1st Edition
Political Dissent and Democratic Remittances The Activities of Russian Migrants in Europe
With a focus on the most recent wave of political emigration from Russia unleashed during President Vladimir Putin’s third term, this book explores the activities of those who voice political dissent after leaving their country. Based on rich ethnographic data and interviews gathered among Russian emigrants to the EU member-states, who are engaged in civic and political participation targeted at their home country, it demonstrates that emigration, particularly forced emigration in which political dissidents are squeezed out of their country, no longer functions efficiently as a means of calming political unrest. Drawing on the concept of social remittances, the author analyses the content, structure and the channels of political democratic remittances sent by political dissidents overseas, the factors that shape them and the perceived effects of these endeavours. A study of the latest wave of politically charged emigration from Russia and emigrants’ engagement in ‘homeland politics’, this volume will appeal to scholars across a range of social sciences working on migration, diaspora and democratisation processes, citizenship, EU studies and Russia studies.
Introduction
1. Setting the Context for the Latest Wave of Emigration: The Closing Civic Space and Russia’s Projection of Influence Abroad
2. Migrants as Agents of Democratic Change? Transnational Civic and Political Participation and Democratic Remittances
3. Surfing the Waves of Russian Emigration: Between Coercion and Choice
4. Mapping the Russian Migrant Pro-Democratic Participation: Actors, Participation Trajectories, and Forms of Engagement
5. Transnational Democratic Remittances: Content and Channels of Diffusion
6. Emigration as an Opportunity and Barriers for Democratic Remitting: Motivation, Enabling Factors and their Interplay
7. Russia, Europe and the Relative Space between Them
8. The Receiving End of Democratic Remittances
Conclusions
Biography
Joanna Fomina is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. Her research focuses on EU integration, migration and migrant integration policies, Euroscepticism and populism, and democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the co-author of Lived Diversities: Space, Place and Identities in the Multi-Ethnic City and the author of Migration and Diversity in Europe: Lessons from British Multiculturalism.
