The REMOC theme follows on from that of the "Regionalisation in the World", which considered the effects of the dynamics of globalisation and regionalisation in terms of regional integration processes approached transversally with situated entries: European and "Mediterranean" (Baltic, etc.) neighbourhoods, corridors (including Asian), etc.
This new project is the result of the merging of two initial exploratory project proposals: "Europe, active margins" and "Globalisation and regionalisation from below in the Arab world". It proposes a geographical refocusing on Europe and the circum-European spaces (Eastern Europe; the Mediterranean in the broadest sense: EU Member States on the northern shore, Maghreb countries, Mashreq, Middle East).
REMOC develops a research problematic around several objectives.
- It aims to clarify the interactions between flows, networks and circulations that constitute globalisation by integrating the effects of borders in the processes of regionalisation within or outside the EU. By observing the active margins of Europe in globalisation, the aim will be to explore areas involved in major flows (migrations, energy flows for example) and in complex processes of opening and closing, but on the margins of institutional regional integration or shared between several groups in the process of being formed. Themes such as Europe and its neighbourhoods, the role of Russia and its neighbours in Eurasian cooperation, the Arab world and the influence of the financial power of the Gulf States will be examined in order to put the joint processes of globalisation and regionalisation to the test, from a multi-scalar perspective, with the highlighting of spaces that are emblematic of these processes (global cities, unequal metropolises, the role of free trade zones, etc.).
- It seeks to contribute to the reflection on the emergence of an in-between or intermediary dynamics in order to show that certain spaces are placed in the interstices of the flows of globalisation or that, between the micro (local) and macro (global) scales, the meso scale (that of the supra- or infra-national region) is a stakeholder in the dynamics of globalisation.
The theme wishes to favour a bottom-up approach (circulation of students, labour, migrants and migration remittances, trade flows and routes, etc.) without depriving itself of the analysis of circulations that fall under a top-down approach (Official Development Assistance, FDI). The observation of this regionalisation from below makes it possible to identify new geo-economic organisations, asymmetrical and even unequal forms of regionalisation. This type of regionalisation can also be linked to longer-term multiscalar networks: between Africa, Europe and Asia.
Finally, this theme will aim to pursue and feed the databases built in recent research programmes (ANR SYSREMO, ESPON ITAN) or submitted (Mapping the World project) and to develop the international research networks of its members (GDR Connaissances de l'Europe médiane, GDRI Espaces et Réseaux urbains en Russie et Europe orientale, etc.)
The challenge, which has never been taken up as such, is to conduct this research by having two scientific communities cooperate through a common methodological framework, the one working on the Mediterranean worlds and the one that follows the future of median, central or eastern Europes.
Agenda de l’axe REMOC
En 2019, à l’occasion du renouvellement de la fédération de recherche FR2007 CIST, l’axe Régionalisations dans le monde s’est transformé pour devenir l’axe REMOC (Régionalisation, mondialisation, circulations).