CASCADE's final events, 18-21 October

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Posted on September 7, 2016 by Irina

Joint CASCADE-ISSICEU Final Policy Event “The European Union and the Caucasus: New Perspectives on an Evolving Relationship,” 18 October, Brussels:

The final policy event (organised jointly with ISSICEU) will take place at the Permanent Representation of Sweden to the European Union, Square de Meeûs 30, Brussels. The draft version of event’s programme can be found here.

The CASCADE’s Final Conference “The Democracy-Security Nexus in and around the Caucasus,” 20-21 October, Brussels:

This international conference will be organised as part of the EU-FP7 CASCADE project (www. cascade-caucasus.eu). It will critically re-examine the link between security and democratisation in the Caucasus, in a context of growing authoritarianism and new protest movements, as well as conflict transformation resulting from broader political upheavals in the wider neighbourhood. This re-examination will be informed by a combination of macro- and micro-approaches.

The conference will take place in Brussels (Université Libre de Bruxelles) on 20 and 21 October 2016. The call for proposals can be found here.

Working meeting of CASCADE Project "Atlas of the Caucasus", September 16, 2016

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Irina

Working meeting of CASCADE Project “Atlas of the Caucasus” team (WP10): Jean Radvanyi, Philippe Rekacewicz and Alexander Panin :

Atlas of the Caucasus Team WP10 CASCADE Project

Find out more photos in our Photo Gallery.

Out Now: "Poverty and migration in Georgia: what mobility partnerships can solve"

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Irina

New CASCADE working paper

By Kakha Gogolashvili, Senior Fellow at GFSIS

There is an extensive literature on how poverty affects migration. Poverty is widely considered as a factor influencing individual decisions to emigrate. “Various country-specific studies on short-term contract international migration show that migration reduces poverty at the family level.” The impact of migration on poverty has also been intensively explored by a large number of research projects. In both cases there is established positive nonlinear correlation elsewhere in the world which leads us to conclude that people emigrate in a large extent to escape poverty and that poverty within the country is reduced thanks to emigration. Read the full working paper: cascade_caucasus_deliverable_3-4.

IGRAS team took part in the Mountain Forum in Dagestan and held a workshop on local development initiatives

Posted on August 11, 2016 by Irina

Vladimir Kolosov at the Plenary Meeting, Mountains Forum 2016

The IGRAS team started its visit to Dagestan by the participation in the Mountain Forum “Efficient Development of Mountainous Territories of Russia” organized on 26-28 July by the government of the Republic. The Forum was a part of the Year of Mountains celebrated in Dagestan and was opened by Ramazan Abdulatipov, Head of the Republic, and Lev Kuznetsov, Federal Minister for North Caucasus Affairs. The event gathered a great number of scholars and experts from all republics and regions of North Caucasus, members of the Dagestani government and heads of municipal districts. Vladimir Kolosov was invited to make a presentation at the plenary meeting and Olga Vendina was a speaker at the session devoted to local initiatives in the afternoon.

Local inhabitants at the workshop

A workshop scheduled on local development initiatives was held on 30 July in the village of Churtakh, Lackh district, located at the altitude of about 2,100 m. Besides the members of the IGRAS team and Dagestani scholars, there were the heads of the mountainous Lackh District, the mayor of the village, experts from North Ossetia, Chechnya, Stavropol region and representatives of the CASCADE’s “sister” project ISSICEU. The workshop was opened in the presence of local inhabitants.

Find more information on the website of Russian Geographical Society and watch a video report on the Dagestani
TV.

Call for tenders/Deadline: 15 September 2016

Posted on August 5, 2016 by Irina

Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (FMSH) launches this call for tenders under the European project CASCADE GA No. 613354 to subcontract for the production of:

– a database (dissemination and outreach),

– network’s website,

– policy recommendations.

These tasks are related to the Work Package 10 of CASCADE EU project.

You can find more details here.

Call for papers “Migration, Mobile Goods and Trade Networks in the Caucasus”

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Irina

Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, November 18-19, 2016

Migration is one of the most popular strategies of coping with poverty among citizens from the Caucasus. In addition to economic factors, migration forms a set of practices aimed at securing social security and personal development. Political changes and economic crises within host countries affect migration patterns and the circulation of goods. At the same time, migration dynamics have an impact on changes in border policy, attitude towards migrants and labour market regulations. For those involved, human mobility creates translocal and transnational ties (or networks) that pave the way for the circulation of goods and enable or facilitate movement of immobile people. For people in the Caucasus, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, social networks in their multiple localities play a crucial role in establishing livelihood strategies and ways of operating in domestic economies. Social networks affect not only migration flows from the Caucasus but also influence the kind of survival tactics migrants employ while abroad. In this light, we are interested in how migration chains and communities are built and how they function.

The circulation of goods is embedded in social activities as a way of bridging and not bridging networks. Within this framework, we would like to address the following questions during the conference: What kind of impact does migration and the circulation of mobile goods have on mobile and immobile people from the Caucasus? How does this impact effect the relations between South Caucasian states and societies and external entities such as the Russian Federation and the EU?

This international conference will be organised as part of the EU-FP7 CASCADE project (www. cascade-caucasus.eu) by the working group dedicated to issues of migration, mobilities and poverty in the Caucasus. We invite scholars from different disciplines, who are exploring migration, mobile goods and trade networks in the Caucasus and beyond. The conference is funded by the EU’s 7th FWP project CASCADE (www.cascade-caucasus.eu). Paper proposals (250 words) together with a short bio (100 words) should be submitted in English by 31 July 2016 to Tamar Khutsishvili (tamar.khutsishvili@uni-jena.de) Weronika Zmiejewski (weronika.zmiejewski@uni-jena.de) and Annika Jooß (annika.jooss@uni-jena.de). The authors of accepted proposals will be notified by 15 August 2016 and asked to submit an extended outline of their presentation (ca. 2000 words) by 18 October 2016 that then will be shared among the presenters, chairs and discussants. The conference will take place in Jena (Friedrich Schiller University) on 18 and 19 November 2016. Travel to, and accommodation in Jena will be funded for the authors of accepted papers.

Call for papers “Mistrust, Mobilities, Insecurities Conference”

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Irina

Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, November 16-17, 2016

This international conference will be organised as part of the EU-FP7 CASCADE project
(www.cascade-caucasus.eu) by the working group dedicated to issues of migration,
mobilities and poverty in the Caucasus.
The central notion to be explored during the conference is mistrust. In contrast to the
notion of trust, which has become popular as a social phenomenon in the social sciences
of late, the notion of mistrust is mostly overlooked. If at all, mistrust is investigated as the
flip side of trust, as an annoying absence and a societal failure. In this vein, post-Soviet
citizens such as those from the Caucasus are depicted as notoriously deficient: alienated
from the state due to the Soviet past they are still haunted by, incapable of creating a
genuine civil society, unwilling to follow the rule of law, relying on personal networks and
relations rather than the state apparatus, predisposed to corruption. The most pressing
question thus seems to be how to restore trust in the state, and how to foster trust in civil
agents and free markets.
With this conference, we intend to take a step back and explore what people actually do
when they mistrust. Particular attention will be paid to how mistrust relates to poverty,
insecurity and (voluntary as well as involuntary) forms of mobility as widespread
experiences in the post-Soviet Caucasus and beyond. We also ask for the constructive
potential of practices of mistrust. Can we identify communities of mistrust? May mistrust
be culturally coded? If so, what is particular about these codes? Does the sharing of
mistrust create new forms of legitimacy?
The conference is funded by the EU’s 7th FWP project CASCADE (www.cascadecaucasus.eu).
Paper proposals (250 words) together with a short bio (100 words) should
be submitted in English by 31 July 2016 (deadline extension) to Florian Mühlfried
(florian.muehlfried@uni-jena.de) and Annika Jooß (annika.jooss@uni-jena.de). The
authors of accepted proposals will be notified by 15 August 2016 and asked to submit a
draft of their paper by 16 October 2016 that will then be spread among the presenters,
chairs and discussants.
The conference will take place in Jena (Friedrich Schiller University) on 16 and 17
November 2016. Travel to, and accommodation in Jena will be funded for the authors of
accepted papers. Selected papers of the conference will be published in an edited volume
dedicated to the anthropology of mistrust.

Cascade Newsletter – Issue No. 4

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Irina

Editorial by Dr. Kevork Oskanian, Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies University of Birmingham:

This April, the world received an unwelcome reminder of the instabilities inherent to the South Caucasus, when the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict became violently unfrozen over the course of four days. Reports of casualties on both sides were contradictory; the end result consisted of a limited advance by Azerbaijan’s troops in the northeastern section of the line of contact, and a reinvigoration of the negotiation efforts by the previously long-stagnant Minsk Group.

Reaction in both societies indicated the extent to which previous (admittedly very limited) peacebuilding efforts had been drops in the ocean; and the ways in which ‘Europeanisation’ – as envisaged in the European Neighbourhood Policy – has failed to make any meaningful difference to both the elites’ and the wider societies’ fundamental attitudes towards the conflict. The flaws in the idea that conditionality and socialization would create a ‘belt of stability’ around the European Union were on full display yet again: after more than 20 years of engagement, both sides’ positions had, if anything, hardened, with nationalist narratives now firmly entrenched in both societies.

The South Caucasus is a textbook illustration of Mansfield and Snyder’s long-running claims on imperfect democratisation, which, in their view, leads to insecure local elites turning to nationalism as a mobilising mechanism and a source of ‘Ersatz’ legitimacy. And this has been the case on both sides of the Nagorno-Karabakh confrontation. The tenacity of these nationalist attitudes may also very well indicate that, over the longer term, top-down models of such mobilisation – whereby elites foster and manipulate nationalism instrumentally – are subject to revision. Over longer periods, values and identities become what Wæver has called ‘sedimented’ – relatively immutable and fixed, and therefore no longer subject to such manipulation; and that may very well have been the case in these two nations’ societies. (Read more)

The full CASCADE Newsletter, Issue No. 4.

Beyond geopolitics: exploring the impact of the EU and Russia in the “contested neighborhood”

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Irina

Eurasian Geography and Economics (57)1, 2016

Special issue coordinated by Esther Ademmer, Laure Delcour and Kataryna Wolczuk

While the geopolitical rivalry between the European Union and Russia over theircommon neighborhood has increasingly attracted academic and public attention, relatively little is known of its actual influence on domestic institutions and policies. This special issue coordinated by two CASCADE researchers, Dr. Laure Delcour and Dr. Kataryna Wolczuk, together with Dr. Esther Ademmer, aims to address this deficit by investigating the joint impact of the EU and Russia on the domestic dynamics of sectoral reform in neighboring countries – a key declared goal of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) – in the areas of trade, natural resources, and migration and mobility. It examines the nature of the instruments deployed by the EU and Russia to change domestic reform processes and their impact on domestic actors in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. The special issue highlights a strong disconnect between participation in the EU’s or Russia’s macro-frameworks for regional integration and domestic sectoral reforms. Despite the increasing external competition over the post-Soviet space, domestic actors remain the key agents to account for the pattern of change in the contested neighborhood.

Find articles by Laure Delcour in this issue:

Multiple external influences and domestic change in the contested neighborhood: the case of food safety

(with Esther Ademmer) With a little help from Russia? The European Union and visa liberalization with post-Soviet states

CASCADE CAUCASUS

Exploring the Security-Democracy Nexus in the Caucasus