In my last pair of blog posts I discussed the impact of sanctions imposed on Iran on Iranian emigration rates. I first addressed the effects of recent sanctions on the Iranian economy to provide a bigger picture of what has been going on in the country. I then looked at larger trends in Iranian migration […]
Immigration and emigration
The People and Culture of Meskhetia
What is a community? What does it mean to be a part of a community, especially when that community is not in its homeland? These are the main questions that I have been investigating during my research of the Meskhetian Turks and their experiences in Central Asia. In my first post I provided a short […]
Citizenship and the Indian diaspora in the UAE
As I described in my previous blog post, the 1973 oil shock stemmed from an embargo placed on the United States by Arab oil producing nations in response to the United States financially supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War.1 The oil shock spurred major trends for public finance and development within Gulf states and […]
Overview of Belt and Road Policy and Migration
Part I. Overview of the Belt and Road Initiative Chinese people take a lot of pride in the country’s global initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative. Known to Chinese citizens as the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) policy, its establishment was one of the exciting moments to many, following the host of 2008 […]
Migration : More “Push” than “Pull”
Imagine packing everything you own into one little suitcase and never having a home. Well this is the experience for Rozina. She was born in Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979. Almost all aspects of life were changed, especially for women. Rozina is a Persian name and the Iranian government disapproved of any name […]
Making Sense of Meskhetian Turk Migrations
You can’t undo a deportation. Jonathan Shapiro For my last three blog posts, I have decided to look at the history of Meskhetian Turks from their deportation in 1944 to the modern day. In this blog post, I am going to do my best to familiarize the reader with the Meskhetian Turks and how forced […]
Assimilation and Belonging: Identity in Migrant Accounts
In our very first class, we discussed why migration tends to elicit such big emotions. Why is the topic of migration, for example, such an emotive political issue in the United States? De Haas says that migration is contentious and emotive because it conjures up themes of belonging and identity, both of which are very […]
China’s “Belt and Road” Initiative and Labor Migration in Eurasia
For my final blogs, I will be discussing China’s “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI) and its impact on labor migration. In our class, we had a brief discussion on Chinese companies doing construction works overseas and bringing Chinese workers as a common business practice. However, such practice has fueled clashes and dismay among countries that […]
Exodus of Cultural Capital: the Migration of Jewish Uzbekistanis from Bukhara to Broadway
If you walk down 108th Street in Queens, NY, you’ll see some familiar sites of an Uzbek diaspora community: tandoor restaurants, traditional clothing stores, and newspaper stands carrying a publication called the Bukharan Times. More curious things you may find are signs with Hebrew alongside Uzbek Cyrillic, synagogues, and Jewish community centers. One does not […]
Constructing New National Identities in the Soviet Union and Turkey
As part of his “Introduction” to The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, author Hein de Haas underscores a key point of tension regarding migration in the modern era: while the movement of peoples is nothing new, the challenges they present to nationalist ideas underlying many contemporary nation-states are. From the […]