in Paris; as well as reference to the Arab Spring in its global ramifications (Springer 2014) post-secular geographies (Cloke, Sutherland and Williams 2016; Williams 2015) and shaking up of regional economies (Smith 2015b). Mamadouh’s (2013) review of books on the Arab Spring (including Dabashi’s 2012 work) is one of the longer engagements besides the work of Tazzioli (2013), Garelli and Tazzioli (2017), and Smith (2015).

4. Examples of this work include research on the global production of a nationality beyond statehood such as in Iran without Borders: Towards a Critique of the Postcolonial Nation (London: Verso, 2015); or the communication between Persian and Italian Renaissance literatures in Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene (Cambridge: Harvard Univeristy Press, 2015).

5. Currently ENP applies to 16 of the EU’s immediate neighbours by land or sea, including countries from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya), Mashreq (Egypt, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria), Southern Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia), and Eastern ex-USSR republics (Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus).

6. The EU Global Strategy, an update to EU foreign and defence policy released in 2016, appears to place less emphasis on this ‘recoding’ than its predecessor, the European Security Strategy. It remains to be seen how markedly different this strategy will be.

7. Indeed, historical colonial regimes have enacted this principle of ensuring resemblance/difference within hierarchical relationships through top-down enactments of superiority and erasure of alternatives. Thus Dabashi and some authors informed by critical post-colonial theory use the term coloniality in order to point how the Eurocentric logics underpinning the colonial framework used in the past to understand and relate to difference, resonate and inform current practices articulated in the present towards diversity (for example see Quijano 2000, 533–580). In this case, the EU, challenged or uninterested in coping with distinct understandings of economic relations, democratic practices, religious and cultural imaginaries, projects a common space termed “Neighbourhood” where the EU is the norm upon which the rest of bordering countries are expected to be tested.

8. It should be noted this adjacency is contingent on the European continent and does not include countries adjacent to the “overseas possessions” of EU Member States, for example: Canada to France and Denmark; or Brasil and Suriname to France.

9. A previous framework of EU Mediterranean relations, the EuroMed Process (founded in 1995), did include discussion of creating joint regulatory bodies, standards and pan-regional dialogues between the EU and Mediterranean partner countries. The introduction of the ENP marked a more explicit shift towards integration into “EU” ways of doing things and pursuing EU interests. See Del Sarto and Schumaker (2005).

10. European External Action Service (EEAS) interview 2: February 2011.

11. EEAS interview 1 (note 1).

12. EEAS interview 2 (note 10).

13. These are missions where EU or Member State civil administrators are sent to train and help manage the administrations of partner countries as they reform.

14. European External Action Service (EEAS) interview 3: 2011.

15. See Manner’s (2002, 2006) work on ‘normative power Europe’ and the debates this provoked.

16. While the EU Global Strategy (2016) does seem to indicate a more practical approach to neighbouring countries, it does not look like a fundamental questioning of the basis for relations between regions nor an approach ‘less centered in Europe’, other than there being less discussion of direct value promotion (see http://europa.eu/globalstrategy/en).

17. EEAS: European External Action Service, the primary diplomatic and foreign policy arm of the EU. Though now distinct from the rest of the EU Commission, there are still areas of shared competency, notably with regard to neighbouring countries.

18. This is consistent with Dabashi’s regular engagement with both policy positions and statements by political leaders, statements by intellectuals that support or are integrated into those political power operations (via think-tanks, policy design institutes, etc.), as well as media representations.

19. It should be noted, Portugal is often referred to as a Mediterranean country, though it shares no coast on the Mediterranean and is often considered geographically ‘Atlantic’.

20. As point of interest here, as Spain negotiated its possible entry into the EEC and NATO, it also participated as an official invitee in the summits of the NAM (especially the Havana summit and New Delhi summit) (Viñas 2004, 11). The head of the Spanish diplomatic mission at the time in fact stated how Spain could align itself with the “global objectives” of the NAM without renouncing the “occidentalist” vocation of Spanish diplomacy, and that while understood as a “western European country” Spain was “not identified” as a “neocolonial country” (Puente Ojea 1983). While this language reflects a certain amount of rhetorical flair from the diplomat, it also signals the positions being navigated within the Spanish foreign policy establishment, newly orienting itself in the post-Franco transition period. The language used indicates a desire to articulate a geopolitical position and space that was not beholden to an exclusive view of the world.

21. Although, in the process of struggling to find other ways to speak, Dabashi can also have a hard time avoiding scare quotes.

22. It is of course important to recall that these sorts of transnational resonances of struggle are not unique to the period following 2011 or the Arab Spring. The transnational or global resonance and communication of struggles does not preclude its regional or national specificities, but rather highlights the hybrid spatialities at work.

23. For example see: de Haas (2012). It is unclear for how long this migratory dynamic persisted, or if it continues.

24. As an early exploration of these questions see Cobarrubias (2017).

Additional information

Funding

This article is based in part on research supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant no. BCS-1023543), as well as the Faculty Research Grant of UNC-Charlotte.