Doctoral Dissertation Research: Territory and Identity in the Borderlands: The Moldovan Case

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This project examines how competing government efforts to define and control Moldovan territory affect the people in the border zones of Romania, Transnistria, and Ukraine. Doctoral student Adam Levy, under the supervision of Dr. John O'Loughlin, will explore these border zones and how they have become key sites of government intervention aimed at re-establishing national sovereignty. This project will analyze the key tensions underlying uncertainties about Moldovan citizenship and identity. These tensions indicate that while governments are attempting to re-territorialize these border regions, informally individuals are experiencing de-territorialization of these regions because of fragmented visa and labor restrictions. The key research question is: What does Moldovan citizenship mean to people in the border zones and how does their view compare to governmental perspectives? This project uses mixed methods including interviews, surveys, focus groups, and participant observation to understand how people who may or may not identify as Moldovan respond to new governmental regulations, like EU migration policies or Romanian passport controls. This approach will enable a comparison of formal ideas and attitudes about state- and region-building with those of the people who live in these regions. Data collected for the project will chart perceptions of nations/states, allegiances to ethno-linguistic communities, household migration histories, and ideas about iconic landscapes as measures of identity and attachment to places. The research will also show how ethno-national identity and regional geopolitical events are understood across generations. The findings will thus address basic questions about how European relations and post-Soviet identities are forged.The broader impacts of this study highlight Moldova's Romanian and Ukrainian frontiers to show where and how states like Moldova are situated within economic and security communities like the European Union (EU) or NATO. Practical political applications of this project include better understandings about how borders are imagined and administered across Europe and the former Soviet Union. Unlike analyses of Moldovan nationalism and EU/NATO "double enlargement", this project will focus on people living in and traversing border zones - not just the governing officials of these regions. Working with borderland stakeholders defined as different generations of government officials, students, teachers, farmers, traders, activists, pensioners, politicians and return-migrants, this research will highlight the real and conceptual distance between formal and informal understandings of national identity to study how such views relate to conceptions of citizenship. Focusing on informal understandings in contrast to formal ones, this approach will detail exactly how the transformation of authority and identity is experienced and contested in borderlands. As such, this study contributes answers to key geopolitical questions about how nations, states, and territory are consolidated. Additional contributions will improve knowledge about how borders are made, managed, and perceived in traditional "crush zones" like the Black Sea region. Academics, policy-makers, and administrators interested in EU/NATO divisions and migration management will profit from these findings. This project will generate fresh answers to big social and political questions about exactly where and how efforts to mark the limits of European countires are unfolding.