Rather than offering an exhaustive literature review of anthropological writings on Europe, we have chosen to produce a deliberately partial and incomplete text that mirrors the partiality and fragmented nature of Europe(s). We aim to delve into the complexities, opportunities and inequalities encapsulated by the term ‘Europe’ by providing insights from four situated and distinct perspectives, grounded in concrete empirical research fields and academic biographies. We understand Europe(s) as a multitude of open-ended and multi-scalar political, economic and cultural projects: as products and production sites of powerful, unevenly distributed and dynamic socio-material relations and entanglements.

All the four individual reflections emphasize the concept of ‘return’, shedding light on how Europe(s) are currently being reshaped with an eye towards the future. Today, Europe(s) are undergoing profound transformations, characterized by a pervasive sense of threat and suspended time, embattlement and a succession of crises that hinder the envisioning of a future. In the collaborative process of writing this text, we encountered some aspects of the European project itself. The composition of the writing team was carefully chosen to capture the diversity and inequality across different perspectives on Europe. In our work, we have encountered various instances, faces and reverberations of Europe(s), across centres, peripheries, Easts, Wests, Norths and Souths.

In various ways, we have explored how Europe(s) emerge and dissolve in a relational and uneven manner, opening opportunities for some, while closing doors for others. Asta, for instance, looks at violent environments and technological zones between Europe’s East and West, and at overlapping regional and planetary scales of fossil modernity’s crisis. Elizabeth explores the entanglements of Europe and the so-called Levant. Čarna examines the Balkans, Europe and the Non-Aligned world; while Francisco studies Narva, the political and cultural edge of Europe, by paying attention to standardized practices of giving and receiving.

While writing this text, we have actively worked to align our situated and partial perspectives through continuous conversations, revisions, redesigns and regular check-ins with the rest of the team. The result of this collaboration sheds light on what might be recursively reiterated across different scales when a group of people converse with one another over an extended period of time.