This book examines the social and political mobilisation of religious communities towards forced displacement in relation to tolerance and transitory environments. How do religious actors and state bodies engage with refugees and migrants? What are the mechanisms of religious support towards forcibly displaced communities? Religion and Forced Displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia argues that when states do not act as providers of human security, religious communities, as representatives of civil society and often closer to the grass roots level, can be well placed to serve populations in need. The book brings together scholars from across the region and provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which religious communities tackle humanitarian crises in contemporary Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Religion and Forced Displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia
- An Introduction
- Victoria Hudson and Lucian N. Leustean
- 2. Humanitarian Action, Forced Displacement and Religion
- Contemporary Research Perspectives
- Section I: Eastern Europe
- 3. Religion and Forced Displacement in Modern Bulgaria
- 4. State, Religion and Refugees in Serbia
- Responses of Faith-Based Organisations, 1991-1996
- Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Marko Veković
- 5. Asylum and Migration System Reform
- A New Role for the Orthodox Church of Greece?
- Georgios E. Trantas and Eleni D. Tseligka
- 6. Responding to Mass Emigration amidst Competing Narratives of Identity
- The Case of the Republic of Moldova
- 7. The Roman Catholic Church and Forced Displacement in Poland
- Section II: Russia and Ukraine
- 8. ‘My Strength Is Made Perfect in Weakness’
- Russian Orthodoxy and Forced Displacement
- 9. Forced Displacement, Religious Freedom and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
- Section III: The Caucasus
- 10. ‘Forgotten by Many and Remembered by Few’
- Religious Responses to Forced Migration in Georgia
- 11. Welcoming Refugees?
- The Armenian Apostolic Church and Forced Displacement
- Section IV: Central Asia
- 12. The Response of the Metropolitan District of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan to the Emigration of Ethnic Russians from Independent Kazakhstan
- 13. Сommunity Intolerance, State Repression and Forced Displacement in the Kyrgyz Republic
- 14. Migration within and from Uzbekistan
- Index
- List of Tables
- Table 3.1 Ethnic demography in Bulgaria, 1887-2011
- Table 3.2 Religious demography in Bulgaria, 1887-2011
- Table 3.3 Dynamics of the Muslim and Turkish population in Bulgaria, 1881-1887
- Table 3.4 Major immigration waves in Bulgaria, 1878-19457
- Table 3.5 Population exchange and forced resettlement in Bulgaria, 1913-1940
- Table 3.6 Major waves of Turkish minority emigration and forceful displacement in Bulgaria, 1878-1989
- Table 3.7 Numbers of asylum seekers in Bulgaria, 1993-2019
- Table 4.1 Forced displacement of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to the FRY and Serbia, 1991-1996
- Table 5.1 Population shifts in Greece, 1907-2011
- Table 5.2 New arrivals to Greece, 2014-2019
- Table 7.1 Population of Poland by declared religion in 2011
- Table 7.2 Estimated losses of the Polish population during World War II
- Table 7.3 Polish citizens repressed by the USSR authorities
- Table 7.4 Polish citizens deported to perform forced labour in the Reich
- Table 7.5 The stance of the Polish political parties regarding the problem of refugees and immigrants presented in the election programmes in connection with the election campaign in 2015
- Table 8.1 Religious belonging in Russia, 2012
- Table 8.2 Number of immigrants in Russia, 1990-2000
- Table 8.3 Migration waves in and out of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1991-2016
- Table 8.4 Selected ethnicities and their favoured Christian churches in Russia, 1989-201018
- Table 9.1 Religious communities in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as of 1 January 20148
- Table 10.1 List of deported nationalities in the Soviet Union
- Table 10.2 Regional migration in the Soviet Union
- Table 10.3 Ecological migration in the Soviet Union
- Table 10.4 Numbers of IDPs in Georgia
- Table 10.5 State funding of the Georgian Orthodox Church after the Rose Revolution
- Table 11.1 Number of Armenian refugees in the Middle East, 1925
- Table 11.2 Number of annually naturalised refugees from Azerbaijan in Armenia, 1992-2009
- Table 11.3 Total number of asylum applications in the Republic of Armenia, 1999-201826
- Table 11.4 Citizenships of asylum seekers in Armenia, 2014-201830
- Table 12.1 Selected population data in Kazakhstan in the Soviet era according to the census, 1926-1989
- Table 12.2 Selected population data in Kazakhstan in the late and post-Soviet era according to official figures
- Table 12.3 Ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan according to region, 2009-2016
- Table 13.1 Migration dynamics in Kyrgyzstan, 1999-2020
- Table 13.2 Religious organisations in Kyrgyzstan, 2019