COST Action IS0803 Workgroups 2010
WG2: Travel, Exchanges, Translations
Roots and Webs: Transformations of Relations through Crossing, Travel and Translation
Second Work Group 2 meeting
Sofia (Bulgaria)
14-15 May 2010
Convenor:
Margarita Karamihova
karamihova_m@abv.bg
+359889586412
2006: Armenian Turkish border a mountain sign: “Happy to be a Turk”. Photographer Nese Özgen
Description:
The first meeting of WG2 held in Rome focused on the relationship between time and the crossing of borders, and also considered what difference the material characteristics of borders made to the perceived relations between borders and places. This second meeting follows on from that by focusing more on the question of what happens to people’s sense of themselves, and their identification with particular places, peoples, nations, etc, when they cross borders and experience both themselves and others from a different vantage point.
Much borders research has suggested that people bring their roots with them when they move – roots built upon notions of ethnicity, nationality, language, religious affiliation, as well as assertions of differences based on historical events (especially wars) and political economies (especially capitalist-socialist differences), or more general claims to some kind of fundamental cultural differences, which includes assertions of orientalist – occidentalist differences, as well as a range of concepts related to degrees and diverse types of modernity and modernization. These
distinctions lie at the heart of many perceived regional differences, such as Balkans, Baltics, post-socialist states, Nordic countries, Mediterranean, western European, etc. These regional distinctions have generated different types of crossings which take different directions.
While there has been a great deal of research on questions of identity and travel, what is less often studied is the way these diverse types of movement across borders (migration, tourism, asylum seeking, etc) both constitute a part of the remaking of the borders that are crossed, but also simultaneously contribute towards the remaking of the people who cross (or sometimes fail to cross).
Accordingly, we invite proposals that could discuss any aspect of the transformations that border crossing brings about: translations of languages and habits; change of moral and cognitive perspectives, the role of gender in performing exchanges and contacts. Special attention will be given to the relations between people and groups who have different ethno-religious affiliations, but who become mutually involved in both legal and illegal exchanges, conversions and translations across borders.
Proposals could also reflect on a wide variety of relevant concepts. These include concepts such as autochthonous, immigrant, foreigner, traveler, passerby, tourist, alien, displaced, exiled, smuggler, illegal, transgressor, settlers, colonist, pioneer and their relation with border crossing at the eastern peripheries of Europe.
Participant: Yelis Erolova Ahmedova
Balkan Ethnology
Ethnographic Institute with Museum at Bulgarian
Bulgaria
Email: kham@abv.bg
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Diaspora Identity (Case study on Crimean Tatars in Dobrudzha)
The most important element for the existence of ethnodiaspora communities is the maintaining of a common identity of origin, homeland and belonging to the community. The Crimean Tatars in historical and geographical region Dobrudzha (today cross-border region between Bulgaria and Romania) were formed as a diaspora community as a result of migrations from the Crimea during the Ottoman dominance in Balkan lands. They construct their ethnic identity through memory / myth of their Crimean homeland, which became the basis for community solidarity and a sense of unity. The willingness and ability of migrants to maintain their ethnic identity in the host country and to publicly identify with their community and homeland are two important elements of modern their profile. The problem for assimilation or maintaince of ethnic identity stands in front of the members of the diaspora after their settle in the host country. In this study the attention is focused on the following problematic issues: How the Crimean Tatars maintain or change their identity; Preferred Turkish identity; Relations with majority society; Crossborderrelations between Crimean Tatars from Bulgaria and Romania. The theoretical approach of Robert Cohen and Gabriel Sheffer will be used.
Participant: Raisa Akifyeva
Sociology Department
State University - High School of Economics, St. Petersburg
Russia
Email: akifieva@gmail.com, akifieva@mail.ru
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Cultural orientation in crossing border migrants: variation over time.
A number of studies of factors which influence migrant adaptation, have found that in certain cases, retention of original cultural orientations can be considered as potential resources rather than adaptive disadvantages. In this context it is important to examine which components of migrant culture have actually changed and which appear to stabilise. The paper will focus on the frequency of series of actions and steps towards cultural changes that occur within migrants at different times after crossing the border. The study investigates variation in cultural orientation within Azerbaijan community in St. Petersburg, by looking at the indicators of their behavior and their expressive and personal attitudes comprising their orientation inside their host cultures including language usage, food preferences, endorsement of their own culture and social interactions with people having other ethnic affiliations.
Participant: Zeynep Alemdar
International Relations- Political Science
Okan University
Turkey
Email: alemdar1a@yahoo.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Transformation of Citizenship Perceptions on Turkey's Borders: Gender Differences
How does “identification with a nation” change when people are on the border? While “citizenship as national membership” is being challenged and we move toward a “citizenship of residency” that strenghtens multiple ties to locality and to the region as Benhabib (2007, 22) suggests, what happens to the people’s sense of citizenship when they live on the border? What are their daily practices, do they, can they cross the border, what happens to their identification with their country when they experience “borderliness”. If, as the feminist literature (Lister 2000, 49) suggests, women are the ones who are most involved with their locality and their daily practices are most affected by their space (women’s political participation being affected mostly by local politics), could we trace a differentiation in the perception of this “borderliness” according to gender? Do men and women on the border see their citizenship, their place vis-à-vis the state differently? Through field research at the conjunction of the Eastern borders of the European Union and Western borders of Turkey, on the intersection of three countries, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, the paper analyzes how “border” “citizenship” and “gender” intersect and raises questions about citizenship on the border.
Participant: Svetlana Antova
Balkan Ethnology
Ethnographic Institute with Museum - BAS
Bulgaria
Email: svetlinata@abv.bg
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Since 2000 when both Bulgarian and Serbian governments agreed to open local border pass after 40 years, there is a regular yearly (in the middle of July) meeting organized at a form of Local Pass Fair on Bulgarian - Serbian border in the region of Bulgarian village Salash and Serbian village - Novo Korito. As a result of several times redrawing of national boundaries between Serbia and Bulgaria during 20th century the border population, named Turlatsi had been separated.
The Kadaboaz Pass Fair creates a place and time for meetings of the separated families and friends, living at the both sides of the border. Periodical "opening the border" (especially at mid 80s) was perceived from local populations as an open market place for deficit goods. It becomes more important for local Serbian population nowadays. Very significant point is that the place of the Pass Fair is widely exploited of all local and governmental authorities from both sides since 2000 as a place to re-construct economical and social links (it would be re-established a customs and checkpoint between Bulgaria and Serbia). Crossing the border as dividing and connecting at individual, local,national and transnational level is the focus of the paper.
Participant: Marit Aure
Sociology, Political Science and Community
University of Tromsø
Norway
Email: marit.aure@uit.no
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
The Gendered Borders of the Labour Market
Based on a qualitative study of highly skilled immigrants in Tromsø, Norway this paper discusses the borders these migrants experience trying to enter a high-skilled labour market. The migrants all migrated of other reasons than employment, in this case “love” and the analysed group consists of both women and men. Previous studies in this field have mainly focused on women as “dependant” migrants, while our study suggests that dependent men also have such experiences. We therefore ask if and how processes of translating skills and competence and experiences of exclusion in the labour market are gendered. We propose that labour market participation can be understood as the result of a process of translation and that experiences of exclusion can be approached through the concept of misrecognition (Honneth 1992). This material lends itself to discussion of the gendered aspects of translation and misrecognition.
Participant: Emilio Cocco
Theories and Policies of Social Development
The University of Teramo
Italy
Email: ecocco@unite.it
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Convenor WG2 2009.
Participant: Gergana Doncheva
Balkan Cultures’ Department
Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgaria
Email: gdoncheva74@yahoo.com; gergana_doncheva3@abv.bg
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
My professional interests are in the field of Balkan and Eastern European Cinema (s) where the topic of travel in its different aspects: emigration, business trip, pilgrimage have a significant place in those current cinematic narratives trying to explain the profound transformations in human national and local identities in the context of globalization. In this sense, a case study presenting the variety of patterns and suggestions made in ‘Eastern’ Cinema (examples from Balkan and Middle Eastern film traditions) could be an interesting turning point in opening of a discussion with experts belonging to different academic areas.
Participant: Deniz Duru
Anthropology
University of Sussex
United Kingdom
Email: D.Duru@Sussex.ac.uk
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Immigrations and Mutual Dependency on Burgaz island of Istanbul: owner and client relationships among different ethno-religious groups
Burgazada used to be 80 % Rum (Greek Orthodox population in Turkey). Due to 1955 pogrom against minorities, expulsion of Rums holding Greek citizenships in 1964 and Cyprus issues following 1974, the Rum community started to leave, leaving their shops and properties to their helpers, waiters and workers (mainly Alevis, Laz, Kurds) who had immigrated to the island from northeastern, south-eastern and eastern villages of Turkey. Rums either sold their property for cheaper prices or had to leave them. Their properties were bought by the new immigrants and the upper class Istanbulites mainly Sunnis, Jews, Suryanis and Armenians. I will present empirical data from my fieldwork data (from July 2009 until present) to document and explore the mutual dependency, tension, friendship and owner/client relationships between lower class shop owners (Alevis, Sunnis, Kurds), horse cart drivers living in slum areas on the island; the rich, elite upper class, non-Muslim minorities (Armenians, Jews, Rums) and "Turks". I aim to document the ways in which these migrations in and out of the island, the exchanges and interactions between different ethnic, religious and class groups have changed the people themselves.
Participant: Sarah Green
Social Anthropology
University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Email: sarah.green@manchester.ac.uk
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Border Crossing Events: moments in the making of Aegean tidemarks
This paper will consider how some stories about crossing the borders of the Aegean have contributed to the sense of border in that region. This follows on from the idea that borders are about ‘the story so far,’ introduced in an EastBordNet paper I gave in WG1 in 2009 ( "Lines, Traces and Tidemarks" ). While many scholars have studied how border crossings affect the lives of the people involved, relatively little attention has been paid to how such crossings affect the borders. The paper will focus on three historical moments that have been identified as significant events for the borders of the Aegean: the 1920s compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey; the 1990s earthquakes and other events that led to improved relations between Greece and Turkey; and the enormous rise in the movement of undocumented peoples attempting to cross the Aegean from the Turkish side onto the Greek side. The paper will argue that these three moments, which are widely identified as events that significantly changed people’s everyday lives in the region, have also been significantly contributing to the making of the Aegean borderli-ness story.
Participant: Madeleine Hurd
History
Södertörn University
Sweden
Email: madeleine.hurd@sh.se
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
When the Borders Cross Over You: Newspapers and the Making (Translation) of Minorities in Germany’s Ex-Borderlands, 1914-1932
What happens to people’s sense of themselves, and their identification with particular places, peoples and nations when they stay put, but the national border moves over them? How are they, so to speak, remade – through what means, according to what discourses and genres? This question can, in fact, be asked of many Europeans – not least of those Germans who had inhabited Germany's northern and eastern borderlands. My paper presents research on how the newly-created German minorities'newspapers reacted to the challenge, not least by constructing minority culture, consciousness and performances. I would like to compare the presentation of minority identities in media produced by the Germans who, after the loss of World War One, were “left” in what had become Polish or Danish territory. The two minorities’ newspaper discourses were necessarily different – given the Germans’ different historical relations to the religion, language, and so-called “race” of their new nations. What can we learn by comparing how such differences expressed, in the worlds presented by these newspapers; which similarities can be found? What, in short, did the movement of borders, and the new vantage points imposed on those thus over-passed, mean for the involuntary border-crossers’ “identity” - as
powerfully constructed, and contested, in their newspapers?
Participant: Margarita Karamihova
Balkan Ethnology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgaria
Email: karamihova_m@abv.bg
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Convenor WG2 2010
Participant: Zaira Tiziana Lofranco
Department of Social Sciences
University of Naples “L’Orientale”
Italy
Email: zaira.lofranco@gmail.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Being culturally displaced across space and time: IDPs and the re-construction of a network of neighbours in post-war Sarajevo.
This paper will analyse the experience of Internally Displaced Sarajevans as an example of forced border crossing that entails complex dynamics of social networks destruction and reconstruction.As a matter of fact the experience of displacement can be defined not only as the act of physically moving to the other side of the border, but a as a socio- cultural apocalypse caused by the invalidation of pre-war norms that put citizens in relation to places and to each other. In this paper I will analyse the cultural process of normalization (not simply inter-ethnic pacification) that in post war period allow common people to recover from cognitive chaos.The production of socio-cultural norms, to define first of all relational boundary between the Self and the Other, will be observed in the way displaced Sarajevans practice and conceive neighbourliness in post-war time. This case study will show that the transformations of relations can be caused and influenced by a cultural displacement, not only across territorial or ethnic borders, but also across rapidly changing political and socio-economic systems.In this sense, though presenting ethnographic data, the paper supports also a conceptual reflections, in tune with Sarah Green's opinions, about the importance of considering historical time in (re-)defining borders and border crossing ineveryday experience.
Participant: Aija Lulle
Human Geography
University of Latvia
Latvia
Email: aija.lulle@gmail.com; aija.lulle@lu.lv
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Construction of transnational identity among Latvians in Guernsey
During the last decade Latvia has experienced a significant outflow of people, especially after the country joined the EU in 2004. Recent emigration has provoked heated debate on whether emigrants are betrayers of the state or victims of its post-socialist neo-liberal economic approach. "Will they come back?" "Are they lost for ever?" are typical questions in both public and academic on recent out migration waves. I argue that both a perception of emigration as a linear, one way process and concept of circulation are ill suited to explain multidimensional phenomena of migration. I draw on empirical data gathered in both Guernsey (where many Latvians live in relatively tiny territory) and Latvia to explore how the transnational belonging is constructed by the migrants themselves in their everyday practices. Crossing borders allow crossing boundaries by status passages and by relative autonomy from a nation state. However, crossing of borders also tightens ethnic boundaries and evokes disassociation. I argue that migrants construct a new form of belonging and citizenship, a third space stretching beyond national borders, often not recognised by state actors and wider society.
Participant: Mila Maeva
Balkan Ethnology
Ethnographic Institute and Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgaria
Email: mila_maeva@yahoo.co.uk
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Transformation Ethnocultural Relations during Emigration
After the fall of the communist regime in 1989 Bulgaria was in the poor condition. The economic and social crisis had influenced on the Bulgarians citizens. Many of them are looking for work outside the country. United Kingdom is one of the desired places for emigration. The paper is based on a round of fieldwork researches among Bulgarians and Turks, emigrants in United Kingdom at the last 20 years. The information in British and Bulgarian media and Internet also will be used. The paper will try to present he interactions between the two main groups of Bulgarian emigrants in Great Britain and contact-conflict attitudes. The result will be compared with the situation in Bulgaria. The basic aim is to clarify the changes in the ethnocultural relations during the pon the identification strategies of Bulgarian citizens.
Participant: Tuija Pulkkinen
Christina Institute for Women's Studies
University of Helsinki
Finland
Email: tuija.pulkkinen@helsinki.fi
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
“Foreign” and “foreigner” – Concepts in Motion
The paper will draw on the discussion in the WG1 in 2009 in Nicosia, in which the productivity of border was approached on an abstract level, connected with ontological approaches to conceptual distinctions and histories. My paper in WG1 (available at the working papers) made the point of distinguishing between two different approaches on identity and difference, those of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. The main difference in approach, which I see between Deleuze and Derrida, is in how Deleuze constructs ontological depth and how Derrida avoids this. The anti- ontological gesture is active in Derrida's work adding the dimension of motion to concepts which are worked on. I would like to carry this discussion over to the Travel, Exchanges, Translations WG, by looking at the notions of “foreign” and “foreigner”. Travel, exchange and translation all include the aspect of “foreign” which names a peculiar relation of both distinction and sameness constituting these practices. I will take up the concepts of “foreign” and “foreigner” through Derrida’s work paying attention to in which way the sense of activity, movement and productivity, peculiar to his approach to concepts, can be read into these notions.
Participant: Eleni Sideri
History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology
University of Thessaly
Greece
Email: eliej73@yahoo.gr
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
“Looking for the autochthonous”: debating ownership in the Turkish speaking-Greek Tsalka
Tsalka is a small city not far from the capital of Georgia. It is well known of its natural beauty and its multicultural environment since it is the homeland of various ethnic groups such as Armenians, Azeris, Turkish-speaking Greeks, Russian and Georgians. After the fall of the Soviet Union this multiculturalism has allegedly become source of various frictions among these groups. The disputes have often as an epicenter the question of ownership over land and property. The discourses developed around this issue mainly stem from the question of autochthony of these groups. The latter draws its significance from the historical equivalence between land and ethnicity that was developed in the Tsarist and Soviet period and gave legitimacy in the political presence of these groups, their social, cultural and political rights. However the debates in Tsalka do not simply reproduce these understandings. Instead, as this paper is going to discuss, they provide a different and even contradictory translations concerning the fundamental in the last decades issue of rootsand routes. Furthermore, it will underline how through the years and the different policies themeaning of the autochthonous varies.
Participant: Magdalena Slavkova
Balkan Ethnology Department
Ethnographic Institute and Museum, Bulgarian
Bulgaria
Email: magdalenaslavkova@yahoo.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Lost in Translation: The Children of Bulgarian Migrants in Spain
The downfall of the socialist regime in Bulgaria in 1989 led to dramatic changes in the way of life of Bulgarian citizens who turned towards cross-border labour mobility in Spain as a new economic strategy. The transition from cross-border labour mobility to permanent migration happens when the first children in immigration are born, or when their children born in Bulgaria join them in immigration and have to start school or socialize in the new surroundings. I have adopted the ethnographic approach. It is based on fieldwork carried out in Bulgaria and Spain. In this paper I shall deal with the various aspects of the changes and transformations on the level of the everyday life of the migrant children who are part of the process when crossing the borders. This crossing the borders brings much more than only transformations in their habits or moral perspectives, because they are in-between two motherlands - Bulgaria and Spain. Through relationships with local peers the children get to know actively the customs and the habits of the environment in which they have found them. On the other hands, they participate in the process of cultural and memory translations across borders. The question is: what happens to children’s sense of themselves negotiating two different identities?
Participant: Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov
Social Anthropology
The University of Cambridge
United Kingdom
Email: ns267@cam.ac.uk
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Diplomatic travel, exchange and authenticity
The goal of this paper is to consider implications for theories of authenticity, travel and exchange by adding another figure to the list of itinerant categories, offered by the workshop organisers. What changes, if we add a professional diplomat or a head of state to this list? Both are undoubtedly constantly moving and crossing borders. Do translations and exchanges that they are involved in differ significantly from those in which migrants or tourists are engaged? What are notions of belonging and authenticity that they articulate. Are they undermined or reinforced by explicitly pragmatic political dimensions of their travel? And does our analytical optics need to be modified if we direct our ethnographic gaze not at the bottom of the transnational order, epitomised by low-skill migrant labour, to the its top, constituted by travel routes of a head of state? This paper draws on empirical materials of my on-going research into gifts to Soviet leaders. I consider the case of Teheran Conference (1943), with gift exchanges between Churchill and Stalin, and the case of Mao Tse-Tung visit to the Soviet Union in 1949. In doing so, I explore how Orientalist/Occidentalist notions of authenticity and identity are constutited through diplomatic gift giving.
Participant: Martin Van der Velde
Nijmegen Centre for Border Research, Human Geography
Radboud University Nijmegen
The Netherlands
Email: M.vanderVelde@ru.nl
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
The roots and webs of the textile bazaars in Lodz (Poland)
Continuing on the presentation in Zagreb in this COST Action Program, this presentation again will discuss the phenomenon of the bazaars or textile open air markets in post-socialist countries. As discussed then, these OAMs still serve both as outlets for locally and regionally produced textiles, as well as products from CIS-countries and even South-East Asia. Next to the local and regional customers the markets also are depending on clients from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. It turns out that old historic relationship patterns still are clearly visible in the current era. Putting it in the TPSN- framework as developed by Jessop and others, we try to focus on the importance of trust and culture especially where it concerns the ‘horizontal’ rhizomatic relationships extending out of these bazaars.