Emptiness and Its Futures Staying and Leaving As Tactics of Life in Latvia
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Emptiness and its futures Staying and leaving as tactics of life in Latvia Dace Dzenovska Abstract: In the past 25 years, rural Latvia has become notably emptier. Th is emp- tying is the result of post-Soviet deindustrialization and large-scale outmigration, enabled by EU accession and exacerbated by the 2008 fi nancial crisis. It is accom- panied by lack of political protest, leading many to conclude that migration hinders political mobilization. Such conclusions derive from viewing leaving and staying as actions in relation to the state. Instead, leaving and staying should be viewed in relation to transnational forms of power. Th e people leaving the de industrialized Latvian countryside to work in the English countryside are seeking futures past, namely, futures of stable employment and incremental prosperity. Th ose who stay in the emptying Latvian countryside create the future as a little bit more of the present. Keywords: emptiness, future, Latvia, migration, United Kingdom Th e proliferation of protest movements around sustained protest with regard to both (Eihmanis the world in the time period following the 2008 2017; Hudson and Summers 2011; Sommers global fi nancial crisis generated hope among and Woolfson 2014). To be sure, there were left -leaning scholars and activists that people’s some protest activities, which culminated in a discontent was bigger than dissatisfaction with demonstration on 13 January 2009. At fi rst, dis- concrete governments in power, concrete pol- content was directed at austerity measures, but icy measures, or corrupt politicians. It began it was subsequently appropriated by the Society to seem that a future diff erent from the one for Other Politics (a social liberal party that was inherent in the oppressive present was possi- a member of the party association Unity, or Vi- ble. Amid this proliferation of hope for a global enotība), which blamed the fi nancial crisis on spring, Latvia stood out. It stood out because the corruption of the oligarchs in power. Th e of the depth of crisis—Latvia’s gross domestic protests led to a change of government, with the product (GDP) fell by 25 percent and unem- incoming prime minister, Valdis Dombrovskis ployment reached 20 percent (Eihmanis n.d.: (Vienotība), implementing an even harsher, if 14)—the severity of austerity measures imple- transparent, austerity agenda. As argued by Ed- mented in response to the crisis, and the lack of gars Eihmanis (n.d.), the new Latvian govern- Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 80 (2018): 16–29 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2018.800102 Emptiness and its futures | 17 ment was so eager to overachieve with regard plausible alternatives to free-market capitalism to austerity measures that international insti- also contributed to the widespread acceptance tutions, usually thought of as propagators of a of neoliberal economic policies. neoliberal agenda, urged the government to in- Th e territorial logic that shapes the view that stitute protection measures for the most vulner- migration releases social tensions and thus de- able segments of the population. creases the likelihood of political protest is also Some left -leaning intellectuals and pub- popular in scholarship. For example, several lic fi gures linked the lack of protest to migra- scholars have turned to adapted versions of Al- tion. One told me in a casual conversation that bert Hirschmann’s (1970) “exit, voice, and loy- “the only reason we have not had a revolution alty” model to explain the relationship between is because people have been able to leave” (see migration and politics in Eastern Europe and also Hudson and Summers 2011; Sippola 2013; beyond (e.g., Sippola 2013; see also Ådnanes Sommers and Woolfson 2014). Indeed, people 2004; Colomer 2000; Hughes 2005; Ma 1993; had been leaving ever since the collapse of the Meardi 2007; Moses 2005; Pff af and Kim 2003; Soviet Union. Moreover, outmigration inten- Ruget and Usmanalieva 2008; Woolfson 2010; sifi ed aft er accession to the European Union Woolfson et al. 2008).2 Hirschmann’s “simple in 2004, and reported reasons diversifi ed aft er hydraulic model”—whereby “deterioration gen- the 2008 fi nancial crisis—in addition to leaving erates the pressure of discontent, which will be in search of work, livable wages, or a more ap- channeled into voice or exit; the more pressure pealing social and political environment, peo- escapes through exit, the less is available to fo- ple also left to escape or repay debts that they ment voice”—has been adapted since it was fi rst had accumulated in the process of becoming formulated, allowing for more nuanced inter- proper capitalist subjects (Dzenovska 2018a; pretations of the relationship between leaving, Halawa 2015; Hazans 2015). However, positing staying, and protesting (e.g., Hirschmann 1993: a causal link between outmigration and lack of 176). However, even in the adapted versions, protest is speculative and insuffi cient, as it tends the territorial logic of the state continues to to assume that people would have protested shape conceptions of modes of power in rela- economic policies and austerity measures had tion to which particular forms of action gain they stayed in Latvia. Eihmanis (n.d.) unsettles meaning (Hoff man 2008; see also Wimmer and such assumptions when he argues that eco- Glick Schiller 2002). Th is seems analytically nomic policies were not at the forefront of pub- insuffi cient in conditions when it is widely rec- lic discontent in 2009, because they had been ognized that people’s lives are shaped by reter- marginalized in the Latvian political landscape, ritorialized and multiscalar forces, with states which was dominated by an ethnic divide be- serving as connectors of power rather than— tween Russians and “Russian parties” and Lat- or in addition to being—containers of power vians and “Latvian parties”: Latvians voted for (Brown 2010; Harvey 2003; Jessop 2002: 108; “Latvian parties” but were split over corruption, Ong 2000; Sassen 1996). To be sure, people’s whereas Russians fairly uniformly voted for discontent continues to be framed in national “Russian parties” (see also Auers 2013).1 As Eih- terms in public and political discourse, because manis writes, “Th e established divisions over representative democracy is still predominantly nationalism and corruption eff ectively distorted linked with the nation-state model. However, the political competition, allowing ethnically this framing should not be reproduced in schol- Latvian anti-corruption parties to pursue as arship that seeks to understand the political as a radical economic policy as they preferred, with “wider fi eld of contingency and struggle that ex- hardly any political cost” (n.d.: 27). Moreover, ceeds established regimes of ‘politics’” (Dzenov- the widespread belief in the failure of socialist ska and De Genova, this issue; see also Mouff e economics and the conviction that there are no 2005). 18 | Dace Dzenovska In this article, I analyze the interplay of leav- apolitical action that partakes in spatially de- ing and staying in contemporary Latvia as tac- ferring the tensions produced by contempo- tics of life that have emerged in the context of rary forms of capitalism (Harvey 2003; Jessop post-Soviet capitalism. I analyze leaving and 2006). In turn, staying, the least political of ac- staying as actions in relation to multiscalar and tions according to the “exit, voice, and loyalty” reterritorialized forms of power, and in doing framework, might open space for the political so, seek to reterritorialize thinking about the in the form of maintaining the future as a little political in the context of migration (see also bit more of the present in conditions when cap- Graw and Schielke 2013; Lucht 2012). For ex- italism creates favorable conditions for leaving ample, I argue that one must allow for the seem- (Ringel 2014). ingly paradoxical possibility that leaving might be a form of staying: when someone emigrates to fi nd work, this may signify leaving a partic- Emptiness and ruination ular state yet remaining beholden to contem- porary forms of capitalism. Moreover, physical As I conducted fi eldwork in rural Latvia from movement in space can also be a temporal prac- 2010 until 2012, many people talked about the tice—for example, pursuit of existential mobil- emptying countryside.3 During this period of ity, of a life worth living (Hage 2009). Th us, in postcrisis austerity, talk of emptiness and its addition to rethinking the spatial confi gurations futures dominated many conversations and of power in relation to which staying or leav- took on special urgency, even a tone of despair. ing gain meaning, I also seek to refl ect on the People across Latvia’s cities, towns, and villages temporal orientations that can be discerned in reported that social life had broken down, that people’s practices of moving or staying. there were less children in schools, that the Th e focus on both spatial and temporal con- streets of many of Latvia’s cities were notably fi gurations of power and action enables me to emptier than they used to be, that it was diffi cult consider the relationship between mobility, pol- to fi nd someone to fi x your roof. However, the itics, and the political in line with the questions emptying of the countryside was not caused by posed by the editors of this theme section (Dze- the crisis alone, or by post-EU accession migra- novska and De Genova, this issue). If power tion, for that matter. It was a process of