Political Science/Geography

Europe is currently experiencing an unprecedented process of reterritorialization in the context of European Union integration. Central to this process is the implementation of various cross-border cooperation schemes, commonly known as Euroregions, aimed at redefining fixed, border-induced Westphalian territoriality. The literature on Euroregions has primarily examined the reterritorialization of state power and institutions across borders, documenting the emergence of cross-border governance networks. However, the territorial underpinning of cross-border reterritorialization, as well as the process of territorial constitution of cross-border spaces has been less well explored. This paper examines cross-border reterritorialization from a geopolitical perspective informed by multi-scalar conceptualizations of political territoriality. Actors at supranational, national and local scales often follow territorial logics that are at odds with each other. Competing meanings of territory and territoriality interact to produce a geopolitics of Euroregions that shapes cross-border reterritorialization. The paper focuses on the Euroregions established at the current fringes of the EU, in the Romanian–Ukrainian–Moldovan borderlands.

Recent years have witnessed increased interest in diasporas. In the current context of globalisation, diasporas have assumed greater prominence on the international stage. The link between diasporas and international politics, however, is relatively under-studied. The purpose of this study is to analyse the interconnections between diasporas and international politics from a geopolitical perspective. Specifically, I examine the linkages between the US-based Romanian diaspora and US foreign policy regarding Romania during the late 1990s when NATO expanded into Eastern Europe. The US-based Romanian diaspora attempted to influence the US political establishment to grant NATO membership to Romania during NATO’s 1997 expansion by reshaping the prevailing geopolitical discourse about Romania in order to move the borders of ‘sameness’ to include Romania as similar to rather than apart from ‘the West’.

... By GABRIEL POPESCU A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006 Copyright @ 2006 Gabriel Popescu All Rights Reserved Page 2. ...

Building on previous insights that have decentered the understanding of borders in a simple, linear manner, there have been recent calls for a paradigmatic change in understanding the role borders play in organizing and regulating contemporary social interaction in space. The main argument focuses on the shift of the role of borders from remote limits controlling access to state territories to central ordering devices at the core of societies both in symbolic and material terms. In this view, borders play vital roles in individuals’ lives, reaching deep into the fabric of societies to structure and regulate daily routines as well as long-term strategies. Several developments such as advances in digital technology, globalization-driven mobility imperatives, flow-related security demands, anda topological imagination of space, are converging to shape a new border paradigm that unsettles long established political and economic practices and rises essential questions about power relatio...