Re-scaling ‘EU’rope: EU macro-regional fantasies in the Mediterranean

Luiza Bialasiewicz, Paolo Giaccaria, Alun Jones, Claudio Minca

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article engages with the most recent spatial fantasy for the making of ‘EU’ropean space: the idea of trans-European macro-regions, currently in vogue in the policy literature. In particular, we focus on the imaginings of a Mediterranean macro-region as the latest incarnation of the macro-regional fad, but also as a useful prism for reflecting on some of the underlying conceptual as well as political and geopolitical challenges of the on-going remaking and rescaling of ‘EU’ropean space. We argue that, although there exists by now a vast literature by geographers and other scholars that engages with the production of ‘EU’ropean spaces through regionalization, the policy literature generated by EU ‘macro-regional experts’ appears to entirely ignore these debates, professing an understanding of regions that is a conceptual pastiche at best, and that entirely occludes the political and geopolitical implications of region-making within, at, and beyond ‘EU’rope’s borders.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)59-76
JournalEuropean urban and regional studies
Volume20
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2013

Keywords

  • Borders, Europe, European Union, Mediterranean, regions

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