The EU, Resilience and the Southern Neighbourhood After the Arab Uprisings

Badarin, Emile; Schumacher, Tobias

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-23641-0_4

The EU, Resilience and the Southern Neighbourhood After the Arab Uprisings

Emile Badarin³ &
Tobias Schumacher³

Chapter
First Online: 07 August 2019

665 Accesses
7 Citations
3 Altmetric

Abstract

This chapter argues that the notion of resilience in EU foreign policy towards its southern ‘near abroad’ is unsettled and continues to undergo a seemingly endless process of reconceptualisation. Accordingly, the chapter treats resilience not only as a work-in-progress. It also considers the concept as a discursive means through which the EU attempts to disguise its struggle to come to terms with the multifaceted fallouts of instability in the Southern Neighbourhood, and to downplay its recently concluded shift from transformative to status quo-oriented aspirations. Accordingly, it is argued that the elusiveness of resilience as a guiding rationale in EU-southern neighbourhood relations, together with ensuing inconsistencies in the practical pursuit of resilience currently renders the EU ill-equipped to enhance stabilisation in the Southern Neighbourhood.

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Notes

1.
Initially, it was even foreseen to include the Russian Federation in the ENP, though due to the refusal of the former, Russian participation never materialised. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were added to the ENP only in 2004, thus shortly after the Georgian Rose Revolution.
2.
The EUGS (European Union 2016: 25) claims that ‘repressive states are inherently fragile in the long term’.
3.
Although philosophical research on resilience is lacking, the existing body of literature suggests that resilience relies on the ontological assumption of complex and uncertain world affairs, which cannot be controlled and, therefore, remain insecure. Subsequently, the notion of resilience focuses on human subjectivities as a means to live with dangers and insecurities. (Evans and Reid 2014; Joseph 2013, 2016).
4.
The list of challenges includes issues such as poverty, vulnerability, fragility, violent conflicts, hybrid threats, climate change, migration, gender inequalities, radicalisation, violent extremism, the building of inclusive societies, sustainable economies, accountable institutions, etc. (European Commission 2013, 2016b, 2017c; European Union 2016).

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College of Europe, Natolin Campus, Warsaw, Poland
Emile Badarin & Tobias Schumacher

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Emile Badarin
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Tobias Schumacher
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Correspondence to Emile Badarin .

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Leiden, The Netherlands
Eugenio Cusumano
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Stefan Hofmaier

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Badarin, E., Schumacher, T. (2020). The EU, Resilience and the Southern Neighbourhood After the Arab Uprisings. In: Cusumano, E., Hofmaier, S. (eds) Projecting Resilience Across the Mediterranean. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23641-0_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23641-0_4
Published: 07 August 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-030-23641-0
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