This book examines the Russophone communities in peripheral cities adjacent to the Russian borders in Estonia and Kazakhstan. The research adopts a cross-disciplinary, space-sensitive approach that focuses comparatively on individual memories, narratives, and performances. Based on multi-layered ethnographic examples, this book reconstructs belonging as a complex dialectical relationship between 'inclusion' and 'exclusion.' This relationship, it is argued, manifests itself through a continuous spiral of boundary construction, appropriation, and transgression among different versions of Estonianness and Kazakhness, Europeanness and Cosmopolitanness, as well as Russianness.
Alina Jasina-Schafer is research fellow and coordinator at the Giessen Center for Eastern European Studies.
Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Cities of Enduring Dislocation Chapter 3: Transgressing Exclusion Chapter 4: Landscapes of Belonging Chapter 5: Relationship with the External Space of Russia Chapter 6: Defining Rodina for Russian Speakers Chapter 7: Conclusion
This excellent book explores how belonging is expressed, conceptualized, and experienced in the everyday lives of Russian-speakers in two post-Soviet borderland spaces. Jasina-Schafer offers an important contribution, employing a creative and fresh analytic approach that conceives of 'exterior interiority' as a continuous interaction between concepts of the inside and the outside, where boundaries are constantly crossed and re-crossed, as old boundaries are reformed or rejected just as new ones are formed. Its focus on the spatial qualities and dynamic lived experiences of belonging makes this book particularly interesting to scholars and practitioners alike.--Angela Kachuyevski, Arcadia University This book offers an exciting academic journey to two 'Russian worlds' in Estonia and Kazakhstan, countries that used to be parts of the Soviet Union, and after its disintegration chose different geopolitical pathways. Alina Jasina-Schafer is one of first scholars who juxtaposed and compared Russophone communities in European and Eurasian contexts, yet not as extensions of Russia as a self-proclaimed 'state-civilization, ' but rather, as subjects worthy of their own attention.--Andrey Makarychev, University of Tartu This is an important book. By unpacking the often elusive concept of belonging and placing it at the center of her study of borderland cities in Estonia and Kazakhstan, Alina Jasina-Schafer offers an urgently-needed new perspective on the continuing debates surrounding Russophone populations in former Soviet space. The work's focus on 'exterior interiority' also gives it a much broader resonance, as it takes us beyond overly-simplistic binaries and static visions towards a fuller understanding of how linguo-cultural minorities everywhere engage day-to-day with their sociopolitical realities to negotiate belonging in a world marked by growing transnational mobility and interconnectedness.--David J. Smith, University of Glasgow
