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Paper short abstract

Through a multimodal ethnography across the European space sector and its emerging infrastructures, we trace how policy and industry actors imagine strategic autonomy and economic competitiveness, with special attention to how these priorities conflict and cohere in the (dis)integration of Europe.

Paper long abstract

Since 2022, Europe has faced a myriad of threats to its strategic autonomy—production delays to the Ariane 6 propelled Europe into a “launcher crisis”, while restricted access to Starlink in Ukraine highlighted Europe’s reliance on foreign infrastructure (Abels 2024; Bennett & Cudney 2026). In response to fears about a lack of access to critical capabilities, the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) initiated several infrastructure programmes, including the European Launcher Challenge (ELC) and a secure communications satellite constellation called IRIS2. Both projects explicitly integrate private industry to prevent future compromise to European strategic autonomy in space, while trying to close the technological gap between European industry and international competitors. By stimulating industrial competition between member states, ESA embraces a privatised innovation sector while disrupting legacy mechanisms of European integration. These emerging programmes and their discursive enactments represent a material manifestation of geopolitical anxieties and commercial ambitions—of particular interest is how those conflict and cohere in broader debates about ‘Europeanness’.

In this paper, we discuss the waves of European (dis)integration as expressed through collaborative, public-private ‘European’ infrastructure programmes such as the ELC and IRIS2. Using a multi-sited, multimodal ethnography, we follow how Europe is united and dismantled through the rockets and satellites it seeks to create. Starting from STS work in infrastructures and imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim 2015; Tutton 2020), we draw together SSOS, international relations, and innovation studies to understand what makes an infrastructure ‘European’ and how that is narrated and constructed within shifting industry and policy discourses.