Del Sarto’s Borderlands examines Europe’s colonial past and quasi-imperial present to understand the disconnect between the European Union’s (EU) alleged normative aims of spreading democracy and economic prosperity in its neighborhood versus the content and impact of the policies themselves. The disconnect is not so difficult to understand, Del Sarto argues, if we conceive of the European Union as an empire, which, just like empires of the past, seeks to stabilize its periphery and draw economic advantages from it. As Del Sarto writes, “Europe does what it does because it is what it is” (31). With an imperial borderlands framework, Del Sarto aims to understand how Europe’s policies have impacted countries across the Mediterranean Middle East, looking specifically at the policy areas of trade, security, and migration. The book’s primary focus is the period between 1995, when Europe launched its Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, and the present, with a particular look at the years following 2011, as uprisings gave way to authoritarian retrenchment throughout the region.

After grounding her arguments in Europe’s colonial history and formation of the European Union, Del Sarto thoroughly examines Europe’s technocratic external economic policies. Specifically, she looks at how Europe’s neoliberal tra