Ethnography in Europe, or an

DaceDzenovska’s sensitive and incisive ethnographic account of the routine affairs of a few immigration officials in Latvia has all the ostensible hallmarks of a classically anthropolog-ical encounter, subtly revealing the nuances of a remarkable sociality enfolded within the seemingly mundane contours of the everyday, in an out-of-the-way place. Within the dis-ciplinary confines of a journal of social anthropology, that alone might conventionally suf-fice to qualify this article as a genuine achievement. I want to insist, however, that this article achieves something far greater. For, in this apparently remote and relatively non-descript place in the borderlands of Europe, Dzenovska discerns and interrogates the workings of a question of rather more monumental proportions. I call this the ‘European ’ question. From a place at the presumed margins of ‘Europe’, Dzenovska has the audacity to frame her ethnography in a manner that compels us to contemplate a constellation of interconnected questions: Where is Europe? Who is a European? What, indeed, is ‘Europe’? These, it seems to me, are questions of deep consequence, which concern us all, in intimate ways. The ethnographic scenario with which we are presented in Dzenovska’s article