Fortress Europe as Empire and Ireland’s National Diaspora Centre

Abstract

This article develops a concept of core–periphery schema to investigate how the underlying cultural structures of social groups and insider–outsider relations are represented visually. We apply both the concept of core–periphery schemas as well as the concept of smaller states to case studies of existing diagrammatic visual representations in academic and policy publications. The specific cases we examine are Geddes’ (2000) and Gravier’s (2015) construction of Fortress Europe and Europe as Empire, as well as Fáilte Ireland’s (2013) construction of a schema to support the building of a National Diaspora Centre in Ireland. Linking the concepts of core–periphery and smaller states, the vulnerabilities and perceptions of threats, and responses to these by states and regional polities like the European Union are present in the visual schema. The results largely support the argument that there exists a widely shared cultural structure in a core–periphery schema, which is transmittable across social contexts and time periods, and is flexible in terms of how different actors can construct it visually to suit individual, situational and contextual factors.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gerard Boucher

Gerard Boucher is a Lecturer in Sociology and Deputy Head of the School of Sociology at University College Dublin in Ireland. His current research interests involve migration, social cohesion and social change, visual sociology, and social media. His recent publications include “Limits of Liberal Individual Integration: Australian, British and Canadian Citizenship Guides”, Nordic Journal of Migration Research (2015), vol. 5, no. 4, and a co-edited book with Yunas Samad, Social Cohesion and Social Change in Europe (Routledge, 2015). 

Iarfhlaith Watson

Iarfhlaith Watson is the Head of the School of Sociology at University College Dublin. He is a former President of the Sociological Association of Ireland. He has published in both Irish and English since the mid-1990s, with a focus on the connection between national identity and the Irish language, including his book Broadcasting in Irish (Four Courts Press, 2003), and many articles and book chapters on linguistic elitism, Irish language media, and the educational advantages of speaking Irish. He has been a member of the Board of the International Visual Sociology Association and Irish Representative on the International Social Survey Programme.