The future of small islands within the European political and geographical context

As a keyword and a research strand, the ‘future’ has been recursively and intentionally quoted by the experts in the field of Island Studies: the ‘future’ of islands as places in the international socio-political context (Niles and Baldacchino, 2011); small islands as the outposts of present and future global processes (Ratter, 2018); the legitimacy of traditional categories in the context of twenty-first-century future challenges (Baldacchino, 2012); climate changes as a series of emergencies that threaten the ‘future’ of islands (Lal et al., 2002; Pugh and Chandler, 2021); the ‘future’, or the ‘future perspectives’, of the debate within the Island Studies community (Grydehøj, 2017); the growth of specific sectors, such as tourism, in the ‘future’ of island economies (Butler, 1993; Hall, 2010); more generally, the position of small islands dealing with unforeseeable ‘future’ scenarios, with numerous other intersections, which are not limited to these fields. Within this prismatic panorama, in this special issue we have chosen to focus on one specific research perspective: the future of small islands within the European political and geographical context