Europe, MENA and the Black Sea regions have been confronted, within the last decade, with uncertainties and threats that challenge established interaction as much as mutual representations. Protracted conflicts and internal wars, poverty, climate change, energy challenges and resource scarcity expose the inhabitants of the whole region, as well as migrants and refugees coming from other regions, to new vulnerabilities and insecurities. In the wake of the end of WWII in Western Europe, and following the decline of East-West rivalries, regionalism (both as an ideology and a political programme) and regionalization (as a process) in the Mediterranean region seemed to represent an enticing agenda, underlined and bolstered by liberal assumptions. Within the past decade, the assumptions associated with the idea of a ‘world of regions’ (and the unchecked expansion of multilateralism) have become confronted with renewed emphasis on sovereignty and the rise of new cross-border threats and challenges.

The purpose of the Bordeaux workshop was to provide a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive representations, processes and outcomes of (in)security with respect to infra-regional, cross-border and transregional flows in the wider Euro-Mediterranean region, including Middle East and North Africa, as well the Black Sea. Accordingly, special attention was paid to the relevance/need for adjustment of the various methodological approaches and various scales to tackle security issues: macro (state, regional organizations.) / micro (peoples’ perceptions) /meso (borders, cross-border flows..) without reducing these phenomena to inter-state or international relations and rivalries.

In order to achieve these objectives, the workshop endorsed the different meanings and dimensions of security, namely:

• ■ National security: the territory, the population and the state apparatus (democratic conception).
• ■ The pursuit of regime security under the guise of promoting national security.
• ■ Collective security: the security of a state is the concern of all states. All states must therefore mutually guarantee their security and defend any aggressed state against any aggressor state.
• ■ Human security: concerns above all the population (its well-being, health, access to basic services, etc.) and the territory (preservation of natural resources), bearing in mind that threats to these vital needs can lead to armed conflicts.
• ■ The classical (national security), the neo-institutionalist or solidarist (collective & human security), the post-modern (security as perceived by the actors) and their overlap/interconnection in different contexts.

These different dimensions and their interplay are regrouped under three broad thematic sessions focused on:

• ■ I - The States’ (in) security dilemmas.
  • • Mental maps and cognitive representations, genealogies: the reference to and imprint of colonial and/or precolonial legacies.
  • • The resilience/survival strategies of so-called weak/failed states and regimes.
  • • The securitization of public policies: how one issue, once treated as a security concern, translates into policies.
• ■ II . The security/insecurity nexus.
  • • The imprint left by territorial disputes, conflicts, wars.
  • • Contending representations of security.
  • • Scale and levels of analysis & different types of actors (states, civil societies, business, organized crime, diasporas and transnational networks of all types).
  • • International sanctions as a tool.
• ■ III Cross border and transregional interactions.
  • • Trade, refugees, migrations terrorism: patterns and their imprint on regionalization processes.
  • • Migrations, responses and perceptions by state and non-state actors, (UN agencies, NGOs, etc.).
  • • The European Neighbouring Policy: concept of third safe country, externalization of migration control, assessing security issues together: European and Middle Eastern countries military cooperation.

Contacts: Prof. Caroline Dufy
c.dufy@sciencespobordeaux.fr