Foreigners in Their Own Home: De Facto Displacement and Negative Emplacement in the Borderlands of Abkhazia

Abstract

This article explores de facto displacement and negative emplacement dynamics in the borderlands of the de facto state of Abkhazia. The uncertain status of de facto states creates a vulnerable, disenfranchised and rearranged post-conflict environment for ethnic minorities that are deemed unwanted remnants of the conflict. I make two arguments: First, de facto displacement is a situation of displacement where the displaced do not physically move away but where the landscape around them together with the sociopolitical situation significantly changes almost overnight. Second, that this displacement comes with negative emplacement in which a person and/or group is negatively set in place in a physical and social sense within the newly created reality of the de facto state.