Religion and Forced Displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia
9789463727556
414 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
This book examines the social and political mobilisation of religious communities towards forced displacement in relation to tolerance and transitory environments. How do religious actors and state bodies engage with refugees and migrants? What are the mechanisms of religious support towards forcibly displaced communities? Religion and Forced Displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia argues that when states do not act as providers of human security, religious communities, as representatives of civil society and often closer to the grass roots level, can be well placed to serve populations in need. The book brings together scholars from across the region and provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which religious communities tackle humanitarian crises in contemporary Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Author Bio
Victoria Hudson is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham, submitting a thesis on contemporary Russian soft power in Ukraine, with a particular emphasis on the contemporary role of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russian foreign policy.
Lucian N. Leustean is a Reader in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom. He is the Founding Editor of the Routledge Book Series on Religion, Society and Government in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet States.
Ansgar Jödicke holds a PhD in the Study of Religion from the University of Zurich and is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His area of research is religion and politics, with a regional focus on the South Caucasus. He is the editor of Religion and Soft Power in the South Caucasus (Routledge, 2017).
Daniela Kalkandjieva holds a PhD in History from the Central European University. Since 2004 she has been affiliated with Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’ as a project leader of research projects in the field of religious studies. She is the author of the monographs The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the State, 1944-1953 (Albatros, 1997; in Bulgarian) and The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948: From Decline to Resurrection (Routledge, 2015). Her more recent publications include ‘Orthodox Churches in the Post-Communist Countries and the Separation between Religion and the State’, in J. H. Bhuiyan and D. Jensen (eds), Law and Religion in the Liberal State (Hart Publishing, 2020); ‘The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Refugee Crisis’, in L. N. Leustean (ed.), Forced Migration and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World (Routledge, 2019); and ‘The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: Authoring New Visions about the Orthodox Church’s Role in Contemporary Bulgarian Society’, in S. P. Ramet (ed.), Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe: Nationalism, Conservativism, and Intolerance (Palgrave, 2019).
Aleksandra Djuric Milovanovic is an anthropologist working as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her publications include Distinctive Aspects of the Religion and Ethnicity of Romanians in Vojvodina (Institute for Balkan Studies SASA, 2015), Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; co-editor with Radmila Radic) and The Romanian Orthodox Church in the Yugoslav Banat between Two World Wars (Cluj University Press, 2019; co-author with Mircea Maran).
Marko Vekovic is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Politics at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade. His recent publications include Democratization in Christian Orthodox Europe: Comparing Greece, Serbia and Russia (Routledge, 2020); ‘Errando Discimus: Has Post-Yugoslav Political and Social Science Neglected Religion?’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 58(3) (2019), pp. 753-763 (with Veljko Ðogatovic); ‘Render unto Caesar: Explaining Political Dimension of the Autocephaly Demands in Ukraine and Montenegro’, Journal of Church and State 61(4) (2019), pp. 591-609 (with Miroljub Jevtic); and, ‘In Pursuit of “Twin Toleration”: Democracy and Church-State Relations in Serbia and Montenegro’, Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 39(5) (2019), Article 19.
Georgios E. Trantas is a Senior Researcher at VID Specialised University, Stavanger, Norway. His recent publications include ‘Greek-Cypriot Reli_x0002_giocultural Heritage as an Indicator of Fundamental Rights and a Means to Cultural Diplomacy’, in Giuseppe Giordan and Siniša Zrinšcak (eds), Global Eastern Orthodoxy: Politics, Religion, and Human Rights (Springer, 2020); ‘The Orthodox Church of Greece: Church-State Relations, Migratory Patterns and Sociopolitical Challenges’, in Lucian N. Leustean (ed.), Forced Migration and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World (Routledge, 2019); ‘Greek-Orthodox Religioscapes as Domains of Migratory Integration and Hybridisation in Germany and Great Britain: A Comparative Study’, Politics and Religion Journal 13(2) (2019), pp. 309-332; ‘The Question of a Contemporary Greek-Orthodox Economic Ethic’, Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 54(2) (2018), pp. 217-228; and Being and Belonging: A Comparative Examination of the Greek and Cypriot Orthodox Churches’ Attitudes to ‘Europeanisation’ in Early 21st Century (Peter Lang, 2018).
Eleni Tseligka is a Teaching Associate in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom. Her latest publications include From Gastarbeiter to European Expatriates (Peter Lang, 2020) and ‘Greek Diaspora in Germany: Church as the Ecclesia’s Forerunner and Point of Reference’, in Giuseppe Giordan and Siniša Zrinšcak (eds), Global Eastern Orthodoxy: Politics, Religion, and Human Rights (Springer, 2020).
Andrei Avram is an Advisor on Public Policy and International Relations in Chi?inau, the Republic of Moldova. From 2015 to 2021, he was Programme Coordinator at the Representative Office of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Romania and also worked for the KAS Representative Office in the Republic of Moldova. He served as an Advisor with the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Moldovan Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Romanian Prime Minister’s Office. His publications include ‘Fragmentation, Fluidity and Personalization: Remarks on Shifts in the Pro-European Party Spectrum in the Republic of Moldova after 2014’, Modelling the New Europe 23 (2017), pp. 31-44, and, with Martin Sieg, ‘Ambivalenz und innenpolitische Bruche: Die rumanische Europapolitik wahrend der EU-Ratsprasidentschaft’, Deutsch-Franzosischer Zukunftsdialog Working Paper, 2019, https://www.zukunftsdialog.eu/2019/06/21/ambivalenz-undinnenpolitische-brueche_x0002_die-rumaenische-europapolitik-waehrend-der-euratspraesidentschaft/). He is the author of ‘Orthodox Churches in Moldova’, in L. N. Leustean (ed.), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2014), pp. 402-425.
Maria Marczewska-Rytko is a Full Professor of Political Science and Religious Studies and Head of the Political Movements and Ethnic Research Department in the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. She is Vice President of the Research Committee on Political Socialization and Education (RC21) of the International Political Science Association and Editor-in-chief of the journal Annales UMCS sectio K: Politologia. Her main publications include, as author, Religia i polityka w globalizujacym sie swiecie (Religion and politics in a globalizing world) (UMCS Press, 2010); and Religie niechrzescijanskie w Polsce (Non-Christian religions in Poland) (UMCS Press, 1997), and, as editor, Handbook of Direct Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 (Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2018); Czynnik religijny w polityce wewnatrzpanstwowej i miedzynarodowej na przelomie drugiego i trzeciego tysiaclecia. Wybrane problemy (The religious factor in domestic and international politics at the turn of the second and third millennia: Selected problems) (UMCS Press, 2016); and Religion in a Changing Europe: Between Pluralism and Fundamentalism: Selected Problems (UMCS Press, 2003).
Roman Lunkin is Director of the Center for Religious Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is Editor-in-chief of the magazine Contemporary Europe and is a member of the Russian team of the Keston Institute, Oxford, of the project ‘An Encyclopedia of Religious Life in Russia Today’. His latest publications include ‘The Status of and Challenges to Religious Freedom in Russia’, in A. Hertzke (ed.), The Future of Religious Freedom: Global Challenges (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 157-180; ‘A Reaction of Russian Churches on Ukrainian Crisis: A Prophecy of Democracy’, in R. van der Laarse, M. N. Cherenkov, V. V. Proshak and T. Mykhalchuk (eds), Religion, State, Society, and Identity in Transition: Ukraine (Wolf Legal Publishers, 2015), pp. 435-476; and ‘Changes to Religious Life in Crimea since 2014’, in E. A. Clark and D. Vovk (eds), Religion during the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict (Routledge, 2019), pp. 144-156.
Dmytro Vovk runs the Center for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He is an expert on the rule of law and religious freedom for UNFPA, OSCE/ODIHR, the Council of Europe, Freedom House, and USAID. He is an academic adviser to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and the Ukrainian State Agency for Ethnic Policies and Freedom of Conscience. In 2019, he was appointed as a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. His publications include, as author, a chapter on ‘Soviet Law and Political Religion’ for a volume on Law as Religion, Religion as Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and a policy report on Religion and Forced Displacement in Ukraine (Foreign Policy Centre, 2020); as co-editor (with Elizabeth Clark), Religion during the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict (Routledge, 2020); and, as a translator, W. Cole Durham, Jr. and Brett G. Scharffs, Law and Religion: National, International and Comparative Perspective (Russian translation, 2021) and Paul Gowder, Rule of Law in the Real World (Ukrainian translation, 2018). He is co-editor of the ‘Talk About: Law and Religion’ blog of the BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies.
Tornike Metreveli is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Lund University and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He held various research fel_x0002_lowships at St. Gallen, Harvard, University of Bern and the London School of Economics. His most recent book, Orthodox Christianity and the Politics of Transition: Ukraine, Serbia and Georgia (Routledge, 2021) discusses how Orthodox Christianity was involved in and influenced political transition in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia after the collapse of communism.
Jasmine Dum-Tragut, armenologist, is Head of the Center for the Study of the Christian East and the Department for Armenian Studies, Senior Scientist at the Department of Biblical Study and Ecclesiastical History, and Docent at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Her latest publications include Far from the Fatherland, in the Fatherland: Fates of Armenian Soldiers in WWI (exhibition catalogue, AGMI, Tigran Mets, Yerevan, 2019); Monastic Life in the Armenian Church (Peter Lang, 2018; with D. Winkler); and the edited book A Commemoration Volume for Jos J. S. Weitenberg (Peeters Publishers, 2019; with U. Bläsing and T. M. van Lint).
Indira Aslanova is an Assistant Professor and the UNESCO Chair of World Culture and Religions at the Kyrgyz Russian Slavic University, and chair of the Research Center for Religious Studies, a think tank focused on the study of the religious situation in Kyrgyzstan. Her professional interests include religious freedom in Kyrgyzstan, violent extremism, and state policy in the religious sphere. Her publications include ‘Practica provedenija expertiz po delam svyazanym s extremizmom i terrorizmom v ramkah ugolovnogo zakonodatelstva v Kyrgyzskoj Respublike’ (Practice of conduct_x0002_ing expert examinations in cases related to extremism and terrorism in the framework of the criminal legislation of the Kyrgyz Republic), in C. Musabekova (ed.), Investigation of the Judicial Practice in Cases Related to Extremism and Terrorism in the Framework of the Criminal Legislation of the Kyrgyz Republic (Supreme Court of the Kyrgyz Republic, 2020); and, with A. Abdirasulova and Ch. Musabekova, ‘Svoboda religioznyh i inyh ubejdenij v Kyrgyzskoj Respublike: practica pravovogo regulirovaniya v sootnoshenii s konstitucionnymi I mejdunarodnymi standartami’ (Freedom of religious and other beliefs in the Kyrgyz Republic: Practice of legal regulation in relation to constitutional and international standards’, in A Handbook for Judges, Prosecutors, Lawyers, and Other Law Enforcement Officials (Maxprint, 2019).
Rano Turaeva is a Habilitating Candidate at the Ludwig Maximilian University and an Associated Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle Saale, Germany. Her studies on migration, entrepreneurship, informal economies, gender, border studies, identity and interethnic relations have been published in academic journals, including Cities, Central Asian Affairs, Central Asian Survey, Inner Asia and Communist and Post-Communist Studies. She is the author of Migration and Identity in Central Asia: The Uzbek Experience (Routledge, 2016) and is currently working on a book on migration and Islam in Russia.
