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technical paper
Unusual Suspects of a Contested Border: Uncertainty, Mobility, and Nonhuman Border Emergencies in the Margins of Georgia
keywords:
borders
multispecies
crisis
Gali is a so-called frozen conflict zone in the southern borderland of the de facto state of Abkhazia, separated from the rest of Georgia since the end of the Soviet Union. People from Gali have lived under protracted uncertainty and ambivalence for almost three decades. Opposing sovereignty projects•of Georgia, Abkhazia, and Abkhazia’s patron state Russia•impose themselves on people’s movements and rights through isolation, surveillance, and militarization. Despite its unpredictable shifts and arbitrariness, Gali people have generated ways to navigate this borderland over the years to sustain lives that are vitally dependent on formal and informal crossings. Since 2017, however, crises instigated by pests and viruses have introduced an unusual pattern of nonhuman border emergencies that people have to understand and struggle with. By focusing on three successive and related border emergencies caused by the “invasion” of brown marmorated stinkbugs, H1N1 virus, and COVID-19, this paper explores the new ways borders and interspecies mobilities are imagined under long-term conflict and uncertainty.