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Post-national Europe — without cosmopolitan guaranteesInstitute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University, Sweden For some years, a growing crowd of 'cosmopolitan' Left-liberal scholars and intellectuals have been taking aim at the nation state, holding it responsible for numerous grave problems facing Europe and the wider world, ranging from growing anti-immigrant sentiments to the absence of a counterweight to US neoconservative unilateralism. In this view, 'more Europe', as in more supranational EU integration, is said to be the key solution, paving the way for a progressive, human rights-based 'cosmopolitan Europe' capable of transcending the vices of national self-interest. This article offers a critique of such an EU-based cosmopolitan promise, focusing primarily on asylum policy. Since there has been an increased EU involvement in asylum policy in recent years, it makes for an ideal context to discuss and 'test' the cosmopolitan 'more Europe' thesis. It is argued that, while there are as many good reasons to remain critical of the nation state as there are injustices committed in its name, recognition of this fact cannot be allowed to spill over uncritically into the nowadays fashionable contention that progress will automatically result from diminishing national sovereignty and the shift of policy-making to the EU level. As the case of 'Europeanised' asylum policy demonstrates, there are no guarantees whatsoever to that effect.
Key Words: cosmopolitanism • European integration • nation state • refugees • Sweden
Race & Class, Vol. 50, No. 4,
20-37 (2009) |
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