Russia's Impact on EU Policy Transfer to the Post-Soviet Space


Book Description

Russia's impact on EU policy transfer to the post-Soviet space has not been as negative as often perceived. EU policies have traveled to countries and issue areas, in which the dependence on Russia is high and Russian foreign policy is increasingly assertive. This book explores Russia's impact on the transfer of EU policies in the area of Justice, Liberty, and Security and energy policy - two policy areas in which countries in the EU's Eastern neighborhood are traditionally strongly bound to Russia. Focusing especially on Armenia and Georgia, it examines whether it is the structural condition of interdependence, the various institutional ties and similarities of neighboring countries with the EU and Russia, or their concrete foreign policy actions that have the greatest impact on domestic policy change in the region. The book also investigates how important these factors are in relation to domestic ones. It identifies conditions under which different degrees of EU policy transfer occur and the circumstances under which Russia exerts either supportive or constraining effects on this process. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of EU and European politics, international relations and comparative politics.




Armenians in Post-Socialist Europe


Book Description

This volume presents articles on the modern Armenian diaspora in post-socialist Europe, including the Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Specialists from the fields of cultural anthropology, sociology, and area studies offer their insights into current developments of Armenian communities which, although located within common post-socialist time-space, differ from one another significantly in terms of their historical background, identity politics, and socio-cultural characteristics.




The EU and Russia in Their 'Contested Neighbourhood'


Book Description

The literature on the European Union influence’s in its Eastern neighbourhood has tended to focus on EU-level policies and prioritize EU-related variables. This book seeks to overcome this EU-centric approach by connecting EU policy transfer to the domestic and regional environment in which it unfolds. It looks at the way in which the EU seeks to influence domestic change in the post-Soviet countries participating in the European Neighbourhood Policy/Eastern Partnership and domestic receptivity to EU policies and templates. It seeks to disentangle the various dynamics behind domestic change (or lack thereof) in Eastern Partnership countries, including EU policy mechanisms, domestic elites’ preferences and strategies, regional interdependences and Russia’s policies. Based upon extensive empirical investigation on EU policies in four countries; Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – and in two pivotal policy sectors - the book provides systematic and nuanced understanding of complex forces at work in the policy transfer process. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of international relations, European studies, democratization studies, and East European Politics and area studies, particularly post-Soviet/Eurasian studies.




Life Strategies of Migrants from Crisis Regimes


Book Description

This book offers a profoundly new examination of life strategies of migrants from regimes in crisis. By focusing on the unique paired comparison of two opposing life strategies—the dynamic, risk-taking and future-oriented ‘achievement life strategy’ and the conservative, risk-minimizing and survival-oriented ‘survival life strategy’—this volume takes migration from post-independence Ukraine to Australia as a central case study to show how people shape their lives in response to regime transitions and crises; what life strategies individuals pursue to cope with social change; and why these individuals chose migration to Australia. Ultimately, the book compels us to reassess what we mean by migration and regime crisis in order to adequately respond to the global challenges confronting numerous democracies today. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in migration, political theory and democracy.




Mutual Intercultural Relations


Book Description

By examining intercultural relations in seventeen societies, this book answers the fundamental question: 'how shall we all live together?'




Multi-faced Transformations


Book Description

Multi-faced Social Transformations: Challenges and Studies brings together the proceedings of the 7th Slovenian Social Science Conference, “The Challenges of Social Transformations”, held in September 2014. It was organized by the School of Advanced Social Studies (SASS), the Slovenian National Committee of the Management of Social Transformations programme (MOST), and the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO. The multidisciplinary contributions presented here analyse various aspects of the economic, social, and cultural transformations that accompany the contemporary globalized world. The book consists of four sections dealing with particular areas of transformations. These include a range of political, economic and cultural dimensions that are observed from the macro-level, in social systems and structural changes, to the micro-level, in aspects of individuals’ lives. The book will be of interest for academics in the field of social sciences, as well as for civil society activists and policy makers. The frames of the transformations are not limited to the European space, and provide a more global perspective.




New Eastern European Migration to Australia


Book Description

This book identifies and examines new forms and paths of Eastern European migration to Australia since the 2000s, and provides updated trends of contemporary migration movements of Ukrainians, Hungarians and Czechs to Australia. With chapters highlighting the diversities and complexities of these new accelerated waves of Eastern European migration to Asia-Pacific, this book offers novel insights to enrich our understanding of East European mobility in the 21st century. The book will appeal to students, scholars and policymakers in the fields of migration, sociology, political science and international relations.




Transboundary Migration in the Post-Soviet Space


Book Description

The collective monograph contains the results of an empirical project conducted in Armenia and Georgia as well as in Moscow (as the favourite destination of migrants from the South Caucasus) from 2008 to 2010. The book is the first contribution to comparative research in the migration-intense post-Soviet space, and covers the complete cycle before, during and after migration. The survey focused on such relevant issues as national migration profiles including age and gender composition, -brain drain- and -brain waste-, return potentials, remittances, child separation, migration perception, and personal experiences in Moscow and other destinations. As results the field studies confirm the international trend of feminization in migration and a high awareness of the ambivalent nature of migration among two cohorts of migrants from Armenia and Georgia in Moscow and six cohorts of returnees in the respective countries of origin."




Global Trends and Regional Development


Book Description

For millennia, contact between societies was limited to trade or wars, a situation that changed profoundly with the development of global markets serving industrialization. The outcome was the emergence of one global human civilization, and one common future that will depend on the capacity of individuals and societies to manage the potentials for social development. This edited collection is dedicated to the discussion of four global trends: upgrading the rationality of organizations, individualization, the spreading of instrumental activism and universalization of value-normative systems. The mutual influence of these interrelated trends brings about both constructive and destructive effects in social life, social integration and change. Contributors examine questions such as: How do global trends pave their way in regions? What are the similarities and differences of regional development? How do agencies cope with the challenges of global trends in regional development?




Post-Soviet Borders


Book Description

This book investigates how borders in former Soviet Union territories have evolved and shifted in the thirty years since the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to fifteen independent states and numerous de facto states; but this process of rebordering is not finished, and social, economic, infrastructural, cultural and political networks and spaces continue to develop. This book explores the intersection between these geopolitical shifts and the individual lived experience, drawing on cases from across border regions in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Throughout, the book introduces and frames the case studies with well-informed theoretical, conceptual and methodological overviews that situate them within border studies in general and post-Soviet border spaces in particular. Overall, the book demonstrates that like a kaleidoscope, the dynamic elements in these newly evolved border regions are similar yet strikingly different in their juxtapositions, with the appearance of new configurations often dependent on changing geopolitical constellations. This timely guide to the post-Soviet world thirty years after the Cold War will be of interest to researchers across border studies, politics, geography, social anthropology, history, Eastern European Studies, Central Asian Studies, and Caucasian Studies.