ABSTRACT

How do Greenland, Aruba, Mayotte, and other micropolities use the EU in their efforts to transcend their colonial status? How do the EU and its member states deal with these partially independent polities? While these territories are seeking greater room for manoeuvre on their own, they are at the same time developing a close relationship to the supranational EU in (dis)concert with their former colonizers. This book seeks to address these apparently contradictory processes of fragmentation and integration. Theoretically, we argue that sovereignty cannot be understood as a ‘thing’ that is either present or absent. On the contrary, sovereignty unfolds in the legal and political games that must be studied as both discourses and practices. By focusing on these arguably odd political entities, we tell an alternative story about how sovereignty works in international relations.