A Moveable East: Identities, Borders & Orders in the Enlarged EU and Its Eastern Neighbourhood

The Centre for European Security of the Institute of International Relations and Anglo-American University invite you to a public lecture by Dr. Benjamin Tallis on borders and their relations to identity and governance in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) and how this has created A Moveable East. 

12. 5. 2015 (17:30)

This content is not up to date Room 2.07, Anglo American University, Lazenska 5, Prague 1

Dr. Tallis will present the findings of a recently completed research project that explored EU borders and bordering in the context of EU enlargement and the creation and extension of the Schengen ‘borderless zone’, as well as the Eastern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Tallis links borders with identities and orders to argue that while the EU has successfully included Czechs and Poles, it has excluded Ukrainians sufficiently to impact negatively on their lives and on the achievement of EU goals in its Eastern neighbourhood.

However, Tallis also challenges critiques of the EU that claim it has created ‘Fortress Europe’ and that its Area of Freedom, Security and Justice is oppressive for migrants – as being unfounded in relation to the Eastern neighbours. The successes of creating the Schengen zone and of the 2004 enlargement shine through, but must be set against the EU’s failures in its neighbourhood.

Using an innovative, interdisciplinary analytical framework and based on extensive interpretive fieldwork, Tallis explores the EU’s borderscape in its spatial, temporal and social complexity to provide a nuanced picture of how, where and why people experience borders in CEE. Tallis outlines the key features, discourses and practices of bordering in CEE and shows how they relate to security, mobility, identity and governance. This borderscape most obviously matters for those who are still considered ‘Eastern’ Europeans, but also for the EU which, in making borders the way it does, betrays its own internal crises of identity and confidence, which should concern all Europeans.

Benjamin Tallis is the Coordinator of the Centre for European Security of the Institute of International Relations and Editor-in-Chief of New Perspectives, the IIR’s English language academic journal. He is an adjunct Lecturer in International Relations at Anglo-American University. Tallis is a former EU strategic analyst and advisor who worked on security missions in the Balkans and in Ukraine and Moldova. He regularly appears in the media and blogs at ‘Torn Curtain’ ceethrough.wordpress.com.

Auspice

Anglo-American University