Transboundary Europe through a West African looking glass: cross-border integration, ‘colonial difference’ and the chance for ‘border thinking’

Abstract

Drawing »political« borders in the European sphere, which considered itself and attempted to appoint itself the center of the world, was also originally and principally a way to divide up the earth; thus, it was a way at once to organize the world’s exploitation and to export the »border form« to the periphery, in an attempt to transform the whole universe into an extension of Europe, later into »another Europe«, built on the same political model. This process continued until decolonization and thus also until the construction of the current international order.