Sandra Hagelin

Welcome to RUCARR seminar 29 September!

Full title

"Speaking Borders, Speaking Europe: Entangled Borders in the Baltic–Nordic Space"

Speaker

Sandra Hagelin

Abstract

Borders are commonly understood as distinct institutional boundaries separating states, territories, and political communities. Yet in political discourse, different borders may become intertwined, acquiring meanings that extend beyond their formal institutional functions. This talk examines how Nordic and Baltic governments discursively construct and connect national, EU/Schengen, and, at times, NATO borders during periods of border-related crisis. Drawing on governmental communication from Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Lithuania across three crisis-related events, the 2015–16 migration crisis, the 2021 Belarusian instrumentalization of migration, and debates over restrictions on Russian Schengen visa holders in 2022, the talk explores how different forms of bordering become entangled with broader understandings of political order and European identity. These discursive entanglements transform borders from territorial demarcations into sites where ideas about security, belonging, and Europe are negotiated.

The talk concludes by considering what these entangled constructions of borders reveal about contemporary understandings of European security and belonging, the changing geopolitical imagination of Europe’s northeastern neighborhood, as well as its implications for the future governance and bordering of migration.

Welcome!