Russian Youth in Georgia: Life Strategies and Cultural Changes

Russian Youth in Georgia: Life Strategies and Cultural Changes

The proposed project is a partial part of the author's dissertation, which examines the consequences of the emigration of Russian youth after the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022, coupled with the intensification of repression by the authoritarian regime. It builds on previous fieldwork in Kazakhstan and Estonia, where the initial data were collected in the form of semi-structured interviews. It clarified the research strategy and drew attention to the need to complement the spectrum of analyzed communities of Russians abroad with a specific region of the Caucasus. The project aims to analyze the life trajectories of young Russians in Georgia, constantly transformed under the influence of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the local socio-cultural and political context, supplemented by the personal aspirations of migrants. It will also explore various aspects of identity, subjectivity and belonging of individuals, paying particular attention to how they are constructed and interpreted by the actors themselves, but also how they are shaped by the external context, namely the host state and local society. In view of the high number of Russian migrants, the proposed project focuses on Georgia and promises to supplement the data corpus as well as strengthen existing and establish new scientific contacts that reflect the problem of Russian youth from a multidisciplinary point of view.

Research team

The principal investigator is Marina Perglová, the project is led by Mgr. Daniela Kolenovská, Ph.D.

Donor

The project is funded by the Charles University Grant Agency.

CUNI

 

Duration

The project is taking place from 2025 to 2026.