Concluding remarks to the special issue ‘Rethinking periphery in Europe: redistributing the cards’

Abstract :

The articles in the present issue update, exemplify and deepen the ideas on Europe’s margins that I and fellow researchers developed in the context of the 1990s enlargement. There are two broad categories of pressure from the margins of Europe upon its centre: attempts to reinterpret and/or relocate Europe’s central identity; and attempts to challenge it, by claiming alternative identities for Europe. Articles examining the latter are particularly fruitful in terms of modifying our theorizations of the margins. The article goes on to sketch out a notion of ‘seeing like a margin’ (with obvious forebears!). There is frequently more insight in seeing like a margins than seeing from the centre. On the other hand, especially at present, a number of ‘pathologies of the margin’ are arising, where misleading claims about being marginalized are made, especially by populist politicians who push bogus solutions.

• Alternative Source 1
• Alternative Source 2