A union in distress: Contested spatial imaginations, narratives and practices of European (dis)integration

Europe as a spatial concept and space in practice has witnessed a variety of integrative as well as disintegrative tendencies over the past decades. While a binary concept of the terms integration and disintegration has dominated a vast proportion of public discussion as well as academic literature, some authors advance a more differentiated view. The introduction of this special issue will pick up the threads of these debates and connect them to considerations of the spatialities of such processes. While theoretically dissecting the roles and meanings of spatial imaginations, narratives and everyday practices and conceptualizing their entanglements within Europe’s growing together and apart, the introduction will provide a basis for the detailed and empirical accounts of this issue. By paying particular attention to the meaningful and symbolic power of imaginations and narratives used within the struggles around European (dis)integration, the main aim is to engage closer with the central mechanisms facilitating and underlying the current struggles around European (dis)integrations. Consequently, the introduction opens the view for a multitude of spatially enhanced processes ranging between encounters and borderings.