ABSTRACT
Processes of increasing economic integration and political cooperation initiated during the postsocialist transition period have greatly affected the significance of state borders in central and eastern Europe. More recently, the historic EU enlargement of 2004 has eliminated most of what remained of formerly restrictive border regimes within the ‘new’ Europe and is now transforming those along the new external borders (see, for example, Mrinska, Popescu and Baranyi in this book). As several contributors to this volume stress, EU enlargement and its (re)bordering effects are characterized by simultaneous processes of inclusion and exclusion. Nowhere is this contradiction more pronounced than in the issue of migration and labour mobility. In the ‘old’ member states in particular, widespread popular fear of job losses and public insecurity caused by open borders in the east have found their way into political discourse in the years leading up to accession and still remain vivid. Many of these countries have introduced quotas to limit labour migration, and strict visa regulations apply for citizens of non-EU countries such as Ukraine and Russia, even though recent studies have shown large-scale labour migration to be highly unlikely.
