Description
Cesare Figari Barberis, 4th year PhD at IHEID. Email: cesare.figari@graduateinstitute.ch
Leonardo Zanatta, 2nd year PhD at Corvinus University. Email: leonardo.zanatta@studio.unibo.it
Abstract
While relations between Georgia and Russia have been confrontational since at least the beginning of the 19th century. Nonetheless, a large number of Russians presently live in Georgia: including the 20,000-40,000 who fled to Georgia following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February. Ethnic Georgians’ reception of this first wave of arrivals was harsh. Given Georgians’ very strong support for Ukraine and their association of the current war with the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, anti-Russian xenophobia and discrimination increased sharply in the initial months following migration. For example, some Russians lost their job in Tbilisi because of their nationality, and anti-Russian graffiti appeared all over the capital. Tensions calmed subsequently, but there are still socio-emotional dynamics going on.
The case is interesting within the Politics of Emotions framework, which are concerned with “who gets to feel what, when, how, and whose feelings matter” (Gustafsson & Hall 2021). Russians fled a country with its feeling rules, which are “rules about the verbal and non-verbal expressions of appropriate emotions in a given context” (Koschut 2020), and started living in a country with very different feeling rules. Indeed, in Georgia they faced institutional and social emotional obligations to somehow bear the guilt and shame of the actions of their country and nation. They also engaged in intra-Russian debates on emotional entitlements, as anti-war Russians felt that also they themselves were somehow victims, but struggled with deciding whether they were entitled to feel as such. Finally, they also had debates on hierarchies of emotional deference, with questions on if and how it was the case to manifestly show their consideration for the emotions of Ukrainians and Georgians, for example by participating in anti-Russia rallies while openly stating their Russianness.
Methodologically, we have conducted 40 face-to-face and online semi-structured interviews with Russians living in Georgia, mainly in Tbilisi. Particular attention is given to the contrasting emotions and feelings expressed by Russians in Georgia, especially to how they cope with sedimented old feeling rules and at the same time with uncomfortable new feeling rules.
