MULTILAYERED BORDERS OF GLOBAL SECURITY

Bio: Eiki Berg is Professor of International Relations at the University of Tartu. He has published widely in leading peer-reviewed journals on bordering practices, identity politics and de facto states. He is co-editor of Routing Borders Between Territories, Discourses and Practices (Ashgate, 2003), Identity and Foreign Policy: Baltic-Russian Relations and European Integration (Ashgate, 2009), and The Politics of International Interaction with de facto States: Conceptualising Engagement without Recognition (Routledge, 2018). During the years 2003-2004 he served as MP in Estonian Parliament and observer to the European Parliament, EPP-ED faction, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy. In 2012, he received National Science Award in the field of Social Sciences for the research in “Identities, Conflicting Self-Determination and De Facto States”.

Abstract: The areas between Russia and the EU find themselves in a renewed geopolitical competition: while the EU is advocating for a zone of stability, security, and economic cooperation on its Eastern flanks, Russia has tried to re-assert its influence in the common neighbourhood through a range of intervention/engagement strategies. Importantly, Russia has been involved in the secessionist conflicts by providing military and economic backing for de facto states (Transnistria in Moldova, South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, Donbas in Ukraine), making hopes of conflict resolution conditional on maintaining close and friendly relations with itself. In the Crimean case, we see that Russia’s systematic instrumental use of norms such as the obligation to refrain (O2R) from using force, or self-determination, has blurred their original meanings and become Russia’s preferred strategy in the international war of interpretations. This politics of unpredictability has led Russia to act in self-defence unilaterally and outside of the framework of the United Nations (UN), going against not only some of its own declared principles while following others, but also further strengthening the discursive gap with the West.

Bio: Stefan Berger is a historian working at Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum. He has been studying European history with special attention to borders, transfers and comparisons, especially in the fields of labour history, the history of social movements, nationalism, national identity studies, historical writing, deindustrialisation and industrial heritage. He was the PI of NHIST (Writing National Histories in Modern Europe) that was a European Science Foundation a la carte programme between 2003 and 2008 and published its main results in a  nine-volume book series between 2007 and 2015. He is currently PI of UNREST (Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Contemporary Europe) – a Horizon 2020 programme that examines memory regimes in relation to the memory of war. He is also directing a major comparative project on deindustrialisation, structural change and industrial heritage funded by the Regionalverband Ruhr, Ruhrkohle AG und RAG-Stiftung in Germany.

Abstract: The West’ was a powerful concept within modern European history albeit one that changed its meanings – both over time and according to place. The concept originated in the west, yet the west also developed powerful critiques of Occidentalism. The borders of what constituted the west changed frequently: from the perspective of German history, for example, Germany sometimes was included in what constituted the west, and sometimes it was excluded. In relation to Europe as a whole, the west was sometimes used synonymously with Europe, at other times it incorporated the transatlantic partnership with the US and North America, and at others it neatly divided the European continent. The borders of the concept of ‘the west’ were extremely fuzzy. There always were contested and intermediate zones. In the first part of this paper I will investigate diverse conceptualizations of ‘the west’ over time and space. In the second part I will look at counter-concepts and analyse the bordering of the concept over time.

Bio: Sarah Green is an anthropologist working at the University of Helsinki. She has been studying issues of location, place and borders in a range of different areas, including the Greek-Albanian border and the Greek-Turkish border in the Aegean region. She was the founder and chair of EastBordNet, a network of researchers working on the eastern peripheries of Europe, who collaborated together to try to understand how the meaning of ‘Europe’ was undergoing transformation along that periphery. She is currently working on an ERC Advanced Grant called Crosslocations  and an Academy of Finland project called Transit, Trade and Travel. Both of those projects concern questions of location in the Mediterranean.

Abstract: Anyone who has lived on the wrong side of the tracks will know that security is a relative term. A security camera makes some people feel reassured, while it makes others feel threatened; some think that walls make good neighbours, whereas others think that walls create prisons on one side and exclusions on the other. Securing the borders of the European Union against spontaneous migration might make some people feel safe, while it leads to the death of others. Security, as an idea, is axiomatically value-laden, embedding within it basic premises about what is to be protected and what counts as the threat. In the context of Europe, these values have become contested terrain in recent years: differences in opinion about what counts as the most fundamental European values have grown starker and wider. Through ethnographically considering some of the crisscrossing dilemmas that appear at the peripheries of the European region, places where it is not clear which side is Europe and which is not, the paper explores the paradox of trying to generate security over a territory on behalf of an idea, Europe, whose meaning is multiple and contested.