A geopolitical enlargement in a contested context

border dynamics in the repositioning of the European Union to the east

Abstract

This article analyses the current eastward enlargement of the European Union, looking at border dynamics and how their construction and deconstruction contribute to collective imaginaries of security and insecurity in a new geopolitical framework. The article argues that enlargement adds a differentiated security and border construction component, with material and symbolic characteristics that are fundamental to the Union’s own credibility. The geopolitical shift brought about by the war in Ukraine has led to a readjustment of Union policies also in a geopolitical sense, with the European Union presenting itself as a locus of resistance against the ‘violent other’, in a dual dynamic of containing both the violence and the fundamental violation of Europe’s border regime through Russia’s use of force, as well as reinterpreting its past as the significant ‘other’, materialised in the great wars to which it does not wish to return.