Travelling through various historical and geographical contexts, Social Imaginaries of Space explores diverse forms of spatiality, examining the interconnections which shape different social collectives. Proposing a theory on how space is intrinsically linked to the making of societies, this book examines the history of the spatiality of modern states and nations and the social collectives of Western modernity in a contemporary light. Learn More

Increasingly, water-stressed cities are looking to the oceans to fix unreliable, contested and over-burdened water supply systems. Desalination technologies are, however, also becoming the focus of intense political disagreements about the sustainable and just provision of urban water. Through a series of cutting-edge case studies and multi-subject approaches, this book explores the political and ecological debates facing water desalination on a broad geographical scale. Learn More

Drawing on territorial ideas prevalent in the Medieval period, Andreas Faludi offers readers ways to rethink the current debates surrounding territorialism in the EU. Challenging contemporary European spatial planning, the author examines the ways in which it puts the democratic control of state territories and their development in question. The notion of democracy in an increasingly interconnected world is a key issue in the EU, and as such this book advocates a Europe where national borders are questioned, and ultimately transgressed. Learn More

As the international economy globalises, there is a need for national infrastructure systems to adapt to form a global infrastructure system. This network of networks aids mobility between national systems as a means of supporting their territorial needs and preferences. This reflects a strategic approach to state infrastructuring as nations seek to utilise these physical systems to support and enhance their territoriality. Providing a thorough examination through the lens of economic infrastructure, the book addresses the forces of integration and fragmentation in global networks. Learn More

The political and symbolic centrality of capital cities has been challenged by increasing economic globalization. This is especially true of secondary capital cities; capital cities which, while being the seat of national political power, are not the primary economic city of their nation state. David Kaufmann examines the unique challenges that these cities face entering globalised, inter-urban competition while not possessing a competitive political economy. Learn More

This stimulating book explores theories, conceptual frameworks, and cultural approaches with the purpose of uncovering a cross-cultural understanding of landscape democracy, a concept at the intersection of landscape, democracy and spatial justice. The authors of Defining Landscape Democracy address a number of questions that are critical to the contemporary discourse on the right to landscape: Why is democracy relevant to landscape? How do we democratise landscape? How might we achieve landscape and spatial justice? Learn More

Bridging the gap between international relations and comparative politics, this book transposes Eurocentric theories and narratives of state-making to new historical and geographical contexts in order to probe their scope conditions. In doing this, the authors question received explanations of the historical origins and geographical limits of state-making, questioning the unilinear view of the emergence of the modern state and the international system. Theoretically and methodologically eclectic, the volume explores a range of empirical cases not often discussed in the literature. Learn More

One of the most pressing policy challenges for Australia and Japan today is ensuring that China’s rise does not threaten the stability of the Asia-Pacific, while also avoiding triggering conflict with their largest trading partner. This book examines how Australian and Japanese perceptions of US primacy shape their respective views of the Asia-Pacific regional order, the robustness of Asia’s alliance system, and the future of Australia-Japan security cooperation. Learn More

25 years after the introduction of EU citizenship this book reconsiders its contradictions and constraints as well as promises and prospects. Analyzing a disputed concept and evaluating its implementation and social effects Reconsidering EU Citizenship contributes to the lively debate on European and transnational citizenship. It offers new insights for the ongoing theoretical debates on the future of EU citizenship – a future that will be determined by the transformative path the EU is going to take vis à vis the centrifugal forces of the current economic and political crisis. Learn More

European Union citizenship is increasingly relevant in the context of both the refugee crisis and Brexit, yet the issue of citizenship is neither new nor unique to the EU. Using historical, political and sociological perspectives, the authors explore varied experiences of combining multiple identities into a single sense of citizenship. Cases are taken from Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey. These examples of communities being successfully incorporated into one entity are exceptionally useful for addressing the challenges facing the EU today. Learn More

The Arctic is a region that has seen exponential growth as a space of geopolitical interest over the past decade. This insightful book is the first to analyse the European Union’s Arctic policy endeavours of the early 21st Century from a critical geopolitical perspective. Learn More

Infrastructure represents the core underpinning architecture of the global economic system. Adopting an approach informed by realism, this insightful book looks at the forces for the integration and fragmentation of the global infrastructure system. The authors undertake a thorough examination of the main internationalised infrastructure sectors: energy, transport and information. They argue that the global infrastructure system is a network of national systems and that state strategies exert powerful forces upon the form and function of this system. Learn More

This book revives the discussion on public social services and their redesign, with a focus on services relating to care and the social inclusion of vulnerable groups, providing rich information on the changes that occurred in the organisation and supply of public social services over the last thirty years in different European places and service fields. Despite the persisting variety in social service models, three shared trends emerge: public sector disengagement, ‘vertical re-scaling’ of authority and ‘horizontal re-mix’ in the supply system. The consequences of such changes are evaluated from different perspectives – governance, social and territorial cohesion, labour market, gender – and are eventually deemed ‘disruptive’ in both economic and social terms. The policy implications of the restructuring are also explored. This title will be Open Access on Elgaronline.com. Learn More

Furthering understanding of the temporalities and spatialities of how people move across international boundaries, this book analyses how timespace intersects with migrant journeys as an integral aspect of the rhythms of daily lives. Individual chapters engage with these concepts by analysing a broad spectrum of migrations and mobilities, from youth mobility, to refugee migration, to gentrification, to food and to the political geography of the border. Learn More

This timely book offers an in-depth exploration of state partitions and the history of nationalism in Europe from the Enlightenment onwards. Stefano Bianchini compares traditional national democratic development to the growing transnational demands of representation with a focus on transnational mobility and empathy versus national localism against the EU project. In an era of multilevel identity, global economic and asylum seeker crises, nationalism is becoming more liquid which in turn strengthens the attractiveness of ‘ethnic purity’ and partitions, affects state stability, and the nature of national democracy in Europe. The result may be exposure to the risk of new wars, rather than enhanced guarantees of peace. Learn More

With an ever-expanding variety of perspectives on the concept of neoliberalism, it is increasingly difficult to identify any commonalities. This book explores how different people understand neoliberalism, and the contradictions in thinking of neoliberalism as a market-based ethic, project, or order. Detailing the intellectual history of ‘neoliberal’ thought, the variety of critical approaches and the many analytical ambiguities, Kean Birch presents a new way to conceptualize contemporary political economy and offers potential avenues for future research through a judicious exploration of ‘neoliberal’ practices, processes, and institutions. Learn More

This book identifies possible factors responsible for the recent rise of many developing countries. It examines how robust these trends actually are and speculatively predicts the implications and consequences that may result from a continuation of these trends. It also suggests possible scenarios of future development. Ultimately, it argues that the rise of ‘the Rest’ would not only imply geopolitical shifts, but could lead to proliferation of new growth models in the Global South and to profound changes in international economic relations. Learn More

Key sections of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal with temporary labor mobility. Ideally, NAFTA status provisions should make the temporary movement of professionals easier across the border of all NAFTA countries. However, in the case of some key sectors, it is arguably not the case. Within the context of recent literature on cross-border trade, city regions, regionalism, international labor mobility, and post-September 11 security measures, this book probes the dynamics of transitory immigration of ‘knowledge-workers’ between the North American west coast city regions of Vancouver, Seattle, and the greater San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley area. This book includes in-depth interviews with Canadian and US immigration officials, immigration attorneys and executives and professional staff of new technology firms and Fortune 500 companies. It ultimately explores whether or not the Canada–US border is an impediment to the development of a cross-border high-tech clusters. Learn More

Illustrated with pioneering maps and with country analyses from a network of researchers from across the Mediterranean, this book takes a territorial approach as a way toward a shared vision for a truly integrated Euro-Mediterranean region. At a time when the region is undergoing rapid change, the main goal of the book is to challenge misconceptions with common geographic data on issues such as transport, energy, agriculture, water and to suggest avenues for policies common to Europe and its southern neighbours. Learn More