Navigating the spaces of Kantian reason: Notes on cosmopolitical governance within the cross‐border Euregios of the European Union

Drawing on a burgeoning academic literature devoted to issues of institutionalised cross‐border regionalism within the European Union, the author attempts theoretically to contextualise observed cross‐border dynamics as a problematic of ‘cosmopolitical governance’, defined by an ongoing deficit of socio‐political rights and duties constitutive of forms of citizenship applicable to the uniquely transnational environments of cross‐border milieux. By exploring Kantian categories of aesthetic judgement and the forms of political community implicit in their manifestation of reason, the author posits a conceptual model of cosmopolitical right which adheres neither to the morally charged rationalities sustaining the liberal, modernist nation state nor the Hobbesian rationalities characterising interstate relations, but is critically informed by the ethical demands required in achieving agreement around claims rooted in affect and the passions. As elaborated in a case study of tranfrontier labourers within the transborder (and tri‐lingual) Euregion Maas‐Rhein, this Kantian sensus communis is meant to lead to the acknowledgement of a spatial and cultural politics capable of empowering cross‐border regional actors in negotiating a measure of agency vis‐a‐vis nation state communitarian logics.