Routledge Handbook on Cooperation, Interdependencies and Security in the Mediterranean

This Handbook provides an essential overview of the contemporary dynamics of the Mediterranean region. Conceptualising the Mediterranean as both a socio-cultural area and a geopolitical entity, it considers the basin both as a whole and as a set of interacting subregions. Established scholars offer new perspectives and approaches from international history, postcolonial studies, migration studies, geography, private international law and public international law, environmental and tourism studies, to reappraise the long-term trends and ruptures that shape security, interdependence, and cooperation. These contributions explain the Mediterranean’s long-established role as a crossroads, and demonstrate the political, economic, ecological, and cultural meanings of security. The book shows how interdependence in economic, environmental, cultural, and human sectors continues to bind the Mediterranean together as migration flows across the sea, environmental change requires common action, legal systems coexist, and multifaceted identities, growing cultural awareness and human rights remain on the political agenda.

This volume will be an invaluable resource for graduate students, researchers, and professionals seeking a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to the historical, political, geographic, and socio-cultural complexities, challenges, and potential of the area.

Elena Calandri is professor of History of International Relations at the University of Padua, director of the MA International Relations and Diplomacy. She has been SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow in International Peace and Security, visiting researcher at Bilkent University, Ankara, visiting professor at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow. She is a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of European Integration History and coordinator of the Working Group European Integration of the Italian Society of International History. Her research interests concern post-1945 international history of Europe, Italy’s foreign policy, the European integration process, and European foreign policy, Mediterranean history.

Karolina Golemo, sociologist of culture, holding a degree in journalism and social communication; Assistant Professor at the Institute of Intercultural Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She cooperates with the Italian research center IDOS dealing with migration issues. As a lecturer and researcher she has visited universities in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Brazil. Research interests: cultural diversity of Italy, Spain and Portugal; integration of descendants of immigrants; migrants and artistic creation; music in intercultural relations, stereotypization in the media and in symbolic culture, cultural dimension of postcolonial relations in the Mediterranean.

Jesús Ventura-Fernández holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Seville (1996) and has been Professor of Regional Geographic Analysis at the same university since 1999. His main research interests include population, settlement, facilities, infrastructure, services, transportation, sustainable mobility, tourism impacts, and development cooperation. He has supervised 3 doctoral theses, each receiving the highest distinction. He has authored over 70 scientific publications and regularly reviews for journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Scopus. He leads the Andalusian Geographical Studies Research Group (15 members) and has directed various research projects and contracts, many of which were awarded in competitive calls, focusing primarily on studies related to the Andalusian regional territory.