Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
Accepted Paper:
Russian Exodus to Georgia: Old Routes, New Hierarchies
Giorgi Cheishvili
(Tbilisi State University)
Elina Troscenko
(University of Bergen)
This paper focuses on the migration of Russian and Belarusian citizens to Georgia following the the Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It explores how the trajectories of the migrants both operationalize and reproduce the imagined geographies originating back in the Russian colonial history.
Paper long abstract:
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 did not only cause a massive displacement of Ukrainians fleeing from the atrocities of war, but also resulted in a mass exodus from Russia itself. Georgia, a country of 3.7 million, with a recent history of military conflicts with Russia and notably anti-Russian public sentiments, became one of the main destinations of the Russian “relocants” as well as Belarusians fleeing from the regime. In this paper, we explore the ways in which the trajectories of these migrants both follow and reproduce certain established routes and imagined geographies of familiarity originating back in the Russian colonial history.