Culture in European Neighbourhood Policy’s Discourses: Tracing Boundaries and Defining Liminal Others

Cultural relations and inter-cultural dialogue have been an integral part of the European Neighbourhood Policy since its beginning, and even earlier as part of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. The financial and technical support for International Cultural Relations (ICR) in the neighbourhood is based on ambiguous narratives, highlighting both cultural proximity as the basis for the creation of regional identities as well as the need for dialogue and exchange between different, and potentially clashing, cultures. If we consider foreign policy as a process that traces boundaries (Campbell, 1998:73), it becomes clear that this discursive process is not neutral, as it concerns the definition of a European identity in relation with (and potentially in opposition to) Others. Drawing upon the analytical tools of critical constructivism, this paper will use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to assess the use of culture as a boundary-tracing topic in the context of the ENP. It will be argued that perceptions of culture play a fundamental role in this definition of boundaries within the ENP, but do not necessarily identify a European Self in stark opposition with a non-European Other, often resorting to narratives of common heritage (e.g. Mediterranean). EU Neighbours thus appear as ‘liminal’ Others, that ‘occupy partly-self/partly-Other positions in identity discourses’ (cf. Morozov and Rumelili, 2012:29). However, this compromise entails a certain ambiguity, as this element of Otherness is downplayed or highlighted at EU’s convenience, thus tracing flexible boundaries that change according to different policy domains (e.g. economic cooperation vs. migration) and different countries within the ENP (e.g. countries with a far but potentially open prospect for EU accession vs. others).