Description
This panel discusses emergent socio-political dynamics of political and ethnic minorities in the South Caucasus. The area is currently going through many macro-geopolitical changes, and this affects also more meso and micro-local dynamics. And while the former macro are quite widely discussed by mainstream media and academia alike, the latter meso and macro arguably receives less attention. This is particularly true when discussing minorities in the South Caucasus, political and ethnic alike.
Hence, with this panel we discuss and bring attention to also these meso and micro-level dynamics. For example, how Russians who fled Russia for Georgia adapt themselves both emotionally and socially in a context which is at times openly hostile to them. How the far-right and the far-left in the South Caucasus absorb fand re-elaborate their theoretical ideals, and how they then operate in a political context where they are still marginal voices. How minority ethnic Azeris in Georgia, after Azerbaijan closed all of its land borders in 2019, changed their mobility patterns and translocal practices to adapt to the new geopolitical reality. Finally, how an increasingly authoritarian State like Azerbaijan uses western-importeed discourses on multiculturalism to narrate and present itself externally, but does so in a way that fits the existing political system.
These political and ethnic minority dynamics in the South Caucasus are ongoing and will become increasingly relevant in the coming years. And as the macro-geopolitical conditions keep changing, we can expect also the meso and micro-sociopolitical dynamics to keep evolving and increasingly become relevant.
