Insecurity, incoherence, and imagined geographies in Central Europe

This Commentary for the Research Colloquium on “Geopolitical Imaginaries of Regional Cooperation and National Identity: A Central European Perspective” foregrounds the significance of imagined geographies for driving policies, shaping nations, and making identities. It highlights the urgency of countering the self-aggrandizing, ethno-nationalist, illiberal, reductionist, and conservative imagined geographies that have emerged in recent years across Central Europe, in particular in Hungary. A more critical, pluralistic, and inclusive geopolitics of the region is presented in this Research Colloquium, which is in stark contrast to the attempts of certain political and intellectual elites to fix identities that foment mistrust and division within and between societies. The regional imaginaries espoused by some political leaders, and their tenuous historical and geographical grounding, tell us little about the geographical concepts and areas they purport to represent but much about the insecurities and agendas of the political elites who directly benefit from the uptake of these imaginings.