Call for papers “Migration, Mobile Goods and Trade Networks in the Caucasus”

Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, November 18-19, 2016

Migration is one of the most popular strategies of coping with poverty among citizens from the Caucasus. In addition to economic factors, migration forms a set of practices aimed at securing social security and personal development. Political changes and economic crises within host countries affect migration patterns and the circulation of goods. At the same time, migration dynamics have an impact on changes in border policy, attitude towards migrants and labour market regulations. For those involved, human mobility creates translocal and transnational ties (or networks) that pave the way for the circulation of goods and enable or facilitate movement of immobile people. For people in the Caucasus, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, social networks in their multiple localities play a crucial role in establishing livelihood strategies and ways of operating in domestic economies. Social networks affect not only migration flows from the Caucasus but also influence the kind of survival tactics migrants employ while abroad. In this light, we are interested in how migration chains and communities are built and how they function. Read more

 

Call for papers “Mistrust, Mobilities, Insecurities Conference”

Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, November 16-17, 2016

This international conference will be organised as part of the EU-FP7 CASCADE project (www.cascade-caucasus.eu) by the working group dedicated to issues of migration,
mobilities and poverty in the Caucasus. The central notion to be explored during the conference is mistrust. In contrast to the notion of trust, which has become popular as a social phenomenon in the social sciences of late, the notion of mistrust is mostly overlooked. If at all, mistrust is investigated as the flip side of trust, as an annoying absence and a societal failure. In this vein, post-Soviet citizens such as those from the Caucasus are depicted as notoriously deficient: alienated from the state due to the Soviet past they are still haunted by, incapable of creating a genuine civil society, unwilling to follow the rule of law, relying on personal networks and relations rather than the state apparatus, predisposed to corruption. The most pressing question thus seems to be how to restore trust in the state, and how to foster trust in civil agents and free markets. Read more