MA, MPHIL and PhD projects

Nejati, Fatemeh, MPHIL: “Women’s challenges and coping strategies in families in Tajikistan”
Abstract: This research project investigates the effects of international labor migration on women and families in Tajikistan. Taking into account the collapse of USSR in 1991, entering to the liberal market, high population growth, devastating civil war and violence have weakened the economy. Migration remained as the only solution to deal with unemployment and low paid jobs for Tajiks. The Republic of Tajikistan is ranked as first in the world among sending countries having the huge migration and the share of remittances (35%) of Gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009. Accordingly, women’s life defiantly could not be resistant to these huge labor migrations, and had been affected. Family structure is very important and strong in Tajik society. Traditionally, women are supposed to live with their families-in-law after marriage. Most of migrants are married men and their wives who are left behind face various problems. They have to cope with difficulties of life in extended families in the absence of their husbands. They suffer from workload in the household and raising children alone. It happens occasionally that migrants (men) never come back, re-marry in destination country, divorce their wives or stop sending remittances. Consequently, women have to deal with cultural, social, religious and economic constrains. In this research project I investigate how male work migration has affected the women’s life, in terms of the challenges they face and their main coping strategies. Selected areas of fieldwork include the capital of Tajikiatan Dushanbe, Hisor, Fazobod and Shahrino and some villages around Fazobod.

Meurmishvili, Giorgi, MPHIL: “Dagestanians (Hunzib) living in Georgia”
Abstract: The Kvareli region is situated in the Georgian borderlands towards Dagestan in the Caucasus and Georgian-Dagestan relations have a long history. For more than one century there have been Dagestani settlements in the Kvareli region, but this is a little known fact, also among scholars. There is a lack of knowledge about the history of Dagestanis in Georgia and their cultural, religious and social practices as well as their relationship to the Georgian population. The aim of this research project is to investigate everyday life among the Dagestanis in the Georgian region Kvareli, with special attention to Dagestanis, who have recently returned to their historical settlements in Georgia.