Chasing the Specters, Dodging the Ghosts: Borders and the Processes of Europeanization in Croatia

This article analyzes discursive bordering practices in the processes of Europeanization in Croatia. It attempts to inscribe a border-related, anthropologically seated notion of tidemarks more firmly within the research on symbolic geographies of the Balkans. The article provides an overview of spatial imagining and (re)bordering of the Balkans and Europe, and it discusses metaphors that accompany those formations, such as bulwarks, bridges, or crossroads. Then, examples from long-term empirical research on the perception of the European Union in Croatia are analyzed through the lens of tidemarks. The analysis includes interviews with negotiators with the EU, students of the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb, union leader in the region of Međimurje, as well as the speech delivered by Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanović at the ceremony marking the country’s accession to the EU. In conclusion, the article proposes that discerning the varying historical and ideological meanings of tidemarks within the realm of symbolic geography deepens the understanding of the European Union and processes of Europeanization in general.