1st Edition
Remapping Security on Europe’s Northern Borders
This book critically analyses the changing EU-Russian security environment in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, with a particular focus on northern Europe where the EU and the Russian Federation share a common border.
Russian involvement in conflict situations in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood has drastically impacted the European security environment, leading to a resurgence of competitive great power relations. The book uses the EU-Russia interface at the borders of Finland and the European North as a prism through which interwoven external and internal security challenges can be explored. Security is considered in the broadest sense of the term, as the authors consider how the security environment is reflected politically, socially and culturally within European societies. The book analyses changing political language and concepts, institutional preparedness, border governance, human security, migration and wider challenges to societal resilience. Ultimately, the book investigates into Finland’s preparedness to address new global security challenges and to find solutions to them on an everyday level.
This book will be an important guide for researchers and upper-level students of security, border studies, Russian and European studies, as well as to policy makers looking to develop a wider, contextualized understanding of the challenges to stability and security in different parts of Europe.
Introduction: Changing dimensions of the Northern European security environment, Jussi P. Laine, Ilkka Liikanen & James W. Scott PART I: Remapping security political environments 1. Russia and the EU: different dimensions of security and cooperation, Vladimir Kolosov & Alexander Sebentsov 2. Neighbourhood and the West: Shifting key concepts of Finland’s geopolitical positioning, Ilkka Liikanen 3. "Foreign Agent" as an internal representative of "the West" in Russia’s geopolitical discourses, Veera Laine & Kristiina Silvan PART II: Security on and beyond national borders 4. Implementation of European Union security strategies in the context of Integrated Border Management, Sari Lindblom & Joona Castrén 5. The geography of threat perceptions of Russian borders, Aappo Kähönen 6. Confusing compass points of human security – Finnish perspectives, Jussi P. Laine 7. Finland, the European Union, and the strategies of the Northern region, Alina Kuusisto 8. PART III: Geographies of migration and everyday security 9. Images of Finland, Europe and the West among asylum seekers, Joni Virkkunen & Minna Piipponen 10. To go or not to go? Finland’s Russian speakers discuss the Immortal Regiment march in Finland, Olga Davydova-Minguet 11. Welfare state, competition state, security state: Nationalism in nation-state responses to cross-border mobilities, Pauli Kettunen Epilogue: Finland and the borderland identity – implications for foreign and security policy, Teija Tiilikainen
Biography
Jussi P. Laine is an Associate Professor of Multidisciplinary Border Studies at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. Currently, he also serves as the President of the Association for Borderlands Studies.
Ilkka Liikanen is a Professor of Border and Russian studies at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland.
James W. Scott is a Professor of Regional and Border Studies at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland.
