Labelling the 'neighbourhood': towards a genesis of the European neighbourhood policy

This article investigates the drafting of the most recent initiative developed by the European Union (EU) to manage its relations with the countries lying in its geographical vicinity: the European neighbourhood policy (ENP). It argues that a functional reading of this policy, as being the response to externally given problems, does not allow for a satisfactory understanding of the various processes at work under the ENP. It tries to depart from such an outlook by analysing the ENP as an administrative label, structured by a variety of discursive strategies and the struggles among differentially positioned agents of the European bureaucracies. In this, it draws from proposals for a sociology of practices initially developed in the field of critical approaches to security studies. Its main conclusion on the ENP is that, despite the official discourse highlighting the need for a rapprochement between the EU and its neighbours based mainly on a programme of 'good governance', the ENP is now largely structured by a perspective focusing on the management of potentially threatening developments stemming from the EU's vicinity.