Navigating Borderlands: Civil Society and Relational Narratives in Georgia’s EU Candidacy

This paper investigates how civil society organisations (CSOs) navigate and reshape geopolitical narratives within the European Union’s evolving candidacy framework. By highlighting the performed inclusivity of EU narratives, it offers a nuanced perspective on the socio-political dynamics of accession processes and promotes a more pluralistic interpretation of the EU candidacy approach. Focusing on Georgia's EU candidacy application, it examines how CSOs, situated in semi-peripheral borderlands, address the complexities of accession processes, structural inequalities and the exclusionary practices embedded in performed inclusivity. The analysis unfolds in three parts. First, it situates the study within the broader context of the politicisation of EU candidacy narratives and introduces the conceptual framework based on relational narratives. Building on the scholarship of strategic narratives and structural narratives, it explores how relational approaches can contribute to the pluralistic understanding of emerging narratives. Second, in a methodological section, it outlines the empirical approach to study relational narratives, based on narrative analysis. Third, through engaging with Georgia’s EU candidacy application process, it analyses how civil society organisations narrate Georgia’s candidacy to address the geopolitical tensions through relational narratives, highlighting their efforts to contest the EU’s limited geopolitical framing. In conclusion, the paper discusses how civil society organisations use relational narratives and offer a nuanced understanding of the socio-political dynamics of accession processes, advocating for more pluralistic interpretations of the EU’s borderlands to counter performed inclusivity.