Bibliogr. s. 91-92. Indeks

The notion of 'Fortress Europe' is a political battle cry employed and acted out by political groups from across the ideological spectrum in contemporary Europe. Under this slogan, Western European extreme-right groups travel to Bulgaria to participate in local citizens' militias that hunt down immigrants. Others send ships to the Mediterranean that push refugees’ boats back to the shores of North Africa. In turn, left-wing activists use the notion of Fortress Europe to denounce the EU's border policies. Their campaigns advertise the construction of a bridge over the Mediterranean, or public funerals for refugees who have died on their journey to Europe. Taking account of the increasing involvement of European citizens in the processes of giving meaning to the notion of Fortress Europe, this study examines how civil society groups (de-)construct European external borders in discourse and action. It regards European borders not as naturally given demarcations, but, in line with Brambilla's (2015) notion of "borderscapes", recognizes their spatial and conceptual complexity as socially constructed and contested spaces. Employing the toolkit of critical discourse analysis, the study uncovers the discursive strategies that an exemplary selection of right-wing and left-wing civil society groups use to establish the metaphor of Fortress Europe as significant for the EU. Furthermore, it uses the theoretical lens of "acts of citizenship" (Isin & Nielsen, 2008) to analyze how the political activists constitute themselves and others as rights claiming subjects through creative and self-organized action. The proposed paper is based on a truly interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon various strands of thought such as citizenship studies, critical border studies, critical discourse studies and critical metaphor theory. The theoretical integration of these rather novel approaches to European Studies, achieved by employing a constructivist approach to the concept of the border and citizenship, constitutes the added value of this work.