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.