We the People of Europe? puts together eleven essays discussing several important political questions concerning European unification, delivered as lectures to various audiences or written as articles for several journals. It is a translation of its French edition, Nous, citoyens d'Europe: Les Frontières, l'État, le people, originally published in 2001, which was somewhat changed for its American audience.

All the essays in We the People of Europe? are challenging and intriguing works both theoretically and practically. One may doubt the validity of this critique of the concept of European citizenship which the European Union (EU) formally adopted and the plausibility of the hypotheses of the worksites of democracy that Balibar uses as a central framework for his investigation. Nevertheless, the book shows exciting and profound insights into some of the most difficult and complicated political issues, such as the border, the nation, sovereignty, citizenship, etc

The book begins with a discussion of the border. In the first chapter, Balibar examines how the term "border" is undergoing a profound change in meaning. According to him, the border is an absolute necessity for the survival of the modern state. It has become an important notion which defines a sphere of sovereignty, both as the imposition of law and as the distribution of land, since the beginning of the European modern age. In the 21st century, a time of free movement of people around the world, the borders are no longer situated at the outer limit of territories. They are dispersed everywhere, for example in cosmopolitan cities, wherever the movement of people is occurring and controlled, in order to preserve all the functions of the sovereignty of the state.

In chapters 6 and 8, Balibar discusses how borders deprive people of their fundamental human rights. He claims that borders are not natural but historical. They are invented (or constructed) and sustained by the state and are the points where the normal juridical order is suspended in the name of public safety and order. Therefore, he proclaims, the very order of borders, where arbitrary state violence is used everyday for the rationality of the state, is anti-democratic. For Balibar, without solving the problem of borders, the European Union (EU) will never be a democratic entity, in which the principle of laws is ultimately founded on the universality of the rights of man. Thus the question "what can be done to democratize the institution of the border?"(p.108) becomes relevant. In a sense, this whole book is about Balibar's endeavor to answer this question. The answer lies in the invention of a new kind of citizenship, what he calls "transnational citizenship," in which residents themselves are the ultimate reference of the constitution of political powers in recognized territorial limits, particularly in Europe.

In chapters 3, 4 and 7, he focuses on the deconstruction of the traditional notion of citizenship in relation with European unification. The 1993 Maastricht Treaty prescribes the attribution of European citizenship only for nationals of member countries, to the exclusion of 13 million people, mainly immigrant workers, coming from "third world countries, such as Turks in Germany, Indians in Great Britain, Algerians in France, and Moroccans in Spain, who have lived for one or several generations on the soil of the various European countries, and who as a whole have become indispensable to European well-being, culture and civility. Balibar argues that European citizenship is just a simple expansion of the modern notion of citizenship, which is understood as the active participation of individuals in political life in reference to the nation as the form in which citizenship is instituted. Such a situation produces European apartheid against non-European people. Excluded from European citizenship, they are deprived of civic rights and human dignity, subjected to violent forms of security control, and must permanently live on the border. Therefore, Balibar argues that the construction of a democratic Europe is at risk and calls for the reinvention of citizenship on which all people in Europe, including immigrant workers, asylum seekers and minorities, can enjoy the rights of man, as a way to lay the foundation for the construction of a democratic Europe.

In chapters 9 and 10, he tries to construct a new concept of citizenship, that is, transnational citizenship. Balibar defines it as citizenship of residency, which includes every member who actually lives in a given space, all residents in Europe, rather than nationals who belong to a country that is a member of the EU. In this definition, he understands citizens as demos or constituent political power, not as ethnos or communal identity. The transnational citizenship is the slogan of his political program, a politics of the rights of man. The rights of man consist of social rights as well as civic rights. Interestingly Balibar argues that social rights, such as unemployment insurance, health care, family allocations, housing and schooling, are fundamental human rights, not benefits for those in need. However, he understands that it is not an easy task to build a democratic Europe on the basis of transnational citizenship. Balibar is cautious enough to say that all of his works concerning the transnational citizenship are just hypotheses and the real conditions of the transformation of citizenship should be produced by the diverse residents themselves in Europe. In this context, Balibar calls Europe a juxtaposition of worksites of democracy, where new and active democratic practices are required: the institutionalization of social conflicts, the coexistence of cultures or civilizations, the importance of translation as the main tool of everyday communications, the feminization of politics and so on.

In the last chapter, Balibar searches for a role that Europe can play in the 21st century world. The essay is well-timed, because there have been increasing concerns about the United States' unilateralism in world affairs, particularly after the war in Iraq. He rejects the calls of American liberal intellectuals, such as Bruce Ackerman, Immanuel Wallerstein, Timothy Garton Ash and Edward Said, which demand Europe to act strategically as a counter-balancer against the American power or a mediator between the US and the rest of world. It is simply impossible, Balibar stresses, because Europe doesn't have any political capacity to determine or even mediate world politics. Instead he suggests the transformation of the system of world politics itself. He calls the new world politics antistrategic politics, which includes collective security, general disarmament and locally mediated resolution of conflicts. Balibar concludes that Europe can be an effective mediator in a process that might bring about a new political culture, in which the concept of the political is changed and a new pattern of world politics takes shape..

This book, We the People of Europe?, deserves our attention not only for its remarkable theoretical insights into European unification, but also for its careful reconsiderations of core political notions, such as human rights and democracy, which will shape the destiny of human beings in future.

Jung-Ho Yang, The University of Chicago

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