Europeanisation versus Euroscepticism: Do Borders Matter?

Abstract

Several overlapping crises which affected the EU during the past ten years have recently aggravated. Especially the progressing refugee crisis, the persisting financial crisis and geopolitical turmoil in the EU's neighbourhood contributed to the rise of anti-EU movements and diverse articulations of Euroscepticism. Although public opinion and mainstream political analysis have easily identified right-wing populism as one of the most important drivers, it is still doubtful if it can be equated with Euroscepticism without further ado. To date it is by no means clear how and where Euroscepticism exactly originates.

Contesting the integration narrative: Shifting perceptions of EUrope

“…2. This is not to suggest that there was no criticism or scepticism towards the EU before (see, for instance, Bürkner, 2020;Galtung, 1973). European integration has always been a highly contested geopolitical process (see Bachmann and Sidaway, 2009).…”

Visionary geographies and European Studies

“…And more recently, a number of geographers have started to write on rise of populism, the New Right and fascism across Europe (Bachmann, 2020; Belina, 2020; Bialasiewicz and Stallone, 2020; Bürkner, 2020; Förtner et al, 2021; Lizotte, 2019), including numerous studies exploring the diffuse reasons, constellations and effects of Brexit (see, for instance, Agnew, 2020; Bachmann and Sidaway, 2016; Boyle et al, 2018; Jessop, 2017). Often, this work is inspired by radical geographic or critical geopolitical approaches accentuating structures and processes of spatial and socio-economic marginalization through dominant frames of knowledge production, dissemination and instrumentalization (Moisio, 2018).…”

Visegrád four political regionalism as a critical reflection of Europeanization: deciphering the “Illiberal Turn”

“…Indeed, contrary to normative assumptions, Europeanization does not inherently signify institutional convergence, compliance to specific norms or unity (Subotic 2011). Europeanization has always been marked by processes of affirmation and contestation that reflect, among others, the impacts of the EU's manifold post-Millennial crises and EU-critical countercurrents (Bürkner 2020;Scott et al 2017). Alongside the notion of constructing political unity, division has thus become a major spatial imaginary of challenges to European cohesion and integration, exemplified by geographies of EU discontent (Dijkstra, Poelman, and Rodríguez-Pose 2020), processes of national re-bordering (Krasteva 2020) and socio-spatial differences exacerbated by crisis (Moisio et al 2013).…”

“…As part of elaborating a critical approach to interpreting the significance of illiberalism as a platform for V4 subregionalism, I take inspiration from political geography and regional study perspectives that challenge normative notions of Europeanization as a center-to-periphery diffusion of ideas and practices (Biebuyck and Rumford 2012;Moisio et al 2013). Furthermore, critical political geography has highlighted the significance of socio-spatial imaginaries such as border-making and regionalizing practices that are often driven by simultaneous contestations and affirmations of the European Union (Bürkner 2020;Ganesh and Froio 2018;Scott et al, 2019;Celata and Coletti 2019). In their explorations of the political geographies of Europeanization, Moisio et al (2013, 2) raised the issue that divisive imaginations of North-South difference emerging with the financial, debt, and more general Eurozone crisis have challenged "the fiction of European unity."…”