The proposed ITN project, entitled “Restructuring European Spaces: Legal, Economic, Cultural and Political Encounters”, responds to the ITN Marie Curie call by bringing together Economics, Law, History, Political Science and Sociology to deal with transformations of statehood, of political subjectivity, of economic relations, of legal techniques, in Europe in its global context, therefore looking at these transformations in connection with similar structural changes as they take or took place in the other continents, in particular Africa, Asia and the Americas. These connections will be explored both in their contemporary dimension as well as with view to their historical connections and interrelations.

Indeeed, today's Europe can be called an advanced laboratory of globalization. It is the object of struggles among the different actors of global capitalism and it is at the same time a place where various legal orders converge, often giving rise to conflicts among the national, the international, the EU and the transnational levels of legislation and political authorities. The nation state, and all the key elements that define it (identity, citizenship, territory, law and sovereignty), are undergoing a deep transformation. At the same time, the nation state is not being dismantled, rather it is undergoing a qualitative transformation (Brenner, 2004). The restructuring of national states entails a redefinition of national state power, of modalities of sociopolitical struggles and of policy formation, under both domestic and global pressures. There are at least three main aspects of this process that the present PhD network aims to address:

1. The transformation of borders: the process of European integration has not entailed a dissolution of borders, but rather their proliferation (Mezzadra and Neilson, Duke UP, 2013). Movement of people, of goods and of capital across borders is a key tool for the reorganization of statehood through the management of circulations. The entanglement of national, EU, supranational and international legal orders produces at the same time new arrangements through the interaction of the existing levels. Migration from other continents to Europe and within Europe enhances cultural exchanges and intervenes in identity formation of the citizens, while at the same time it produces reactions of closure and of new divisions.

2. The relationship between statehood restructuring in Europe and processes of legal, economic, cultural and political transformation taking place in the other continents. The present project starts from the premise that it is extremely difficult to understand EU integration as a Eurocentric and closed political process. For too long, scholarship on European integration has focused on the peculiar character of the EU as a post- or transnational polity. At present, there is still too little attention to the EU as a postcolonial process, that is a the result of the historical process of decolonization, as well as to the similarities between statehood transformation in Europe and processes of regionalization in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

3. The changing connection between legal, political, economic and cultural orders. Studying borders and statehood transformation at the EU and at the global level under conditions of contemporary capitalism entails also understanding the changing role and interconnection between the role of law, of ecomics and of politics. Indeed, the complex governance of a transnational order does not allow for direct political claims. Most of the time, economic and legal discourses and practices work as proxies for political effects.