The Routledge Handbook of Peripheries in European Studies

“By centring on peripheries, the essays in this handbook draw attention to their shifting, ambiguous, and plural nature, emphasise the importance of cultural distinctions as well as economic or political asymmetries in defining their positions, and expand the scope of European studies beyond the European land mass to include geographically distinct sites that are defined as peripheral solely because of their relationship to Europe. With its productive typology distinguishing between spatial, structural, sociopolitical and epistemic peripheries, this volume will be both an extraordinarily useful resource and an inspiration to further research.”
Wendy Bracewell, Emeritus Professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

“It is only through Europe’s material and symbolic peripheries that we can begin to understand – and, ultimately, unsettle – ‘Europe’ as a coherent cultural, racial, and even geographic referent. This task is especially urgent at a time of increasingly fortified borders and virulent xenophobic nationalisms. Drawing on diverse theoretical traditions and methodological approaches, the chapters in this volume analyze the ‘periphery’ as a spatial referent, a relational process, a structural position, an embodied subjectivity, and an epistemological standpoint. This handbook should be essential reading for scholars in European studies, post/decolonial studies, and critical migration and border studies.”
Camilla Hawthorne, Associate Professor of Sociology, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

“This groundbreaking multidisciplinary handbook brings into conversation a territorial configuration – Europe – and the productive concept of peripheralization – two indispensable frameworks with which to better understand the uncertain and unpredictable character of 21st century geopolitics.”
Dominic Thomas, Letessier Professor of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

"In its bold reenvisioning of Europe, this volume breaks methodological ground and assembles cutting-edge empirical knowledge on a perpetually changing continent. Here, the periphery becomes both the canvas and the brush to depict a whole new Europe, a place of staggering geographical, structural, sociopolitical and epistemic multiplicity. A plea for relearning and reconsidering our scholarly perspectives, this is a must-read across multiple fields."

Theodora Dragostinova, author of The Cold War from the Margins