We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship.

• Author: Grigoriadis, Ioannis N.
• Position: Book Review

We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship By Etienne Balibar Translated by James Swenson (Princeton University Press, 2004)

In We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, Etienne Balibar argues that Europe's borders have always been mobile "overlapping zones" of contradictory civilizations rather than juxtapositions of monolithic entities. Europe's interior and exterior spaces have also been under constant renegotiation in the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. The European Union enlargement process is thus inextricably linked with the questions of whether Europe's borders are geographical or cultural, and fixed or shifting. As a result, the question of whether Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, or even the Balkans are part of Europe can have multiple and conflicting answers.

The author, who is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Paris X and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, stresses that the term "border" is undergoing a profound change in meaning. State borders are no more entirely situated at the outer limit of territories. New borders are emerging within the western world, as in cosmopolitan cities where immigrant communities are discriminated against on the basis of their nationality and are deprived of fundamental human rights. In the case of the EU, this problem has acquired worrying dimensions. Age-old European nationalism and racism are now channeled toward consolidating the social and cultural exclusion of millions of non-EU nationals who reside within the European Union. Borders have moved from the edges of the state territory into the middle of political space, where they challenge the ability of democratic states to deal with inextricable administrative and ideological problems.

In Balibar's words, borders comprise "the point where, even in the most democratic of states, the status of citizen returns to the condition of a 'subject,' where political participation gives way to the rule of police." Borders are the "absolutely non-democratic" or "discretionary" condition of democratic institutions. This characteristic becomes even more apparent as the gap between the increasingly transnational character of private practices and social relations and the persistently nation-centric framework of most public institutions grows. Rethinking the meaning and function of borders in the global era results in the redefinition of...