Schengen in the suction of sovereignism

This article examines how the Schengen system generates new tensions between European integration and state sovereignty. Schengen challenges the traditional concept of sovereignty by transferring border control to the European level, while simultaneously creating perceptions of lost national control. These contradictions provide fertile ground for sovereignist politics, which promise to simplify complex transnational realities by invoking “the will of the people” and reinforcing symbolic and material borders. Drawing on the Hungarian case, the paper shows how populist narratives and conspiracy thinking transform border politics into a self-reinforcing dynamic – the “suction of sovereignism” – in which political efforts to assert control intensify rather than resolve the paradoxes of European border governance.