National identity politics and postcolonial sovereignty games: Greenland, Denmark and the EU

This project unfolds the Greenlandic case of a larger project in Museum Tusculanum's book series 'Monographs on Greenland / Man & Society' (forthcoming September 2016 – pre-order at link below).

The overall project analysed the relations between the EU and a series of post-colonial micro-states in the margin of Europe: One group enjoying status as an partly autonomous "overseas country or territory" of an EU member state (i.a. Greenland, French Polynesia, Aruba, Cayman Islands, Mayotte) and a group of Nordic micro states with varying status vis-à-vis both the EU and the 'mother state' (Iceland, Faroe Islands, Åland). On the one hand, these microstates seek an independent sphere of action in relation to their ‘mother states' - on the other hand, the selfsame countries are developing an intimate relation to the European Union, which in itself is challenging the sovereignty of its member states. The project analysed the special dilemmas and strategies to which this double movement gives rise. The project was co-directed with Rebecca Adler-Nissen (Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen). Theoretical contributions and overseas cases published in Adler-Nissen & Gad (eds) (2012) "European Integration and Postcolonial Sovereignty Games. The EU Overseas Countries and Territories", Routledge's New International Relations series. Nordic cases in a special issue of Cooperation and Conflict (2014). Spin offs in Politik 14(1) and Grønlandsk Kultur- og Samfundsforskning (2012). Please see more on the project at link below.