Doctoral Dissertation Research: Forced Migration, Displacement, and Community in Contested Borderlands

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This project investigates the conditions under which displaced people construct their lives in a politically disputed borderland. The recent refugee crisis in Europe has revealed that various states, not only unstable states, have stakes in people's movements, and has urged deeper reflection on existing legal categories and rights, their ambivalence, and what these categories do to people in need of urgent help. At a time when issues of displacement gain broader visibility, this project, which trains a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of conducting empirically grounded scientific fieldwork, aims to understand how displaced people find new ways to maintain their social ties and practices in contexts of political insecurity. By providing a longitudinal assessment of how such relationships are maintained, this project will provide data useful to other contexts where displacement is having a significant social and geopolitical impact. Findings of this research will contribute to a more nuanced perception of forced migration, and to policy and practice in conflict management and building sustainable peace. George Washington University student Gorkem Aydemir Kundakci (under the direction of Dr. Sarah Wagner) will examine how displaced communities forge durable social relationships in contexts of political instability and uncertainty. The research will take place in a displaced community in the de facto Georgia-Abkhazia borderland, which provides a rich site for longitudinal exploration. During the Georgian-Abkhaz war in 1992-1993, after the collapse of Soviet Union, Georgian residents of Abkhazia were forced to flee into Georgia proper; and the ceasefire line created between parties soon turned into a contested borderland where three polities - Abkhazia, Georgia, and Russia - perform their sovereignty projects in uncertain ways. To this day, members of the displaced community in the borderland maintain their ties with both sides of the border, and navigate this ambivalent region in unexpected forms. To understand how the displaced experience this zone and challenge the categorical distinctions like "displaced," "at home," and "returnee," the researcher will conduct ethnographic research, by (1) tracing the political and legal context that constitutes the borderline and trans-border movements of the displaced, (2) exploring legal, social, and material aspects of border crossings, and (3) understanding the transformations in people's relations to the border and in modes of crossings over years. In doing so, the project will contribute to research on the issues of migration, ideas of homeland, and legal and political construction of borderlands in liminal zones. It will also increase public knowledge of contemporary dynamics of displacement and new information on the South Caucasus, a region anthropologically understudied. The research will rely on an innovative methodological design that will involve object biographies and maps of people's movements narrated through storytelling, and also make use of conventional methods of ethnographic data collection, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews.