ABSTRACT
Europe is the continent with longest history of cooperation on migration and mobility, which is part and parcel of political relations. The continent's history of being divided and separated by the Iron Curtain made mobility a cherished prize of European integration, and it was only recently that the European Union (EU)–Russia stand-off put the brakes on what would have inevitably been closer cooperation in this domain. Russia is the main actor shaping the mobility and migration flows of nearly one-third of Europeans, as aptly described by Jaroszewicz. The architecture of the post-Soviet space consists of at least three different organisations with various levels of cooperation and openness. Even today, in 2017, the debates and analysis of the role of the EU in pan-European cooperation take place in Western European scholarship, while Central and Eastern European scholars produce rather descriptive pieces, filling an important knowledge-gap that has developed over the last two decades and preparing the ground for the future debates.
