Intersections of Ethnicity, Economy and Gender in the Case of the Turkey-Georgia Borderlands

Intersections of Ethnicity, Economy and Gender in the Case of the Turkey-Georgia Borderlands

Guest Lecture (26.05.2021), Research Factory B/ORDERS IN MOTION

Lecturer: Dr. Latife Akyüz (Berliner Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung BIM, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Moderator: Prof. Dr.  Kira Kosnick (Europa-Universität Viadrina)

Borderlands are two different spaces separated from each other by barbed wires, security points and watchtowers as well as they are entities with people perpetuating the same lives on both sides. The structure emerging on the edge of at least two states produces its own rules, own institutions and own ways of living as well as it stays ‘in-between’ the effects of the political and economic rules of these states. This structure is both strongly determined by sharp lines and rules and is uncertain and ambiguous so that it can be changed easily. The relations established in this structure are imposing their own rules, finding ways to cope with uncertainty, variability, and the transformation of borderless into bordered spaces, thereby creating a dynamic structure. In my talk, I will focus on this dynamic structure of the Turkey-Georgia borderlands in order to understand how the context that is created by the types of economic activities that appear in border regions is experienced by different ethnic identities and gender, their forms of participation in this process and the new inequalities that this process brings to the surface through the intersecting points of economy, gender and ethnicity.