Unravelling the Southern Neighbourhood Dynamics of the European Research Area: Dynamics of the European Research Area: Tailored Positive External Differentiation and SegmentationTailored Positive External Differentiation and Segmentation

This article explains how the European Commission steers the incorporation of entities from specific geographic areas and specialising in specific thematic domains into international research-intense projects through detailed guidance elaborated in the documentation of open calls for project applications. This hoop-test guided process tracing study aims to better understand what factors come into play in the formation and facilitation of the engagement of the European Southern Neighbourhood-based entities in the European Research Area through projects funded by the European Union’s Framework Programmes. This category-driven, qualitatively-oriented text analysis is based on the coding of various policy-relevant geographic reference points to clarify the exact contextual background that played a decisive role in including entities from Morocco and Tunisia in project consortiums.