The Great Departure: Rethinking National(ist) Common Sense

This article argues that, in order to overcome the national(ist) common sense that continues to haunt everyday political and scholarly interpretations of mobility, scholars need not diagnose nationalism with greater vigour, but should rather move beyond facile diagnoses of nationalism. The article calls for a meticulous tracing of relations and practices of emplacement and displacement that ubiquitous national(ist) interpretive frames both co-opt and exceed simultaneously. The argument is elaborated on the basis of an analysis of historical articulations of emplacement and displacement in Latvian understandings of 'the good life'. The article pays particular attention to the ways in which the figure of the migrant has emerged historically as an aberration to Latvian understandings of the good life. It also considers how this ethical configuration is being unsettled through massive labour migration to Western Europe-or 'the Great Departure'

Public Reason and the Limits of Liberal Anti-Racism in Latvia

My paper is a critical analysis of anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives in Latvia. First, I trace the historical and geopolitical conditions that enable the emergence of two discursive positions that are central to arguments about racism - that of liberally inclined tolerance activists and that of Latvians with politically objectionable nationalist sensibilities. Subsequently, I argue that, plagued by developmentalist thinking, anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives fail in their analysis of contemporary racism. They posit backward attitudes as the main hindrance to the eradication of racism and displace racism as a constitutive feature of modern political forms onto individual and collective sensibilities. Instead of the fast track diagnosis of racism that animates liberal anti-racism, I suggest that an analysis of racism should integrate attention to the common elements of modern racism across political regimes and the historical particularities that shape public and political subjectivities in concrete places. © 2010 Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis

Aizbraukšana un tukšums Latvijas laukos: starp zudušām un iespējamām nākotnēm

Vai un kāda veida problēma ir aizbraukšana? Kā aizbraukšana kā masveida sociāla parādība maina sociālo un politisko vidi Latvijā? Kā tā pārmaina cilvēku dzīvi, tajā skaitā pasaules uztveri un rīcību? Šajā monogrāfijā autore skata aizbraukšanu nevis kā izolētu parādību, no kuras izriet politikas mērķis apturēt aizbraukšanu un pagriezt cilvēku plūsmu pretējā virzienā, bet gan kā kompleksu darbību kopumu, kuru analizējot uzmanība jāpievērš arī dzīvei uz vietas, tajā skaitā aizbraukšanas interpretācijai un reprezentācijai ikdienas, kā arī publiskajā un politiskajā diskursā. Balstoties uz etnogrāfiskiem datiem, kas iegūti ar līdzdalīgā novērojuma un interviju palīdzību Latgalē un Kurzemē, monogrāfijas nodaļas pievēršas aizbraukšanas un tukšošanās rezultātā notiekošajām pārmaiņām lauku iedzīvotāju dzīves pasaulē, kā arī šajās pārmaiņās manāmajām nākotnes aprisēm. Autore aicina paplašināt problēmas formulējumu un skatīt aizbraukšanu un lauku tukšošanos pēcpadomju ekonomisko un politisko reformu kontekstā. Tāpat, autore aicina pievērsties detalizētai tagadnes analīzei, jo tikai saprotot tagadni iespējams veidot nākotni, kurā dzīve ir dzīvojama arī tepat Latvijā. [Is departure a problem and what kind of problem? How does leaving as a mass social phenomenon change the social and political environment in Latvia? How does it change people's lives, including world perception and actions? In this monograph, the author sees departure not as an isolated phenomenon, from which the policy goal of stopping departure and turning the flow of people in the opposite direction follows, but as a set of complex activities, the analysis of which should also pay attention to life on the spot, including the interpretation and representation of departure in everyday life, as well as in public and political discourse. Based on ethnographic data obtained through participant observation and interviews in Latgale and Kurzeme, the chapters of the monograph focus on the changes in the life world of rural residents as a result of leaving and emptying, as well as the outlines of the future visible in these changes. The author calls for expanding the formulation of the problem and viewing the departure and emptying of the countryside in the context of post-Soviet economic and political reforms. Also, the author calls for a detailed analysis of the present, because only by understanding the present is it possible to build a future in which life is livable here in Latvia as well.]</p

Historical agency and the coloniality of power in postsocialist Europe

In this article, I analyse the ways in which coloniality as a racialized and racializing rationality of government and knowledge production shapes political and historical subjects in postsocialist Europe. I analyse Latvian attempts to establish historical presence in European modernity through appropriation of 17th-century colonial pursuits of the Duchy of Courland into Latvian national history, as well as interpretations of this historical appropriation by Western scholars and travellers. I argue that Latvian identification with Europe's colonial past not only renders visible the continued salience of coloniality in European politics but also illuminates the mechanisms through which Europe attempts to renew its moral superiority in the global arena by relegating colonialism to a past that Europe claims to have overcome and that Latvians are required to overcome to become fully European. I argue that in order to understand how coloniality continues to inform political life in contemporary Europe it is necessary to move beyond analysis of national histories and deploy a relational approach which traces how contemporary political subjects are constituted in racialized and racializing fields of power relations. It is also necessary to analyse postsocialist Eastern Europe not only in relation to the socialist past but also the global present

Emptiness and its futures: staying and leaving as tactics of life in Latvia

In the past 25 years, rural Latvia has become notably emptier. This emptying is the result of post-Soviet deindustrialization and large-scale outmigration, enabled by EU accession and exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis. It is accompanied by lack of political protest, leading many to conclude that migration hinders political mobilization. Such conclusions derive from viewing leaving and staying as actions in relation to the state. Instead, leaving and staying should be viewed in relation to transnational forms of power. The people leaving the deindustrialized Latvian countryside to work in the English countryside are seeking futures past, namely, futures of stable employment and incremental prosperity. Those who stay in the emptying Latvian countryside create the future as a little bit more of the present

Coherent selves, viable states: Eastern Europe and the "migration/refugee crisis"

This essay argues that what is at stake in debates about the difference between eastern and western Europe in the context of migration and asylum politics is the definition of a politically- and ethically-acceptable threshold of “too many,” which takes on concrete contours in relation to historically-formed understandings of coherent selves and viable polities. The argument derives from placing analysis of the alleged political and ethical failures of eastern Europe alongside those limits of refugee/migrant intake that are considered politically legitimate and ethically justifiable from the mainstream liberal democratic perspective. The essay proposes that in order to understand the European political landscape in relation to migration, it is necessary to undertake relational analysis of the different configurations of the Europe-wide tension between inclusion and exclusion, as well as analysis of the modes of power that differentiate between these configurations of inclusion and exclusion on moral grounds