This event features the 5th session of the Research Lab seminar series with a presentation by Tim Ellemann
In his thesis, the researcher Tim Elleman re-interprets the emerging economic security instruments of the EU (e.g. foreign investment screening, export controls, etc.) as legal mechanisms that determine with increasing precision what may enter the EU's internal market, on what terms, from whom, and what may not leave it. For example, a Chinese individual may be prohibited from entering the EU market as a buyer of critical infrastructure, like the Port of Hamburg. Taken together, he argues that these instruments constitute something that existing legal scholarship has not yet adequately theorised: a regime through which the EU is actively producing its own economic borders rather than merely managing economic flows across borders that already exist.
The text he will circulate and seek feedback on only relates to part of my theoretical framework—on borders and law—which aims to be relevant beyond the narrow trade or economic security context. In it, the researcher aims to develop a theory of bordering through law by drawing on the social sciences literature from the field of border studies. In essence, borders are understood not as fixed geographic lines (nouns) but as dynamic and continuous social practice of spatial differentiation (verbs). He reviews how existing legal scholarship has treated and theorised borders in law (mostly EU and international law) and claim that only a dynamic and practice-oriented theory of law can accommodate the border studies understanding of borders, which this chapter aims to develop. Such a theory, for instance, looks not only at the text of an EU foreign investment screening regulation but at how national authorities, firms, and advisors continuously enact, contest, and adapt its boundaries in concrete cases. This theory will later be applied in four case studies of economic security instruments (not part of this chapter).
The paper will be shared close to the event following registration.
The Research Lab was born from the idea of creating a space where researchers can present their work and where we, as a community, can come together for fresh and provocative discussions! Any researcher can present any research, and the idea is, similarly to the Faculty Seminar, to have a 1-hour monthly session with a paper shared in advance, an assigned discussant, and the possibility for everyone to engage with the arguments advanced. Until June, the Reps are running a pilot phase with some working groups.