Politics of EU Infrastructure Investments in Southeast Europe: the Connectivity Agenda and Europeanisation With(out) Enlargement

The article offers a critical reading of Europeanization through the study of the EU’s infrastructure investments in Southeast Europe. It draws from the neo-materialist reading of European integration as construction of infrastructural networks (Opitz and Tellmann, 2015; Schipper and Schot, 2011) to ask how particular political rationalities of the European project are made possible and sustained by the production of material connectivity in places outside of the EU-proper. Following Larkin (2013), next to technical and political functions of the EU’s infrastructure investments in Southeast Europe, I particularly focus on their entextualized forms (in terms of techniques of regulation, standardization and administration) and how they constitute subjects and condition everyday experiences and practices. The analysis centers on the 2018 ‘connectivity agenda’, which prioritizes increased links between the EU and Southeast Europe through the co-financing of investments into transport, energy and digital infrastructures in the region.