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- Chair:
-
Pengshan Pan
(Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
- Discussant:
-
H Deniz Genc
(Istanbul Medipol University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- Anthropology & Archaeology
- Location:
- William Pitt Union (WPU): room 527
- Sessions:
- Friday 20 October, -
Time zone: America/New_York
Accepted papers
Session 1 Friday 20 October, 2023, -Paper abstract
This paper will present findings from face-to-face interviews conducted by the author in Kazakhstan in the first half of 2023. The paper aims to shed light on the connections between respondents' views about the Soviet legacy in Central Asia and their opinions regarding Russia's aggression against Ukraine as well as their overall views about Russia. Influences of basic demographic characteristics and prevailing pattens of media consumption are taken into account.
Paper abstract
The war that Russia launched against Ukraine, significantly challenged the world order. The consequences of this event can only partially be studied -- by attending its side effects, such as the Russian exodus to neighboring countries, including Georgia. Indeed, the war had a dramatic influence on the urban social fabric of the Georgian capital. Overnight, the Russian language suddenly became far more dominant in Tbilisi’s urban landscape than it has been at least within the last three decades of Georgia’s independence. The reaction of Georgians to the large-scale inflow of Russian citizens was not uniform: while some, especially in the hospitality sector, started to adapt to new reality and demand from its staff to communicate in Russian with the new customers, others boycotted Russian. One of the responses to the immigration of Russian nationals was decorating balconies and streets of Tbilisi with Ukrainian flags and anti-Russian graffities. While the Russian newcomers try. To pronounce the basic words in Georgia without an accent, Georgians greet them with “Slava Ukrainy” expecting to be answered with “Geroyam Slava”.
The proposed paper will attend to the ways in which the entering of the Russian language into Tbilisi’s everyday life has been perceived of by the locals. What types of interactions does the Russian language facilitate in the city’s social landscape?
Paper abstract
Tajikistan is one of the main migrant origin countries in the post-Soviet space, with approximately ten to twelve percent of its population living and working in Russia (Mahmadbekov, 2012; Pettinger, 2013; MPI, 2019). In the midst of such mass labour migration, the social fabric, family dynamics and gender relations are transformed in different ways.
Drawing on the stories of migrant workers from Tajikistan in Russia, through the narrative inquiry research approach, this paper illustrates how gender relations are transforming in a complex subtle way. Specifically, I discuss how migrant workers are gradually becoming different in performing their gender roles in public and in private. I demonstrate the transformative potential of ‘becoming different’ through everyday practices that create change in gender relations. I discuss how migrant workers are 1) becoming different in household chores; 2) in public spaces, and how it all contributes to 3) familial tensions.
In this paper, I argue that transformation of gender relations happens in the struggle between moving forward towards more egalitarian gender relations and coming back to more traditional gender relations. These findings make us reconsider how gender roles and gender relations are transforming in a complex way in the context of labour mobility.