Description
Klaudia Kosicińska
PhD student, Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences
In my presentation I want to show how mobility patterns and translocal practices among the Azerbaijani minority in south-east Georgia has changed since 2019. In my research I focus on the ethnically diversed Marneuli district, situated close to the border with Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Azerbaijanis are the largest minority here.
In my research, through ethnographical fieldwork which I have done between 2018 and 2022, I try to examine the process of constructing the border between the two countries in material, social and symbolic dimensions.
The border between Georgia and Azerbaijan after the outbreak of first a pandemic and then a war in Nagorno-Karabakh suddenly became material again when it was closed for more than two years in 2020. Have trips to Azerbaijan been replaced by other practices, and if so, which ones? Did permanent residence on one side of the border make Georgian Azerbaijanis feel all the more settled in Georgia, separating not only physically from Azerbaijanis but also mentally? How do those who, for family reasons and related to the issue of legality of residence, stayed on the other side by their own choice, react to it? To find the answer on the research questions, I want to look at the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan and the contexts in which it manifests and (dis)appears and what kind of practices it provokes. I understand the border as the material phenomenon of the division between states, which is still negotiated and contested, as exemplified by the pandemic and armed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the boundaries between community (boundaries) and state (Barth 1969).
Selected references:
Barth Fredrik, 1969, Introduction, in: F. Barth (red.) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, Oslo: Universitetforlaget.
Levitt Peggy, Nina Glick-Schiller, 2004, Conceptualizing Simultaneity. A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society, ”International Migration Review”, Vol. 38, No. 3, 1004-1039.
Pelkmans Mathijs, 2006, Defending the border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
