engleski

Illusions of Borders, Borders of Illusion: Towards a New European World Economy-Society

In this paper the EU is taken as a growing alliance of countries that overcomes the formats of the historical empires. In this regard, further expansions of the EU borders would necessitate changes in the Union's economic and political arrangements for to manage over its enlargement and complexities. In so doing, the EU may decisively contribute to building a democratic world-state. However such an outcome seems utopian rather than futurological and it, moreover, rescinds the basic function of the borders, which is to protect insiders' exclusive possessions of valuable resources - most borders are movable and crossing rather than fixed or impenetrable. This particularly concerns the dynamics of the EU borders. Nevertheless, general perspectives on outcomes of the EU dynamics are divergent. One perspective follows Kant's utopian vision of Europe and accordingly considers further expansion of the EU borders as a cosmopolitan tendency and a possible foreground of a democratic world-state. The other perspective is utterly realistic and pessimistic alike, as it sees the EU as a project of the Cold War's Realpolitik of the Western Europe, whereas currently, unlike welfarism in the Cold War era, the EU adopts neo-liberal agenda and thus becomes a new empire with its own center(s) and peripheries. Although the latter view is not endorsed in the official documents and political rhetoric of the EU, it surfaces in its policy of overprotected borders. Building on the former view, author specifies possible consequences of further expansions of the EU borders in terms of cosmopolitanism. Insofar, he expounds six theses concerning the "variable geometry" of the EU borders, then their shifting, pulsations, and the lack of the vision of the antagonist ; next theses are that perpetuation of the borders impedes social change and that it facilitates devolution of the contemporary democracy. In lieu of conclusion about outlooks of the future expansion of the EU, author offers a conceptual epilogue based on the classical sociological dichotomy between Community and Society, whereby boundaries are taken as the markers of identities of the Community, contemporary national or "civilization" identities alike, which do not vanish, indeed, but may become porous, whereas the Union borders might gradually disappear, former nation-state borders of the EU member states alike.

European empires; EU borders; European cosmopolitanism; world state; communal boundaries; societal / Union borders

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