Fieldwork and Research Strategy

Most of the literature on internally displaced persons, including the reports, studies, surveys, policy briefs, and guidelines of various international and domestic nongovernmental agencies and institutions, focuses on primarily on the living conditions, humanitarian aid, and urgent situations caused by forced displacement. However, some academic works deal directly with the issues we touch upon. For instance, Peter Kabachnik, Joanna Regulska, and Beth Mitchneck (2010, 317) argue that Georgian internally displaced persons were experiencing “double displacement, spatially and temporally.” They identify home as journey, drawing on Shelley Mallett’s (Reference Mallett2004) notion of describing the ways that persons who are internally displaced deal with traumatic experiences and prolonged displacement. Specifically, what matters is that in their imagination a home remains both in the past and in the future, combining their positive memories of Abkhazia and their future hopes to go back to the homeland. Home is both “a place of origin” and a “point of destination” (Kabachnik, Regulska, and Mitchneck Reference Kabachnik, Regulska and Mitchneck2010, 317).

Kabachnik (Reference Kabachnik2012b, 45) also analyzes what he calls “cartographic anxieties,” the “fear of a country’s loss of territory,” which feed into the Georgian national discourse and the narrative of territorial integrity. This narrative represents separatist regions as integral parts of the Georgian “geobody” that feels them as wounds which “won’t heal” until they are separated from it (Kabachnik Reference Kabachnik2012b, 47). These national sentiments are manifested in different areas, including government policies, political speeches, maps, patriotic youth camps, and popular music.

In another article, Kabachnik, Regulska, and Mitchneck explore the construction of a “discourse of blame,” that is to say placing the responsibility for the conflict in the case of the community of the internally displaced (2012, 125). The research shows that the blame falls on Russia, rather than on Abkhazians, despite painful experiences and forced displacement. Moreover, nostalgic sentiments permeate the imaginations of those who are internally displaced, emphasizing “normalcy and harmonious inter-ethnic relations” in prewar Abkhazia (Kabachnik et al. Reference Kabachnik, Regulska and Mitchneck2012, 128). However, Abkhazia is imagined as a place of trauma and violence during the armed conflict of 1992–1993 and then, after the displacement, as a chaotic realm without law and freedom. Despite all this, those who are internally displaced envisage the possibility of restoring peaceful coexistence with Abkhaz people if Russia is removed and Georgians are allowed to return.

Minna Lundgren (Reference Lundgren2016) addresses the factors that influence the intentions of young (between 18 and 25 years old) internally displaced people to go back to Abkhazia. Her article, based on fieldwork in Zugdidi and Tbilisi, shows how the place of origin and social, economic, interactional, and identificational factors in the current locations affect the intentions of people who are internally displaced to return. She employs a modified model of Roger Zetter’s (Reference Zetter1999) triangle of continuity to connect time (the concepts of the past, the present, and the future) and space or place. Within this model, the angles signify the places in the past, present, and future. The model illustrates a range of factors that define the intentions of young people who are internally displaced to return: “socio-economic incentives, integration on different levels, a sense of belonging and loyalty, the length of time in displacement, information about the situation in Abkhazia” (Lundgren Reference Lundgren2016, 134). These factors vary in Tbilisi and in the small city of Zugdidi, as both cities offer different housing and employment opportunities for those who are internally displaced.

Elizabeth Cullen Dunn, in the case of internally displaced persons from the South Ossetia/Tskhinvali region, discusses “the existential effect of absence” (2014, 305). She makes use of Alain Badiou’s (Reference Badiou2001) term nothingness to point to a void that is not only left by the conflict but actively produced by the humanitarianism of the United Nations missions and the efforts of nongovernmental organizations steeped in “neoliberal market ideologies and political symbolism” (Dunn Reference Dunn2014, 291).Thus, the nothingness “is not merely the result of violence but also the result of care; not merely the remnant of destruction but also an effect of construction” (Dunn Reference Dunn2014, 305). We can understand “nothingness” in material terms when it is impossible for internally displaced persons to consider donated objects as “counterweights to all that had been lost in the war”; they are like “zero itself,” which “filled up space but didn’t seem to have positive ontological value” (Dunn Reference Dunn2014, 292). Or nothingness could express “a profound existential dilemma of subjectivity, of being nothing,” when the capacities of those who are internally displaced are limited by life in collective settlements marked by the absence of home and familiar ways of life (Dunn Reference Dunn2014, 299). As a result of these voids of “having nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing” (Dunn Reference Dunn2014, 305), internally displaced people are left in limbo of protracted displacement with a stigmatized status in Georgian society and almost complete dependence on governments and international aid agencies.

As we can see, these authors also connect outlined topics to the social and economic hardship, poor living conditions, and problems of social integration in the present, while providing refined theoretical models from broader “foundational” literature on displaced persons (Ahmed Reference Ahmed1999; Black Reference Black2002; Zetter Reference Zetter1999; Mallett Reference Mallett2004). However, we try to place the genealogy of the memories of those who are internally displaced not only within the present social and economic problems but also in relation to cultural reasons. In particular, we discuss how the recollections of those who are internally displaced are, essentially, informed by institutionalized historical narratives.

Collective centers for the internally displaced are scattered through major towns of Georgia; however, there are certain areas where the majority of those who are displaced reside. Those from Abkhazia live mostly in the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region, predominantly in the Zugdidi district, in the capital, Tbilisi, and in the Kutaisi area of the Imereti region (Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation of Georgia 2014b). The primary reason that Zugdidi has the “greatest concentration of IDPs from Abkhazia” (Kabachnik, Regulska, and Mitchneck Reference Kabachnik, Regulska and Mitchneck2015, 13) is physical proximity, since the district borders Abkhazia. Many internally displaced persons from the adjacent Gali district of Abkhazia often visit their homes to farm agricultural land. Here we also note that some 45,000–60,000 Georgians returned informally to the Gali district, which was mainly populated by ethnic Georgians before the displacement. Returned Georgians face economic hardship and discrimination from local Abkhazian authorities on ethnic bases that are expressed, for instance, in banning school instruction in Georgian language and the restriction of civil and property rights.Footnote ²

Internally displaced persons from the South Ossetia/Tskhinvali region are mainly concentrated in the Shida Kartli region, particularly in the Gori area and in the Tserovani settlement (Mtsketa-Mtianeti region). The majority of people there are called new internally displaced persons, as they were displaced during the August war of 2008.

Tbilisi is home to more than half of the whole community of internally displaced persons in Georgia, as the capital offers better economic and social opportunities for them, such as employment, education, health care, and housing (Salukvadze et al. Reference Salukvadze, Gachechiladze, Gogishvili, Sichinava, Javashvili, Tugushi and Bregvadze2013; Kurshitashvili 2012; Kabachnik et al. Reference Kabachnik, Mitchneck, Mayorova and Regulska2014; Lundgren Reference Lundgren2016). Overall, according to the latest official records, among the registered 273,411 internally displaced persons, 105,956 live in Tbilisi; 87,220 in Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti; 17,512 in Shida Kartli; and 11,196 in Mtsketa Mtianeti (Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation 2014b).

Our research team conducted fieldwork in collective settlements for internally displaced persons in Samegrelo (western Georgia), Shida Kartli, and Mtskheta-Mtianeti regions (eastern Georgia).

From August 24 to 26, 2015 team members conducted 28 face-to-face interviews with internally displaced persons from the Abkhazia region in collective centers or settlements in Zugdidi and in the village of Anaklia (within Zugdidi district) in the Samegrelo region. On September 12 and October 23, 2015, we interviewed 31 internally displaced persons from South Ossetia/Tskhinvali region in the Tsminda Tskali collective settlement in Gori and the Tserovani settlement in Mtskheta district.

We had some initial considerations in selecting specific regions of Georgia as the main areas of our fieldwork. We intentionally excluded Tbilisi from our research plan and conducted fieldwork in internally displaced persons’ collective settlements in the Samegrelo and Shida Kartli regions of Georgia. According to our preliminary reflections, these regions could provide a more distinct and specific picture of marginal position of the community of internally displaced persons within Georgian society than Tbilisi. First, in Tbilisi, which is the largest city in the country, internally displaced persons represent a diffuse and amorphous community: collective settlements are spread over different parts of the city and are not so easily distinguished from their surroundings. In the above-mentioned regions, by contrast, compact settlements of internally displaced persons are more noticeable, as Zugdidi and Gori districts are far smaller than Tbilisi. There are many locations in these districts where internally displaced persons collectively reside. Therefore, we could say that these settlements are more defined, as their isolation and detachment from the surrounding homogeneous and small-scale society are clearly visible. Consequently, internally displaced persons in these regions experience two types of detachment or isolation. First, they are disconnected from the capital, living in a region where economic problems are generally more profound. Second, they are alienated from the local population, struggling with problems of integration.

To ensure confidentiality, all respondents’ names have been removed. Despite our efforts to obtain an equally distributed sample over age criteria, we encountered difficulties in finding or locating young internally displaced persons between the ages of 18 to 23. Consequently, 66 percent of interviewees were women and 53 percent fall in the age group of 36 to 65 years old, leaving smaller shares of the sample to other age groups: 12 percent were 18 to 23 years old; 16 percent 24 to 35 years old; and 19 percent 66 to 80 years old.

For this fieldwork, we prepared approximately hour-long, semistructured interviews to support an open and conversational atmosphere. Accordingly, even though we tried to stick to the main questions, we were often forced to change their order and remain flexible both to probe for additional information and to encourage respondents to speak freely. It should also be noted that our conversations were relatively free of the so-called “interview effect,” since we were not outsiders like the “foreigners” who have done research on this topic. Therefore, our team had a unique opportunity to have frank conversations with internally displaced persons and, in certain cases, respondents were quite honest when we as insiders asked them sensitive questions about their lives. Often, they freely expressed their feelings and, on many occasions, also distrust and even anger toward the government.

Thus, interviews were more like long conversations with internally displaced persons, who talked about the initial period of their displacement; their present and pre-displacement social and economic conditions; their perceptions and feelings on the state of being an internally displaced person and how local residents treat them; their assessment of state policy toward internally displaced persons and humanitarian programs of various agencies and nongovernmental organizations; and the importance of keeping memories of the “homeland.”

The other source of empirical data was a focus-group meeting held in February 2016, to which we invited representatives of governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations working on internally displaced persons’ problems.Footnote ³ The focus-group participants spoke and exchanged ideas regarding the efficacy of internally displaced persons’ representation; their ways of determining the needs of the internally displaced; problems of integration of internally displaced persons; attitudes of the surrounding society toward displaced persons (stereotypes); media; the discrepancies between those internally displaced persons living in Tbilisi, the capital, and those residing in different regions of the country.

Present Miserable Life: Who Were We and What Have We Become?

When internally displaced persons were asked to compare their pre-displacement and present-day social and economic conditions, they considered such a comparison to be absurd, because of the hopeless gap between these two realities. For them, it was like comparing having everything with having nothing:

However, it is not only about losing the material world, but also missing people, relationships, graves, and everything that connects internally displaced persons emotionally with their homeland:

These typical responses indicate the perceived fundamental ruptures between current miserable reality and the past ideal and meaningful life. Specially designed frameworks and guidelines providing step-by-step recommendations on how to achieve the successful integration of internally displaced persons have not brought actual results. That would seem paradoxical, as Georgian laws, strategies, and action plans on internal displacement fully correspond to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and recommendations outlined in the 2005 Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility Footnote ⁵ that defines the sustainable local integration of internally displaced persons as one of the key elements of the durable solutionFootnote ⁶ of the displacement (Ferris, Mooney, and Stark Reference Ferris, Mooney and Stark2011, 129). Moreover, “Georgia counts among the first countries in the world in adopting national legislation specifically addressing internal displacement” (Mooney Reference Mooney2011, 185). It is unprecedented that the law of Georgia on internally displaced persons, adopted on June 28, 1996 and amended occasionally in following years, narrows the definition by “excluding IDPs who were forced to flee their homes or places of habitual residence due to causes other than those mentioned, including natural disasters” (Mooney Reference Mooney2011, 193). The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (1998Reference Goody) defines internally displaced persons as

According to the current Law of Georgia on Internally Displaced Persons–Persecuted from the Occupied Territories of Georgia (Chapter 2, Article 6), enacted in 2014,

The Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees (known as the Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation) is mainly in charge of designing and implementing a policy for the internal displacement in the country. In 2007, the ministry developed a state strategy on internally displaced persons (Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation 2007) and subsequently has developed a series of action plans on displacement. It also coordinates governmental and nongovernmental agencies (domestic and international) to address the problems of the internal displacement through a decision-making and advisory steering committee that was established in 2009 (Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation 2016; Mooney Reference Mooney2011, 199–200).

However, the official categorization of internally displaced persons, the counting of their numbers and the designation of segregated services and institutions specifically created for their benefit reveal “governmentality” (Kabachnik et al. Reference Kabachnik, Regulska and Mitchneck2015): the patterns of governmental control, management, and instrumentalization of problems of internally displaced persons for political games. For instance, some authors indicate that in the first years of the displacement, the promise of the quick return of internally displaced persons was a dominant aspect of the policy. Even though conflict resolution in Abkhazia and the South Ossetia regions seemed unrealistic, the government institutionally nourished within the community of the internally displaced the constant longing to repatriate. By legally restricting the rights of those who are internally displaced to vote in local elections or own land in their current living areas, this policy deliberately prevented the internally displaced from local integration (Mooney Reference Mooney2011, 214–216).

Apart from this, as Dunn (Reference Dunn2012) puts it, the humanitarian aid process in its nature ignores persons who are internally displaced as “social beings” and “individual sufferers” reducing their demands to “uniform,” “basic biological needs” (Dunn Reference Dunn2012, 7) sorted as distinct and unconnected categories such as shelter, food, security, water, sanitation, and health. During the emergency in August of 2008, humanitarian aid in the form of prefabricated, prepacked, and portable kits corresponding to predefined categories of need was often delivered without considering the real needs in the field. Therefore, the passivity and dependence on aid of those who are internally displaced were not coming from a moral failing or trauma, but from the adhocracy that made it impossible for them to be attached to their new homes.

Generally, providing shelter for those who are internally displaced was a major concern for the official policy, as the displacement occurred in 1990s.Footnote ⁷ Initially, hotels, schools, hospitals, factories, and other state-owned buildings were used as collective centers; these were—and to this day remain—in very poor condition, mostly without basic facilities. After the August war in 2008, the new internally displaced persons were placed in new “hastily tossed-up small cinderblock cottages or government buildings renovated into tiny standardized apartments” (Dunn Reference Dunn2012 8,). The scattering of the settlements in remote and disconnected areas where access to livelihood resources and basic services are extremely limited is a clear manifestation of the ways in which the state policy contributed to segregation of the internally displaced (Salukvadze et al. Reference Salukvadze, Gachechiladze, Gogishvili, Sichinava, Javashvili, Tugushi and Bregvadze2013; Kurshitashvili 2012); from this perspective comes the widespread assumption that promoting movement out of collective centers could be an adequate way to overcome the marginalization of those who are internally displaced. However, some scholars claim that collective settlements are also places “where the dispossessed gain access to critical livelihood resources through living in a shared space from which they gain some advantage” (Kabachnik et al. Reference Kabachnik, Mitchneck, Mayorova and Regulska2014, 28).

When we asked our respondents where they would prefer to live, in the collective centers or in private accommodations, most of them responded that they were willing to reside with their fellow internally displaced persons in the collective centers. Their main argument for this choice is that people in collective centers share the same fate and have a sense of deep solidarity toward each other:

On the other hand, some young people among those who are internally displaced did not share these sentiments. Instead, they expressed a desire to move out of the collective center:

Retrieving information from the focus-group participants was a more delicate task when we tried to touch on the topic of the acceptance of internally displaced persons into local communities, asking whether attitudes toward newcomers were positive or negative. Generally, our respondents talked about their local neighbors in a very positive way. Most of them tried to be tempered and balanced in answering this question, but after some probing they did recall several occasions of negative labelling and stereotyping of the internally displaced:

The participants often referred to the stereotypical image of the internally displaced person as someone who cannot have a life of dignity and prosperity:

Two focus-group participants displaced from the South Ossetia/Tskhinvali region spoke about dramatic developments in Tbilisi during the first days of their displacement in August 2008, when they had no choice but to occupy public buildings. As one recounted,

Contested Historical Narratives and Cultural Memory in Displacement

Memories of their lost homeland have an overwhelming influence on the lives of those who are internally displaced. Their residential collective centers could be viewed as the confined “mnemonic spaces” where they constantly, in everyday communication, cultivate their personal or shared memories. Here, we can draw on widespread concepts of the “communicative” and “cultural memory” (Assmann Reference Assmann1995; Reference Assmann2008; Reference Assmann2015) to address the nature of these recollections. The communicative memory corresponds to those “varieties of collective memory that are based exclusively on everyday communication” (Assmann Reference Assmann1995, 127). These kinds of memories, lived and reproduced in the everyday interaction, belong to the area of oral history and last, approximately, for only 80 years, the time span of three interacting generations (Assmann Reference Assmann2015, 333–334). On the other hand, the “externalized” and “disembodied” cultural memory covers the distant past and requires material symbolization; institutional distribution; cultivation by specialists; and celebration and ritualization on special occasions. It “may be transferred from one situation to another and through generations” (Assmann Reference Assmann2008, 110–111; 2015, 331–332). Cultural memory revolves around the fixed and faithful points in the past. The past, as an object of scholars’ professional investigation detached from present concerns, is not important in the context of the cultural memory, “but only the past as it is remembered and ‘inhabited.’ Cultural memory reaches back into the past only so far as the past can be reclaimed as ‘ours.’ This is why we refer to this form of historical consciousness as ‘memory’ and not just as knowledge of the past” (Assmann Reference Assmann2015, 334).

In Georgia, the historiography is never free of the politics, identity rhetoric, and territorial claims. It is extremely difficult to separate knowledge of the past from memory politics. The Georgian historical narrative, written and fixed in history textbooks or academic works, establishes a conformity and orthodoxy (Goody Reference Goody1998) that endures though generations and across political systems. This also leads us to the political memory that is “highly normative, prescribing what must by no means be forgotten in order to form and belong-to a political identity” (Assmann Reference Assmann2015, 339). Consequently, the personal recollections of those who are internally displace are also largely informed by the institutionalized national narrative (Toria Reference Toria2015, 50).

To grasp this aspect of the recollections of the internally displaced, we consider the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian contested narratives that emerged in the Soviet period. Generally, a Soviet historian was forced to operate in the remote past, to be kind of an antiquarian and work at the same time from a primordial perspective and within a Marxist-Leninist theoretical framework. In the period of “Glasnost,” when national questions appeared more problematic in the Soviet state, many historians suddenly became “national leaders” who expressed ethnic resentments and claims. For instance, Vladislav Ardzinba (active 1994–2010), the leader of the Abkhazian separatist movement in the early 1990s, was a historian specializing in the history of Hittites. As it happened, the former Soviet historian was absolutely not prepared to reflect on once-taboo themes of latent ethnic grievances or contradictions. Therefore, a typical post-Soviet historian was unable to refrain from engaging the political struggles and, more importantly, in the war of historians.

Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian historical narratives revolve around the idea of primordiality in Abkhazia and the South Ossetia/Tskhinvali region that turns these regions into contested spaces. Proclaiming the antiquity of a region serves to legitimize the right to the territory. According to Georgian historians, Abkhazia always was an integral part of Georgian territory and culture. Apart from this, Abkhazians are culturally close to Georgians or even the people of Georgian origin whose alienation started during Tsarist and Soviet times (Janashia Reference Janashia1952; Ingorokva [Reference Ingorokva1954] 2002; Inadze Reference Inadze1999; Lomouri Reference Lomouri1998,Reference Goody; Lortkipanidze Reference Lortkipanidze1990; Papaskiri Reference Papaskiri1998; Reference Papaskiri2010; Reference Papaskiri2012). By contrast, Abkhaz historians portray a different picture of the past: a permanent battle and struggle against ethnic Georgian rivals. Local historians claim that Abkhazia was never a part of Georgia and that Georgian historians are trying to distort the past and take away the historical memory of Abkhazian people; ethnic Georgians came to Abkhazia in the wake of the region’s colonization (Basaria Reference Basaria1923; Ashkhatsava Reference Ashkhatsava1925; Inal-Ipa Reference Inal-Ipa1965; Anchabadze Reference Anchabadze1959; Reference Anchabadze1976; Bgajba and Lakoba Reference Bgajba and Lakoba2007; Achugba Reference Achugba2010).

Georgian and Ossetian positions on who is indigenous to the region is also radically different. According to Georgian historians, until the middle of the 19th century, the number of Ossetians in this territory was not significant. Only since that period can we trace their gradual and steady mass, settling in what is now known as “South Ossetia,” that is, the lowlands of “Georgia’s heartland,” the Shida Kartli province (inner Kartli). Generally, in Georgian historiography, special importance is ascribed to the role of this region in forming Georgian culture and statehood: “the territory of South Ossetia is a cradle of Georgian material and spiritual culture and it is an integral part of Georgia. From the north Caucasus, where Ossetians came from, it always was demarcated by state borders and natural boundaries—the Caucasian range (Jorjoliani 1995, 4). Apart from this, Georgian historians argue that Bolsheviks granted autonomy to Ossetians in the territory of Shida Kartli as a reward for helping the Red Army to annex and occupy the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918–1921). There were no other, particularly no historical, reasons for creating the autonomy of Ossetia. Georgian historians stress the irrelevance of using the designation “South Ossetia,” since it is an artificially constructed term (Apkhazava Reference Apkhazava1996; Gvasalia Reference Gvasalia1996; Lekishvili Reference Lekishvili1996; Topchisvhili Reference Topchisvhili1997 2005; Itonishvili Reference Itonishvili2002; Bluashvili Reference Bluashvili2005; Totadze Reference Totadze2006) Ossetian historians, in turn, claim that their ancestors have resided in South Ossetia since the first humans appeared there. Georgians are depicted as newcomers. Ossetian authors argue that, throughout the ages and even millennia, Ossetians were constantly settling and resettling in this territory (Vaneti Reference Vaneti1936; Abaev Reference Abaev1949; Bliev Reference Bliev2006; Kochieva and Margiev Reference Kochieva and Margiev2005).

However, in the Georgian historical narrative, another key element is the story of the peaceful coexistence of Georgians and Abkhazians before the conflict (the same is true for the narrative of Georgian and Ossetian cohabitation). In our focus groups, every respondent religiously referred to the memory of peaceful coexistence. Therefore, the conflicts are represented as the explosions of mines planted by Russia in order to prevent Georgia from gaining independence and getting rid of Russian domination: “Within this narrative, Abkhazians and Ossetians are depicted as having been ‘tricked’ by imperial Russia into starting a war against their true ‘brothers’—Georgians” (Toria Reference Toria2015, 55).Footnote ⁸ This type of narrative template is, as James Wertsch and Zurab Karumidze conceptualize it, “an underlying general story line is used repeatedly to make sense of multiple specific events” (2009, 380), according to which internally displaced persons—from both regions—reconstruct the past of their homeland.