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Policy, mobility and everyday culture in competition in the identity construction (The case of Karakachans in Bulgaria)

2017; Institute of Ethnography, SASA, Belgrade; Volume: 65; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2298/gei1703639d

2334-8259

Nacho Dimitrov,

Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

The political changes in Bulgaria in 1989 are accompanied by severe economic crisis, high unemployment rate, and the emergence of acute social inequalities. These factors lead to intense migration processes. Furthermore, the ambiance generates conditions that enable the activation of new ways of constructing identities amongst most ethnic and confessional communities in the country. Immediately after the changes the Karakachans in Bulgaria become the object of political interest from neighboring Greece: from the beginning of the 1990s community members (as well as their spouses), unlike other Bulgarian citizens, have easy access to visas for entry into Greece, which determines the emergence of a mass labor mobility within the community. Thus, the Karakachans from Bulgaria find themselves at the center of a complex tangle of relationships and mutual influences between politics, identity and mobility, which will be the subject of this study.