![Вихра Баева. Нишката на живота. Между коланчето за рожба и Богородичния пояс. София: Академично издателство „Проф. Марин Дринов”, 2012](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2014_17218.jpg)
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In this paper, the author raises some terminological questions concerning the phenomenon of a particular kind of labour migration, pečalba, and the term “transnationalism”: if and how it can still be used to define the present models of pečalba. Basing her argument on fieldwork in Western Macedonia, the author observes at least two models of pečalba – to Slovenia (seasonal male migration) and to Italy (migration of entire families living abroad almost the whole year). Even the latter work migration is perceived as temporary, because Macedonia remains the place of reference for the migrants. They invest money, build houses and marry off children in Italy, and because only men have salaried jobs, it can be considered a male migration. Thus, one can see some sort of continuity of the traditional model of temporary labour mobility known in the Balkans since the second half of the 19th century. As for the concept “transnationalism”, the author finds is very useful for understanding migrants’ practices and experiences, but also agrees with some scholars that this term is not adequate for describing migration in the Balkans. She holds that migration from Macedonia is more trans-state than transnational, since numerous migrants belong to national minorities: As ethnic Albanians or Turks, they perceive their country of origin above all through the prism of territory and citizenship, and not through ethnicity or nationality. Furthermore, crossing state borders is one of the central elements of the interlocutors’ narratives of pečalba.
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In this paper I attempt to link two issues that seem to have no obvious connection: market and commodity, a predominantly economic field, and the ethnographic perspective on Romanian migrants at the beginning of the 1990s. I link these issues by arguing that the Romanian migrants’ experiences and difficulties actually reflect the encounter between a market and non-market situation. I am mainly interested in the way this encounter is lived on an individual basis and the effects on interpersonal relations between those at the arrival destination and those at the departure place. In order to illustrate my point, I refer to discussions on a blog set up by a Romanian immigrant to Canada. The market situation is an exchange-based situation, in which all things have a price because they have in their turn been earned at a price. Those who remained at home did not have the larger exchange picture in mind, but rather a vague imagination of the resourceful West, the engrained idea of needs and the status drive towards conspicuous consumption. For those at home, the émigré to the West was an asset for their status, separated from the value in work or time, for acquiring money. The non-market situation in the departure country obscured the perceived market value and “correct price” of commodities, time and people. This I believe can be considered the root of a misunderstanding. All those entering the market system had to take on its values and expectations, but at the cost of alienation and the loss of a dimension of friendship and social solidarity – with no market exchange value – which could not be recaptured. The lost dimension turned bitter through exposure to the new situation. Something was lost in translation between the two worlds.
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The article investigates aspects of the everyday lives and strategies of Bulgarian children left behind by their migrant parents. It relies on an ethnographic study conducted in two Bulgarian cities and adopts a child-centered approach that builds on the narratives of children and their interpretations of the meaning of commitment at a distance and care from afar. In an attempt to illuminate the wider effects of migration on the home society, the article focuses on individuals who are not themselves migrants, but whose everyday lives and strategies are deeply influenced by the migration of others – parents, relatives or friends. Challenging the increasingly dominant view of Bulgarian children left behind as passive victims of parental migration, the paper shows these children as social agents who are actively involved in the renegotiation of family roles and inter-generational relations at home as well as of their subjectivities. It demonstrates that parental migration has resuscitated largely forgotten models of familial arrangements and adulthood, which is by no means a conservative tendency, as it happens within a framework of complex transposition and management of transnational relations. The article emphasizes left-behind children’s ability not only to forge and maintain connections at a distance, but also to export and transfer social bonding developed in the home country across state borders.
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Based on the case study of the career history of a Bulgarian-Turkish entrepreneur I elaborate on the idea that significant (macro-level) events such as governmental takeovers or migration do not influence the economic decisions of individuals on the micro-level. It is the social capital, embedded in networks of people, which provides direct access to economic resources. Social networks are of different types (kin or non-kin) with varying influence on an individual in different stages of his life course. The subject of this research, a man called Akhun, is a successful entrepreneur who was able to activate and manipulate (scarce) resources in different historical periods. He began his informal enterprise in the times of the communist regime. The enterprise started to suffer after the beginning of the “Revival Process” and later – in 1989 being part of what has been called the “Great Trip” – he was even forced to leave the country. However, he returned in 1990 and, based on his previous networks, started a new business. The enterprise, a family farm, successfully develops until today. Akhun’s story is to be seen as an example of post-socialist entrepreneurial development.
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Various conceptualizations of return migration – understanding it as a “myth”, “illusion”, “natural homecoming”, etc. – point out dominant approaches and research paradigms within migration studies as well as hidden ideological and political agendas. It is argued that the latter had a different impact on migration studies in emigration and immigration countries. Contemporary circumstances of enhanced global mobility have diversified the categories of return migration so that researchers have added various qualifications to the generic term. They speak of imagined and provisional return, (co-)ethnic return, ancestral or roots return, partial and virtual return, etc. The new research paradigm of transnationalism which embraces these new conceptualisations, can thus be said to have enlarged rather than dissolved the meaning of the term. Finally, based on the broad spectrum of possible studies on return in the ethnographically probing Croatian context, it is argued that return – as part of an ongoing and reversible migration process – might be studied as just another kind of immigration.
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The present article discusses the main characteristics of the processes of irregular migration to and through Bulgaria. Outlined are the different types of irregular migrants and their relationship with the informal economy in the context of the existing migration regime in the country. Traced are the status dynamics among irregulars, the niches of irregular work, the related recruitment patterns as well as the networks of assistance among irregulars.
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The phenomenon of migration has always existed, manifesting itself through transhumance, invasion, colonization and crusades. The strong appeal of the more prosperous regions for the poorer populations has often been a determining factor for migration flows. Whether it receives immigrants or provides emigrants, the Romanian village Biled was and remains significantly involved in the social phenomena of internal and external migration. Located in the historical region of Banat, Biled has undergone many stages of migration. The two World Wars and the post-war period, as well as communism, brought significant changes to the ethnic composition of Biled, and substantial transformations in the social, cultural, economic, and demographic evolution of the community. Our study focuses on the socio-cultural effects of the internal and external migratory phenomena on the community of Biled. These effects have an impact on all social classes and categories. At the macro level, we have an ageing population that cannot contribute significantly to the socio-economic development of the Romanian rural society. It is difficult to transmit the socio-cultural reproduction of the habits, traditions and cultural practices intergenerationally without the active participation of the working age population of the village. Moreover, the direct effects on the education and personal development of children from families with one or both parents who have left to work abroad are very significant. However, we decided to give more attention to the socio-cultural distance between different ethnic, regional, and religious groups from the current community and to make an analysis of the main causes and effects of the migration flows in recent decades in Biled.
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One of several opinion polls of the student population in Serbia, conducted in May 2008, revealed that about 78% of the interviewees is ready to leave Serbia immediately after they get their diploma. Although there are many who declare that they are ready to permanently return to their home country, and certainly a great majority is in one way or another engaged in a widespread public debate about the issue of emigration, the portion of those who have already made concrete plans and preparations for leaving is considerably smaller. Focussing on the wishes and plans of the young for leaving after 2000, I will try to formulate answers to two questions: first, what is the social and cultural context of this fervent debate, supposing that the various discourses on youth, at the particular moment centred on the migration issue, might in fact represent a part of the wider process of reconstruction of youth as a social category in postsocialist transformations; and second, what are the characteristics of the more shadowy process that, in the private arena of family life and family planning, accompanies this more exposed political debate. In short: what kind of home will Serbia become if the young people wish so strongly to escape from it?
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Unauthorized entry of migrants into Europe’s “Schengenland” is a social phenomenon that has not only increased rapidly in the last decade, it has also become a major concern of migration studies in recent years. The Greek-Turkish border, which separates EU territory from a non-European country and which is often crossed by irregular migrants and persons seeking refuge from the Middle and Far East, is especially relevant for studying irregular migration flows in Southeastern Europe. The article shall focus on the reception of unauthorized migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos who managed to cross the Greek-Turkish border by boat clandestinely. Based on anthropological fieldwork on the Greek island of Lesbos, ethnographic data on the migratory process from Turkey to Greece about how undocumented migrants cross the maritime border, how they are received in Greece and how their apprehension on the island of Lesbos works will be presented. In discussing the findings, the category of illegal migration shall be challenged. Based on empirical data from the Greek-Turkish maritime border, we have to think of managing unauthorized migration as a complex system with interrelated legal practices as well as unlawful actions of all actors involved.
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This paper questions the stereotypes that foreign domestic workers face and their strategies to overcome these stereotypes, and aims to raise questions about the issues that foreign domestic workers face in Turkey from a feminist perspective. In this respect, the paper summarizes the discussions concerning waged domestic work in Turkey and questions the way that gender is performed in the context of the home by two women, the foreign domestic worker and the host employer. For this paper, 5 foreign women working as domestic workers and four of their employers have been interviewed. All of the informants were found through friendly networks and live in Ankara. The paper supports the idea of Jones that gender matters in migration at the level of ideology, discourse, policy, and in the lived realities created by the migratory experience, and adds an important aspect, that is, how we define gender matters. Culture being an important determinant in the performance of gender has to be studied further in the context of foreign domestic work as the barrier of second language changes the gender performance.
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The concern with and the trope of “illegal migration” is one of the main narratives that has been dominating the public and political migration debate since the 1990s. In the following paper I develop an analytical perspective on the topic, which focuses on the political and scientific context and condition of its knowledge production, especially on the invention of the migrational figure of the “undocumented transit migrant”. Thereby I draw on the empirical findings and experiences of the research project called Transit Migration (2007). Transit Migration was an interdisciplinary research project focussing on the Europeanization of migration policies and in particular on the formation of the European border regime in Southeastern Europe, specifically in Turkey, Greece and the Balkans in general. I will show which international and local actors and discourses produce a political scenario in the European peripheries, which can be called “transit migration dispositif”. In contrast to this kind of political usable knowledge production, the ethnographic material rather demonstrates that “transit migrants” are hard to define. But the ethnographic data shows that due to the EU border regime more and more migrants are caught at the fringes of the EU, leading to the emergence of highly “precarious transit zones”.
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Economic globalization, poverty, and ethnic conflicts around the world have increased the number of people fleeing persecution. Some of these migratory flows headed to Europe through illegal means such as smugglers and illegal border crossings. This made the distinction between irregular migrants and asylum seekers blurry. As European states formulated solutions for the problem of unwanted flows, the international protection provided to asylum seekers was loosened for the sake of national security. In fact, the short history of migration in the European context shows that asylum was never seen as a problem as long as it was consistent with national interests. When the European Union member states initiated a policy towards common immigration and asylum standards for Europe, control tools and prevention mechanisms were prioritized against the refugee protection. Due to abolishing the internal borders and having common external borders for Europe, attention was directed to neighbouring countries and their asylum and immigration practices. This paper will focus on the development of common immigration and asylum policy for the EU and its effects on third countries with a special emphasis on Turkey.
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This case study gives an account of the development of Hauzmajstor, a small real estate maintenance firm, founded by a Serbian repatriate in 2004. Beginning with its start up as the first daughter firm of Komon sens, the consulting and project development firm, the study follows its adaptation to the local business environment, concentrating on its organizational and business culture. The study also presents a detailed description and analysis of intercultural experiences of the Hauzmajstor insiders focussed on the perception of their first contacts and established relations with foreign (Western) clients. Conclusions deal with the mechanisms and the processes of establishing intercultural communication.
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The present paper refers to sociological issues, namely the experiences of social exclusion and inclusion of second-generation immigrants from Bulgaria. More specifically, the paper presents the immigrants’ experiences that have been “produced” within the school environment and Greek society in general. The theoretical framework of the study approaches second-generation immigrants as social subjects whose experiences of social reality are mediated by the relationship of the parameters of ethnicity, class and gender. The paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of second-generation Bulgarian students in Athens. The research project was conducted by the Research Centre for Greek Society of the Academy of Athens between 2006 and 2007 and focussed on the relationship of the second-generation Balkan immigrants to education. The study is based on the empirical material of semi-structured interviews with immigrant pupils who attend upper secondary education. It is argued that their relationship to education is significantly determined by their parents’ cultural capital which, in its turn, refers to different social strata. The paper concludes that the cultural can be more fully understood through its relationship to class and gender, as it is shaped by them.
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The paper discusses the problems of memory, memorizing and actualization of information, as well as the mechanism of inheriting it. The study is based on previous opinions characterizing the individual and collective memory, and the biographical with regard to the forms of written and oral conveying. The correlation between memory and heritage wherein it is acting as a constant reminder and functionalizer of community’s collective memory. Due to the complexity and versatility of the problem of collective memory resources within the context of folk culture the paper emphasizes upon one of its aspects, namely on the possibilities of a certain territory to serve as a collective memory pillar. Mutual influence and explicitness of territory is easily realized on the level of settlement community which organizes and gives sense to the environment it has been living in. The territory/community interactions in everyday life are grounded on the formation of community image. This image, on the other hand, favours the preservation of stable and equilibrium relations between the former determinants. Being materially long lasting and continuously bound to the human groups the settlements are considered as an ethnological heritage for identification of the people. Thus actualizing the reminiscences and the knowledge in the community memory the pillars of the territories become an explanatory code and means for establishing their cultural identity.
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In this article I have discussed the constructions of multiple identities of Bosnian refugees in Slovenia. The constructions of identities are very important for understanding social dynamics of refugee communities. In exile (more or less) rapid transformations of identities occur as many of the places where the identities were anchored in the homeland are changed. The possibility of continuity of those identities is vital for the mental health of refugees, therefore, the quick assimilation is not recommended in refugee studies. I focus in the article on sociocultural identities (a religious one is also mentioned), ethnic, gender ones, the stigmatizing or spoiled identity and the multiple identity concept (regional identity is briefly mentioned). For the successful integration new identities need to be formed, however, not all Bosnian refugees in Slovenia are inclined to form them as, for example, the elderly or some individuals from other social groups. Appropriate integration models would be needed in order to encourage the development of skills and capacities of those refugees.
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