Dwelling and circulating in a context of risks: (im)mobilities and environmental hazards in Tajikistan's Pamir mountains

Abstract:
This doctoral research in human geography examines the relation between disaster risks and human (im)mobilities through a case study in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains. This work constitutes a longitudinal ethnography of the residents of the Bartang Valley, who live under the threat of environmental hazards such as floods, avalanches, and rockslides. Qualitative methods were implemented, including observations, interviews, mobile methods, autoethnography, and audiovisual methods. The research touches upon issues of post-Soviet transition, livelihood sustainability, environmental hazards, and risk perceptions, and gives insight into everyday activities and spirituality in the Bartang Valley. The work is structured around two main research topics: involuntary immobility induced by physical inaccessibility and voluntary immobility enhanced by place attachment. Hazards impact the state of roads and vehicles and impair rural-urban mobilities, which are essential to the livelihoods of the Bartangi
people. The vulnerability of these livelihoods—and of the mobility infrastructure—to environmental hazards is increased by the general level of economic poverty in the Valley. Frequent mobility disruptions reduce the accessibility of the Valley and can lead to involuntary immobility. Despite these risks and low accessibility, place attachment is deep among residents who generally express strong bonds with their valley. Many remain in their villages or return after years spent working in other parts of Tajikistan or in Russia. Most of those who are displaced by destructive hazards choose to stay in the Valley, relocating within or not far from their village. Place attachment, immobility, and adaptive capacity are envisioned as mutually reinforcing phenomena, and the mobility-immobility and voluntary-involuntary continuums are
explored in their dynamic and fluctuating dimensions.
Taking accessibility, mobility disruptions, and place attachment as core research topics has led to a rather hybrid work at the intersection between studies on the environment-migration nexus, on rural-urban, daily, or circular mobilities, and more classical ethnographic works on rural mountainous communities. At the theoretical level, this work argues for a better integration of concepts of the “mobilities turn” into research on environmental mobilities in order to encompass a wider range of mobility patterns on multiple spatial and time scales, to examine (im)mobility aspirations and potentials, to explore infrastructure and materialities, and to include immobility. Through an analysis of individual place attachment and risk perception, this work also reaffirms the importance of cultural geography for the field of environmental mobilities.

Dissertation (pdf) available here: https://libra.unine.ch/handle/123456789/29515