From People to Pawns: A constructivist approach to the debate on internally displaced people in ethnically divided Georgia.

Abstract

Georgia has struggled with frozen ethnic conflicts and protracted internal displacement for over thirty years. This thesis studies the different trajectories that the debate on internally displaced people (IDP) in Georgia, and the de facto states Abkhazia and South Ossetia, has taken. As the conflict plays in the common neighbourhood of Russia and the EU, it is often analysed from a grand geopolitical perspective. I argue that the different trajectories of the debate can best be explained through a constructivist approach to feminist geopolitical theory. With this theoretical framework, I show that the conflict and the IDP debate are best understood by studying the interaction and transformation between the international, national, and local levels of discourse. To understand the different layers separately and in combination with each other, I used a collection of international reports, speeches, memos, and IDP testimonies. With this approach, we can notice that the influence spheres of Russia and Europe significantly outline the shape of how the IDP debate developed but that national and local levels at certain times have tremendous transformative power over the conflict, thus creating different trajectories.