Download or read book Migration and Social Upheaval as the Face of Globalization in Central Asia written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the start of the 1990s, Central Asia has been the main purveyor of migrants in the post-Soviet space. These massive migrations due to social upheavals over the last twenty years impact issues of governance; patterns of social adaptation; individual and collective identities; and gender relations in Central Asia. This volume raises the importance of internal migrations, those at a regional, intra-Central Asian, level, labor migrations to Russia, and carries us as far away to the Uzbek migrants based in Istanbul, New York, or Seoul, as well as to the young women of Tashkent who head to Germany or France, and to the Germans, Greeks, and Jews of Central Asia who have returned to their “ethnic homelands”. Contributors include Aida Aaly Alimbaeva, Stéphanie Belouin, Adeline Braux, Asel Dolotkeldieva, Olivier Ferrando, Sophie Hohmann, Nafisa Khusenova, Erica Marat, Sophie Massot, Saodat Olimova, Sébastien Peyrouse, Luisa Piart, Madeleine Reeves, Elena Sadovskaya.
Download or read book Moving for Prosperity written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Migration presents a stark policy dilemma. Research repeatedly confirms that migrants, their families back home, and the countries that welcome them experience large economic and social gains. Easing immigration restrictions is one of the most effective tools for ending poverty and sharing prosperity across the globe. Yet, we see widespread opposition in destination countries, where migrants are depicted as the primary cause of many of their economic problems, from high unemployment to declining social services. Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets addresses this dilemma. In addition to providing comprehensive data and empirical analysis of migration patterns and their impact, the report argues for a series of policies that work with, rather than against, labor market forces. Policy makers should aim to ease short-run dislocations and adjustment costs so that the substantial long-term benefits are shared more evenly. Only then can we avoid draconian migration restrictions that will hurt everybody. Moving for Prosperity aims to inform and stimulate policy debate, facilitate further research, and identify prominent knowledge gaps. It demonstrates why existing income gaps, demographic differences, and rapidly declining transportation costs mean that global mobility will continue to be a key feature of our lives for generations to come. Its audience includes anyone interested in one of the most controversial policy debates of our time.
Download or read book Globalizing Central Asia written by Marlene Laruelle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the need to maintain control over them in the interest of state sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary international economic and political context answers the needs of both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course adoption.
Download or read book Security Society and the State in the Caucasus written by Kevork Oskanian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caucasus, including the South Caucasus states and Russia’s North Caucasus, continues to be an area of instability and conflict. This book, based on extensive original research, explores in detail at both the local and regional level the interaction between state and society and the impact of external actors' engagement in the region within a conceptual framework linking security and democracy. Unlike other books on the subject, which tend to examine the issues from a Western political science perspective, this book incorporates insights from sociology, geography and anthropology as well as politics and contains contributions from scholars who have carried out extensive research in the region within a European Commission-funded Seventh Framework Programme project.
Download or read book Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context written by Matthias Schwartz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The demise of state Socialisms caused radical social, cultural and economic changes in Eastern Europe. Since then, young people have been confronted with fundamental disruptions and transformations to their daily environment, while an unsettling, globalized world substantially reshapes local belongings and conventional values. In times of multiple instabilities and uncertainties, this volume argues, young people prefer to try to adjust to given circumstances than to adopt the behaviour of potential rebellious, adolescent role models, dissident counter-cultures or artistic breakings of taboo. Eastern European Youth Cultures in a Global Context takes this situation as a starting point for an examination of generational change, cultural belongings, political activism and everyday practices of young people in different Eastern European countries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It argues that the conditions of global change not only call for a differentiated evaluation of youth cultures, but also for a revision of our understanding of 'youth' itself – in Eastern Europe and beyond.
Download or read book Central Peripheries written by Marlene Laruelle and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central Peripheries explores post-Soviet Central Asia through the prism of nation-building. Although relative latecomers on the international scene, the Central Asian states see themselves as globalized, and yet in spite of – or perhaps precisely because of – this, they hold a very classical vision of the nation-state, rejecting the abolition of boundaries and the theory of the ‘death of the nation’. Their unabashed celebration of very classical nationhoods built on post-modern premises challenges the Western view of nationalism as a dying ideology that ought to have been transcended by post-national cosmopolitanism. Marlene Laruelle looks at how states in the region have been navigating the construction of a nation in a post-imperial context where Russia remains the dominant power and cultural reference. She takes into consideration the ways in which the Soviet past has influenced the construction of national storylines, as well as the diversity of each state’s narratives and use of symbolic politics. Exploring state discourses, academic narratives and different forms of popular nationalist storytelling allows Laruelle to depict the complex construction of the national pantheon in the three decades since independence. The second half of the book focuses on Kazakhstan as the most hybrid national construction and a unique case study of nationhood in Eurasia. Based on the principle that only multidisciplinarity can help us to untangle the puzzle of nationhood, Central Peripheries uses mixed methods, combining political science, intellectual history, sociology and cultural anthropology. It is inspired by two decades of fieldwork in the region and a deep knowledge of the region’s academia and political environment. Praise for Central Peripheries ‘Marlene Laruelle paves the way to the more focused and necessary outlook on Central Asia, a region that is not a periphery but a central space for emerging conceptual debates and complexities. Above all, the book is a product of Laruelle's trademark excellence in balancing empirical depth with vigorous theoretical advancements.’ – Diana T. Kudaibergenova, University of Cambridge ‘Using the concept of hybridity, Laruelle explores the multitude of historical, political and geopolitical factors that predetermine different ways of looking at nations and various configurations of nation-building in post-Soviet Central Asia. Those manifold contexts present a general picture of the transformation that the former southern periphery of the USSR has been going through in the past decades.’ – Sergey Abashin, European University at St Petersburg
Download or read book Migrant Workers in Russia written by Anna-Liisa Heusala and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia has a very large pool of economic migrants, up to 25% of the workforce according to some estimates. Although many migrants, many from former Soviet countries which are now independent, entered Russia legally, they frequently face bureaucratic obstacles to legal employment and Russian citizenship, factors which have led to a very large “shadow economy”. This book presents a comprehensive examination of migrant labour in Russia. It describes the nature of migrant labour, explores the shadow economy and its unfortunate consequences, and discusses the rise of popular sentiment against migrants and the likely impact. The book also sets the Russian experiences of migrant labour in context, comparing the situation in Russia with that in other countries with significant migrant labour workforces. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book Tajikistan on the Move written by Marlene Laruelle and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-05-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The southernmost and poorest state of the Eurasian space, Tajikistan collapsed immediately upon the fall of the Soviet Union and plunged into a bloody five-year civil war (1992–1997) that left more than 50,000 people dead and more than half a million displaced. After the 1997 Peace Agreements, Tajikistan stood out for being the only post-Soviet country to recognize an Islamic party—the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT)—as a key actor in the civil war as well as in postwar reconstruction and democratization. Tajikistan’s linguistic and cultural proximity to Iran notwithstanding, the balance of external powers over the country remains fairly typical of Central Asia, with Russia as the major security provider and China as its principal investor. Another specificity of Tajikistan is its massive labor migration flows toward Russia. Out of a population of eight million, about one million work abroad seasonally—one of the highest rates of departure in the world. Migration trends have impacted Tajikistan’s economy and rent mechanisms: half of the country’s GDP comes from migrant remittances, a higher share than anywhere else in the world. However, it is in the societal and cultural realms that migration has had the most transformative effect. Migrants’ cultural and societal identities are on the move, with a growing role given to Islam as a normative tool for regulating the cultural shock of migration. Islam, and especially a globalized fundamentalist pietist movement, regulates both physical and moral security in workplace and other settings, and brings migrants together to make their interactions meaningful and socio-politically relevant. It offers a new social prestige to those who work in an environment seen as threatening to their Islamic identity. The first section of this volume investigates the critical question of the nature of the Tajik political regime, its stability, legitimacy mechanisms, and patterns of centralization. In the volume’s second part, we move away from studying the state to delve into the societal fabric of Tajikistan, shaped by local rural specificities and social vulnerabilities in the health sector and gender relationships. The third section of the volume is devoted to identity narratives and changes. While the Tajik regime works hard to control the national narrative and the interpretation of the civil war, society is literally and figuratively on the move, as migration profoundly reshapes societal structures and cultural values.
Download or read book The EU s Eastern Neighbourhood written by Ilkka Liikanen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of the Soviet Union has had profound and long-lasting impacts on the societies of Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, impacts which are not yet fully worked through: changes in state-society relations, a comprehensive reconfiguration of political, economic and social ties, the resurgence of regional conflicts "frozen" during the Soviet period, and new migration patterns both towards Russia and the European Union. At the same time the EU has emerged as an important player in the region, formulating its European Neighbourhood Policy, and engaging neighbouring states in a process of cross-border regional co-operation. This book explores a wide range of complex and contested questions related to borders, security and migration in the emerging "European Neighbourhood" which includes countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as the countries which immediately border the EU. Issues discussed include new forms of regional and cross-border co-operation, new patterns of migration, and the potential role of the EU as a stabilizing external force.
Download or read book Constructing the Uzbek State written by Marlene Laruelle and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past three decades, Uzbekistan has attracted the attention of the academic and policy communities because of its geostrategic importance, its critical role in shaping or unshaping Central Asia as a region, its economic and trade potential, and its demographic weight: every other Central Asian being Uzbek, Uzbekistan’s political, social, and cultural evolutions largely exemplify the transformations of the region as a whole. And yet, more than 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, evaluating Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet transformation remains complicated. Practitioners and scholars have seen access to sources, data, and fieldwork progressively restricted since the early 2000s. The death of President Islam Karimov, in power for a quarter of century, in late 2016, reopened the future of the country, offering it more room for evolution. To better grasp the challenges facing post-Karimov Uzbekistan, this volume reviews nearly three decades of independence. In the first part, it discusses the political construct of Uzbekistan under Karimov, based on the delineation between the state, the elite, and the people, and the tight links between politics and economy. The second section of the volume delves into the social and cultural changes related to labor migration and one specific trigger – the difficulties to reform agriculture. The third part explores the place of religion in Uzbekistan, both at the state level and in society, while the last part looks at the renegotiation of collective identities.
Download or read book Fertility Conjuncture Difference written by Philip Kreager and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last forty years anthropologists have made major contributions to understanding the heterogeneity of reproductive trends and processes underlying them. Fertility transition, rather than the story of the triumphant spread of Western birth control rationality, reveals a diversity of reproductive means and ends continuing before, during, and after transition. This collection brings together anthropological case studies, placing them in a comparative framework of compositional demography and conjunctural action. The volume addresses major issues of inequality and distribution which shape population and social structures, and in which fertility trends and the formation and size of families are not decided solely or primarily by reproduction.
Download or read book Bishkek Boys written by Philipp Schröder and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pioneering ethnographic study of identity and integration, author Philipp Schröder explores urban change in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek from the vantage point of the male youth living in one neighbourhood. Touching on topics including authority, violence, social and imaginary geographies, interethnic relations, friendship, and competing notions of belonging to the city, Bishkek Boys offers unique insights into how post-Socialist economic liberalization, rural-urban migration and ethnic nationalism have reshaped social relations among young males who come of age in this Central Asian urban environment.
Download or read book Conflict and Peace in Eurasia written by Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on a range of Eurasian conflicts, including Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, this book offers contemporary perspectives on the ongoing conflicts in the Eurasia, with an emphasis on the attempts towards peace. The book brings into focus how various factors such as ethnicity, religion, border disputes, resources, and animosities inherited from the past play crucial role in these conflicts. It questions whether developments in Eurasia affect other conflicts across the globe, and if differences between parties can be resolved without pulling the relations beyond adjustable limits. The book goes on to look at how tricky the path to peace would be, and furthers the development of a framework of study of Eurasian conflicts in the post-Soviet world, while taking into account both internal and external variables in analyzing these conflicts. It is a useful contribution to Central Asian and Caucasian Politics and Security Studies.
Download or read book Mobilities Boundaries and Travelling Ideas written by Manja Stephan-Emmrich and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together a variety of anthropological, historical and sociological case studies from Central Asia and the Caucasus to examine the concept of translocality. The chapters scrutinize the capacity of translocality to describe, in new ways, the multiple mobilities, exchange practices and globalizing processes that link places, people and institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus with others in Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates. Illuminating translocality as a productive concept for studying cross‐regional connectivities and networks, this volume is an important contribution to a lively field of academic discourse. Following new directions in Area Studies, the chapters aim to overcome ‘territorial containers’ such as the nation‐state or local community, and instead emphasize the significance of processes of translation and negotiation for understanding how meaningful localities emerge beyond conventional boundaries. Structured by the four themes ‘crossing boundaries’, ‘travelling ideas’, ‘social and economic movements’ and ‘pious endeavours’, this volume proposes three conceptual approaches to translocality: firstly, to trace how it is embodied, narrated, virtualized or institutionalized within or in reference to physical or imagined localities; secondly, to understand locality as a relational concept rather than a geographically bounded unit; and thirdly, to consider cross‐border traders, travelling students, business people and refugees as examples of non-elite mobilities that provide alternative ways to think about what ‘global’ means today. Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas will be of interest to students and scholars of the anthropology, history and sociology of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as for those interested in new approaches to Area Studies.
Download or read book Chinese Foreign Relations with Weak Peripheral States written by Jeffrey Reeves and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines China’s relations with its weak peripheral states through the theoretical lens of structural power and structural violence. China’s foreign policy concepts toward its weak neighbouring states, such as the ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy, are premised on the assumption that economic exchange and a commitment to common development are the most effective means of ensuring stability on its borders. This book, however, argues that China’s overreliance on economic exchange as the basis for its bilateral relations contains inherently self-defeating qualities that have contributed and can further contribute to instability and insecurity within China’s periphery. Unequal economic exchange between China and its weak neighbours results in Chinese influence over the state’s domestic institutions, what this book refers to as ‘structural power’. Chinese structural power, in turn, can undermine the state’s development, contribute to social unrest, and exacerbate existing state/society tensions—what this book refers to as ‘structural violence’. For China, such outcomes lead to instability within its peripheral environment and raise its vulnerability to security threats stemming from nationalism, separatism, terrorism, transnational organised crime, and drug trafficking, among others. This book explores the causality between China’s economically-reliant foreign policy and insecurity in its weak peripheral states and considers the implications for China’s security environment and foreign policy. This book will be of much interest to students of Chinese politics, Asian security studies, international political economy and IR in general.
Download or read book Global Trends 2040 written by National Intelligence Council and published by Cosimo Reports. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.
Download or read book The Grass is Always Greener written by Timur Dadabaev and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-02 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book unpacks the nature of Central Asian migration to East Asia. This book uses the case of Uzbekistan, the most populous country of Central Asia, and demonstrates the migration channels and adaptation strategies of migrants to the realities of Japan. What are the foreign policy engagements of Japan in Central Asia? How do they relate to the intensifying educational mobility and labour migration from Central Asia (in particular, Uzbekistan) to Japan? By answering these two questions, this book aims to detail the social factors that play important roles in localizing foreign policy engagements and narrating them in terms easily understood by the public.
