Paper short abstract:

Drawing on field research amongst the German and Polish border police, the paper will discuss the framing of micro level interactions by institutional constraints and will argue that Europe as a security community has a much more tangible meaning than the anaemic concept of a cultural identity.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of Europe has always been most concise where it was not defined out of itself, but in contrast to something else. After the end of the Cold War old enemies could no longer be used to construct a (west)European identity. Furthermore, the accession of parts of the former "enemy camp" to the EU has been a great challenge to both security and identity policies of the EU-15. The new member states were not only not granted full member status, but became degraded to Western Europe's insecure other and to a little trustworthy frontier zone.

At the German-Polish border, the interface of the inner-European East-West dualism, the idea of Europe is put to the test. With Poland's EU accession Polish and German border guards are no longer spatially separated, but jointly control travellers, go on joint patrols and share contact point offices. Both border polices in a common effort endeavour to provide security to the "area of freedom, security and justice". The official rhetoric, however, cannot conceal that the asymmetries that are predominant in the European security field are also being reproduced on the micro level of German-Polish border police cooperation and hinder identification with a common European project.

Drawing on field research in German and Polish border polices, the paper will discuss the framing of micro level interactions by institutional constraints and will argue that Europe as a security community has a much more tangible meaning and finds much larger support than the so far anaemic concept of a cultural identity.