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This book looks both backward and forward with regard to the European Union’s political strategies towards its neighbouring countries. By bringing together the perspectives of critical geopolitics, policy studies and border studies, it presents a comprehensive review of the European Neighbourhood Policy and how it impacts the ongoing construction of the EU’s external frontiers. Is the EU committed to promoting integration in a ‘wider’ European space, or is a “fortress Europe” emerging where the strengthening of internal cohesion is coupled with the militarisation of its external borders? The book aims to problematize this question by showing how the EU’s external policies are based on a mixture of openness and closure, inclusion and exclusion, cooperation and securitisation. The European Neighbourhood Policy is a controversial strategy where regionalization and bordering, homogenisations and differentiations, centrifugal and centripetal forces proceed side-by-side, in an explicit attempt to construct a selective, mobile and fragmented border. A specific focus is devoted to the diversity of geo-strategies the EU is pursuing in its neighbouring countries and regions, macro-regional strategies and cross-border cooperation initiatives as new scales of cooperation, and the role of other global players.

Social Sciences. --- Human Geography. --- International Relations. --- European Integration. --- Social sciences. --- Europe --- Sciences sociales --- Economic policy. --- Europe_xEconomic policy. --- Anthropology --- Social Sciences --- Anthropogeography & Human Ecology --- European cooperation. --- European Neighbourhood Policy (Program) --- European Union countries --- Foreign relations --- European Neighborhood Policy (Program) --- ENP --- European Commission. --- Politique européenne de voisinage (Program) --- PEV --- Politica Europeană de Vecinătate (Program) --- International relations. --- European Economic Community literature. --- Human geography. --- International cooperation --- European Economic Community lite. --- Coexistence --- Foreign affairs --- Foreign policy --- Global governance --- Interdependence of nations --- International affairs --- Peaceful coexistence --- World order --- National security --- Sovereignty --- World politics --- Anthropo-geography --- Anthropogeography --- Geographical distribution of humans --- Social geography --- Geography --- Human ecology

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How to frame the (re)emergence of contentious initiatives in the housing sector in relation to the current debt and financial crisis and the consequent adoption of austerity policies? Centred on the cases of squatting initiatives in Rome and the main social movement around housing (Plataforma de los Afectados por la Hipoteca PAH) in Barcelona/Sabadell, the dissertation connects a series of debates and issues rooted at the intersection of critical political economy, geography, urban studies, social movements’ studies and sociology. Indeed the emergence of these initiatives is related to some of the main processes at work in contemporary political economy, notably indebtedness, financialization, precarity, neoliberal/austerity urbanism and the re-configuration of the welfare state through the process conceptualized by Sassen (2014) as “expulsions”.Political economists have paid a great attention to the emergence of social movements opposing austerity politics, in some cases acknowledging the potentially contentious character of housing and real estate to favor mobilization. Indeed the massive increase of foreclosures and evictions that followed the burst of the bubble highlights one of the main basic contradictions of capitalism (use-value vs exchange-value): a basic need is opposed to the research for profits by financial institutions. However, when stressing the potentially contentious character of housing and real estate, these contributions analyze social movements’ initiatives as a response to the “violence of financial capitalism” in a dynamics of hegemonic power/resistance. So they fail to recognize how contentious practices in the housing sector can be brought by the same subjects that were previously involved in making the hegemonic process at work.Against such a dualistic perspective, the dissertation develops a theoretical framework mostly relying on the Foucauldian analysis of the economy. Neoliberalism and its dispositifs (such as indebtedness or financialization, among others) are thus seen as immediately subjective, i.e. they produce specific subjects following specific moral imperative reproducing hegemonic power relations through their everyday actions and beliefs (Foucault, 2008). So neoliberalism (as well as indebtedness or financialization) involves always a “work on the self” interlocking economy and ethics- the latter meant as a relation of self to itself in terms of moral agency, thus figuring the intentional work of individuals on themselves to subject themselves to specific sets of moral imperatives and norms of conduct. Building on this main Foucauldian assumption, the main argument I develop through the five papers is that the emergence of these initiatives can be framed as resulting from a rupture within the processes of subjectification involved by neoliberalism and its dipsositifs. This argument relies on the Foucauldian conceptualization of power as a circular force (1982): likewise any other power relation, neoliberalism and its dispositifs contain within themselves the possibilities of rupture.