During the past few decades, there has been an increasing focus on using education policy to foster job creation, economic growth and social cohesion in the European Union (Krejsler, 2018). Central to these initiatives, the European Commission (EC) has sought to develop a common European Education Area by 2025, within which ‘learning, studying and doing research would not be hampered by borders’ (European Commission, 2018, np). As a key feature of the broader European project, previously rigid borders and territorial constructions of the nation-state are now challenged by a ‘multifaceted web of relations and a transnational flow of information and people’ (Lawn, 2006, p. 272). Rather than a purely technical exercise, space is redefined through shared attraction and meaning, with Europe co-constituted as a population and a distinct imagined community of shared histories and values (Cakici, Ruppert, & Scheel, 2019). Such a post-national enactment of Europe’s populations and territories (see Grommé & Ruppert, 2019) helps drive new possibilities for imagining how one can be situated in the world, whereby questions of where and what is Europe are increasingly reframed in terms of data practices (Lewis, 2019). At the same time, the trend towards such trans-nationalism has been countered by the recent rise of nationalism and populism in the mainstream polity, and a reorientation towards more statist conceptualisations of policy solutions (Judis, 2016). Indeed, the growing Euro-scepticism now evident through decentralising processes such as Brexit arguably challenge the trend towards European policy convergence, if not consensus.Our purpose in this paper here is two-fold: i) to examine how certain EC initiatives are animated in the development of a European Education Area; and ii) how, in response, Denmark and the UK have sought to reject this pan-Europeanism in favour of more nationally-centred, populist approaches to education policy (Bergmann, 2017). Informed by post-Foucauldian conceptions of governmentality, and drawing on relevant policy documents of the EC, and Danish and UK Ministries of Education, we show the ongoing tensions between trans-nationalising and re-nationalising tendencies in European education policy. Our analyses reveal that even while the EC seeks to forge a shared policy consensus within a common Europe Education Area, this multilateralism and respatialisation is in danger of being challenged by more nationally-framed conceptions of education. We close by suggesting these processes of re/de-bordering are contingent upon local context, which results in many possible ways of reimagining Europe and the role (and location) of the nation-state.

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