Public-Talk #29. IN SEARCH OF GOOD LIFE: UNDERSTANDING SOCIOCULTURAL DYNAMICS OF MIGRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA – BY DR. ELENA BORISOVA, 6 OCTOBER, 2023

Area: Social Anthropology, Migration, Research, UN SDGs
Speaker: Dr. Elena Borisova,  Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Sussex (UK)
Source: Release and Post Release

OVERVIEW

In October 2023, Dr.Elena Borisova delivered a guest lecture entitled ‘In Search of the Good Life: Understanding Sociocultural Dynamics of Migration in Central Asia’, which took place at International Office Hall and provided a deep understanding of migration processes in Central Asia on the case of Tajikistan.
Migration is also a cross-cutting issue across the 2030 Agenda, relevant to all 17 of the SDGs. This section goes beyond the direct references to migration to acknowledge and address the mutually supporting relationships between migration and each of the Goals and targets.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes for the first time the contribution of migration to sustainable development. Migration is a cross-cutting issue in the 2030 Agenda, relevant to all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Further, the SDG’s motto to ‘leave no one behind’ is a clear call for sustainable development to be inclusive, including for migrants. At least 10 out of 17 goals contain targets and indicators that are directly relevant to migration or mobility. The inclusion of migration in the 2030 Agenda presents countries with a series of new migration data challenges and reporting requirements. At the same time, this presents a crucial opportunity to improve migration data.
Migration is often analyzed through simplistic push-pull models with deterministic logic of economic models and demographic statistics dominating both academic and public discourses. In this talk, the speaker showed how we can study migration if we place our empirical and analytical attention to the everyday life of ordinary people in the place where migration originates. Based on more than a year of ethnographic research in rural Tajikistan, Elena shows how migration is bound up with people’s attempts to achieve a good life.