Contenu du sommaire : Espaces de voisinages

Between Belgium and France, bad jokes are not the only way of representing the neighbour. The Belgian-French border, which progressively emerged over a distance of 620 km prior to the founding of the Belgian state in 1830, was traced in a way unrelated either to natural limits or to clear linguistic boundaries. The relations between Walloons and the inhabitants of Brussels with France are very particular and ambiguous.

Expressing in thought the manner in which Spain under Franco (1939-1975) was represented by its European neighbors requires attention to both the evolution of representations of the foreign enemy conceived at the time of the Spanish civil war and the imperatives of building a new regime suffering from illegitimacy at its origin. Marked by the stigma of fascism while representing the cause of anti-communism during the World War II and after, Franco's Spain succeeded -despite international ostracism during the 1940s and pressure from the republican resistance- both in preserving the continuity of the national project and preparing its rehabilitation in Europe through the normalization of relationships with its neighbors, whether friends or enemies in earlier times.

Between Spain and Europe there were complex and changing neighbor relations between 1947 and 1975, with alternating periods of dialogue and tension. The lack of balance and the dissymmetry of those relations as well as the authoritarianism of Franco's regime prevented good neighborhood relationships from taking shape. This article nuances the question of Spain's maginalization, taking into account the fact that Spain was associated with Western defense as early as 1953; was integrated into the capitalist system beginning in 1957 and was tied to the EEC by a commercial agreement signed in 1970. The neighbor relations between Franco's Spain and Europe was not lacking in ambiguity. But since that period, pro-European sentiment in Spain, a product of the political culture of the antiFranco opposition and of Spanish administrative, intellectual and economic elites - progressively took shape in the 1950s-60s and it explains in part the strong wishes of the Spanish people to become a full member of the EEC after 1975.

From the turn of the century to the present day, both the Finnish elites and the authorities of the country have aimed to produce, disseminate and control information about their country. Before independence in 1917, this endeavor was mostly the task of the nationalist elite, which produced texts and publications aimed at foreign audiences describing the country and its national development. After independence, this public relation effort was monopolised by the new state's official authorities. Today, however, it is made more difficult because of the combined effect of changes in Finnish society, technological change and the opening of cultural and economic borders. The Finnish state continues, however, to produce a certain discourse about Finland which is relayed by the efforts of the Finnish authorities' public diplomacy.

European neighborhood policy began in 2003 and the concept of “near abroad” created in 1992 partly cover the same geographical area. The destiny of this area will depend on the nature of the relationships Brussels and Moscow establish and on their respective political wills to make of this area either a zone of cooperation or one of conflict. The European neighborhood policy and concept lead to questions about the representation and the image of neighbors; neighbors' relations are not exactly the same with reference to geography, politics or institutions. In this respect, Ukraine and its neighbors provide a good example of such representations and problematics.

Since the Vienna Summit in 1993, the Council of Europe has encouraged cross-border cooperation and in particular the creation of Euroregions at outer borders of the European Union (EU), in order to contribute to the democratic stabilization of the European continent. These multilateral Euroregions with a geopolitical finality were formed under the auspices of the Council of Europe around the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea Region for example, as a contribution to the member states' neighborhood policy. They go beyond a strictly regional framework of cross-border cooperation because they further implicate states beyond the EU's borders. They are therefore often cited as a contribution to the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) founded by the EU in 2003. However, the EU was not directly involved in their creation since in 2003, 150 Euroregions already existed throughout Europe. It was only in 2007 that the EU provided for a neighborhood policy instrument within the framework of the ENP which was concerned with cross-border cooperation.

Is it possible to organize the neighborhood politically by forming the national elites? Since 1992, le Council of Europe organizes, in partnership with local NGOs, “Schools of Political Studies”, which provide courses of study about democracy for young political, legal and media elites. These original, malleable and largely un-formatted schools of democracy are aimed at states outside the EU, from Croatia or Moldova to Russia, Ukraine or Armenia.

From the very first months of the Algerian war of independence, the FLN (National Liberation Front), tried to bring its cause on the international scene in order to escape political isolation and to alleviate the weaksness of its military apparatus. Thanks to the support of 14 afro-asian countries, it obtained its first success in 1955. 1955 was indeed the year of the question of Algeria in the agenda of the UN 10th session. In the mean time, it set up the French Federation of the FLN. Its mission was to control the immigration, to collect “the revolutionary tax”, to export the war to France and to use propaganda to influence public opinion. After September 1958, the action of the Federation was coupled with the action of the foreign office (MAE) of the provisional government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA). Its mission was to convince governments of the legimity of its cause. In such a context, the main concern of France neighbouring countries was to limit the extension of the conflict on their territory as well as to preserve their political independence. Switzerland struggled to make belligerents understand the basis of its foreign policy because it was at the heart of the diplomatic strategy of the GPRA and because it welcomed a very politicized Algerian immigration. By moving the focus of the study of the French Federation of the FLN from metropolitan France to Switzerland, the European dimension of the Algerian war shows all its complexity.

The relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean have travelled a path strewn with obstacles and undermined by multiple misunderstandings. They have become particularly complex. Having reached adolescence and puberty, they remain unstable today. The policies of the region's main actor, the European Union, allies resembles that of a “message in a bottle” in the sea. Imbalance is the key notion at the heart of this relationship. Europe, defined as the expression of a community of states that are politically stable, economically developed and having a tradition (if not great experience), of the outside interventions, and engaged in a process of a multidimensional integration, finds itself in a rather comfortable position with the South. The Arab world, “sick man” of Mediterranean, and probably of the 21st century, seeks to keep its head above water.

The latest enlargement of the EU (2004) has changed the geopolitical landscape of Europe. It also gave hope and new dimensions to the relations between Azerbaijan and the EU through the implementation of the New Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in the South Caucasus countries. The ENP aims to deepen political and economic presence of the Union in every country of South Caucasus. This article aims to explain by what means the EU is attempting to get involved in the region and enhance its political and economic status.

Caught in an enclave between Russia and China, the republics of Central Asia have opted for a so-called multidirectional foreign policy involving numerous bilateral and international agreements. These new independent nations, not yet versed in international politics, are seeking to strike a subtle balance between Moscow and Beijing while trying to assert their national interests against these giants of regional politics.

This article examines the question of Mexican immigration to the United States as a question of international relations, examining various paradigms of I.R. analysis, including realism, neo-liberalism and the transnational perspective. While recognizing the usefulness of the neo-liberal model for its emphasis on the role internal U.S. social and political forces in determining immigration policy, the author defends transnationalist analyses of globalization against realists and liberals who believe such thinking underestimates the capacity of the state to enforce immigration policy. Emphasizing the current climate of hostility to Mexican and other Latin American immigrants, and a systematic “legal production of illegality” (N. de Genova), he calls for a critical perspective drawing on the resources of the neo-Gramscian and postcolonial/decolonial contributions to I.R. analysis.

In a European context generally hostile to the new Portuguese political institutions, the young Portuguese Republic, threatened on its own territory by attemptsed Spanish incursions and on its overseas territories by the colonial claims of the European powers, tried to found the legitimacy of the new regime at the national and international level by demonstrating to the international community Portugal's cultural and colonial power. For this purpose the Portuguese government, beginning in 1910, attempted a rapprochement with its former colony, Brazil, in order to stress the fraternal bonds between the two countries, based on history, race, language and religious faith. This discourse of fraternity, which became official on the occasion of the centennial of Brazilian independence, offered a theoretical framework for the idea of Luso-Brazilian neighbor relations, based above all on historical and cultural criteria.

How does the history of the tangible (le sensible) make it possible to complexify and to renew the concept of “frontier“? To answer this question, we propose to examine the situation in the colonized Chaco Boreal in the 1920s and 30s. At that time, the Chaco was described as a “desert” in the national literatures of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. FFrontier territory by definition, its expression in thought involved a strict, airtight opposition between civilization and barbary. However, this vast area, which remained outside the control of states, felt the profound influence of different settlement fronts. The The Chaco was thus a territory where people, objects, ideas and feelings circulated. The circulation of the tangible thus blurred together what the symbolic system tried to separate.