Papers by Raia Apostolova
(2024) Eradicating Socialist Internationalism, 2024
Something broke beyond recognition in the 1990s. Internationalism, as a political strategy, was m... more Something broke beyond recognition in the 1990s. Internationalism, as a political strategy, was made to disappear from the postsocialist horizon. The early forms of anticommunism and anti-internationalism continue to reproduce conditions for a “real existing” postsocialism, where, as the introduction to this volume argues, representations of socialism as a deviation from a “normal” path justify social exclusions. As demonstrated here, the postsocialist state perpetuated violent expulsions—both
through severe social exclusion and forced exoduses—in the name of anticommunism. The expulsion of nonwhite foreigners was objectively inscribed in institutional settings and procedures. These processes entrenched deep structures of meaning that conditioned postsocialist xenophobic nationalisms, constituting a rupture with socialist practices and logics. Racializing grammars found in “actual postsocialism” run on an imposed memory loss of the practice of “friendship” Bulgaria had once established with countries outside the Euro-Atlantic axis. “Real postsocialism” thrives on constant reinstitutionalization of whiteness—in education, in international migration practices, and in international
relations—that allows for further implementation of budget cuts and desocialization of public services. The early 1990s continued to display longue durée effects on the local experiences of African, Asian, and Arab communities in postsocialist Bulgaria. The historical force with which anticommunism and anti-internationalism promised to end bad governance, in fact, reinforced a real existing postsocialism inhibited by violent makings of whiter streets, educational institutions, grammars, and political spaces.
Това кратко есе проследява прехвърлянето на кървавата вражда между Иракската комунистическа парти... more Това кратко есе проследява прехвърлянето на кървавата вражда между Иракската комунистическа партия (ИКП) и Партията за арабско социалистическо възраждане в Ирак (Баас) на територията на Народна република България. Есето се съсредоточава върху един конкретен исторически момент от пребиваването на иракски студенти в НРБ в края на 1970-те, в който изкристализират антикомунистическите стратегии на Баас и антиимпериалистическите стратегии на ИКП и Българската комунистическа партия (БКП). Представената тук перспектива обхваща три главни актьора – ЦК на БКП, ИКП и Баас, – а направените изводи се основават на архивни документи от фондовете на ЦК на БКП в Централния държавен архив в София.
The Alternative University. Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela, 2023
Mariya Ivancheva’s monograph The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela (2023,... more Mariya Ivancheva’s monograph The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela (2023, Stanford University Press) brings us amid the educational reforms under late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavéz. Focusing on the University of Bolivarian Venezuela (UBV), it traces the revolutionary higher education experiments in Venezuela: their advancements and contradictions as a tool for social change and as a democratic socialist alternative to capitalist development.
Theory and Process of Socialist Migration, 2023
The essay explores the labor-exchange programs between postcolonial
and socialist states as a f... more The essay explores the labor-exchange programs between postcolonial
and socialist states as a form of moral economy that attempted to reconcile the notions of socialist internationalism and ‘mutually beneficial’ migration. Focusing on the relationship between Vietnam and Bulgaria, the article traces key logics of socialist migration and internationalism that informed, broke, and reshaped the relationships between different units of solidarity. These include links between the Party, mass organizations, and economic enterprises; between economic units, political organizations, and foreign workers; and essentially between the two countries,
Vietnam and Bulgaria. The essay contends that the constant renegotiation of the meaning of internationalism between economic enterprises and ministries, on the one side, and the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and foreign workers, on the other, produced two competing logics on whether labor-import from postcolonial states was politically valuable. To explore the clash, I concentrate on the years between 1975–1985, when some voices required the halt of labor exchange programs. This notwithstanding, in this period, the number of Vietnamese workers to arrive in Bulgaria more than tripled. The essay enters the spaces where socialist internationalist theory and the social practice of migration interacted, to make internationalism an open-ended domain.
Тютюнът преди тютюн, 2021
Настоящата статия разказва за стратегии и тактики на класовите борби в България преди Първата све... more Настоящата статия разказва за стратегии и тактики на класовите борби в България преди Първата световна война, когато най-ярко изпъкват механизмите и технологиите, чрез които се случва първоначалната поляризация на стоковия пазар и задълбочаването на капиталистическите форми на експлоатация. Тази поляризация не засяга единствено производствения процес, а всяка една социална тъкан – здраве, храна, жилище, отглеждане на деца, свободното от труд време. Прочитът, който предлагаме, макар и непълен и фрагментарен, показва как тази поляризация се мултиплицира и приема различни форми, които обуславят начините на борба „отдолу“. Самата борба по необходимост е еластична и отвръща на еластичността на капитала, на неговите „капризи“ и опити да тотализира и подчини социалните, политическите и икономическите процеси в страната с една единствена цел – да натрупва принаден труд и стойност.
Социологически проблеми, 2021
The article focuses on the “demographic crisis” as a field of knowledge, where actors with hetero... more The article focuses on the “demographic crisis” as a field of knowledge, where actors with heterogenous knowledge resources operationalize the government of labour power. One of the main assumptions here is that the delineation of low economic productivity as an effect of demographic collapses, catastrophes and crises undergoes a process of translation where different political strategies and tactics construct privileged and subordinate groups of labour power and in accordance to their “natural,” bodily potentials. Furthermore, the semantic instrument “in the conditions of a crisis” produces crisis-objects, which as such are subjected to a knowing process that aims to calculate and direct their behaviour in order to achieve demographic balance though increased labour productivity (not necessarily waged one). The analysis shows the ways in which the “elderly” are turned into a privileged object of demographic governing and how the governing of the labour power of other crisis-objects (e.g. immigrants) is subordinated to the meta-frame of “population aging”.
The relationship between social reproduction and migration (Katz, 2001;
Koffman, 2012; Ferguson a... more The relationship between social reproduction and migration (Katz, 2001;
Koffman, 2012; Ferguson and McNally, 2015; Hopkins, 2017) is especially critical in the context of a geography of EU enlargements to Eastern Europe, where austerity politics have destroyed stable employment and social welfare in the years since 1989 (Smith, 2000; Koffman, 2012, 2014). Such a composition has consequences for the relationship between labour, social reproduction and migration that shapes specific trajectories of antagonism and are defining for what we see as a geography of class struggles. The notion of the geography of class struggle is defined as a political field conditioned upon the dialectic between the fixing and the freeing of labour power, where class struggles concerned with the reproduction of life unfold transnationally.
Emigration from Bulgaria tends to create moral panics about an imminent extinction of the nation ... more Emigration from Bulgaria tends to create moral panics about an imminent extinction of the nation and a potential economic collapse (Angelov, 2015). Unemployment and poverty are the main emigration triggers (Bogdanov & Rangelova, 2012), with Spain, the U.K. and Germany being the most desired destinations. Bulgaria's demographic strategy is increasingly being focused upon the securing of return migration of its citizens (Council of Ministers, 2012). State institutions rely on a scientifically based typology of returning migrants in order to analyse the most stable factors linked to return but also in order to identify the predetermining factors for subsequent and repetitive outward migration (MLSP, 2019: 62-63). As of currently, the state strategy focuses predominantly on labour markets and defines 'successful' reintegration in economic terms. Abstract The article develops the notion of restless bodies to explore the interaction between regimes of social reproduction and freedom of movement. The notion captures the methodological difficulty to account for 'return migration' and goes beyond the isolation of a singular migration determinant. The author relies on two empirical cases. The first draws on one hundred interviews with 'return migrants' in Bulgaria. The second is based on fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2015 in Germany. Both show how the political economy of movement is characterised by a contradiction between fixity and motion in the context of capital accumulation and fading welfare state. The concerns at hand are raised both because of their methodological importance but also as a potential instrument that could supplement ongoing policy debates in the field of EU social security portability coordination.
This essay will be centred around the Special Home for Temporary Accommodation of Foreigners (SHT... more This essay will be centred around the Special Home for Temporary Accommodation of Foreigners (SHTAF) in the city of Lyubimets, which I will examine as a space maintaining the fantasy of the economic-political migrant division, but also one where a struggle against that same division unfolds. Lyubimets is a space of potentiality, this means that conflicts unfold in the movement in-between and along the axes of potentiality and actuality – between being a ‘genuine refugee’ and an ‘economic migrant’.
The most glaring image of captivity in liberal thought, from the early nineteenth century onwards... more The most glaring image of captivity in liberal thought, from the early nineteenth century onwards, is the one that depicts the chained, immobilized body of a slave (see Figure III.3.1). The image positions the 'free' subject as a moving , mobile subject. Liberal thought makes physical movement imperative for freedom. This has greatly informed our contemporary political context and, in a similar manner, one of the main principles behind the implementation of the 'European project' contains the notion of freedom, on the one hand, and movement as a constitutive element, on the other. 1 What does it mean to have the right to free movement? What is the relation between collective struggles and freedom of movement? Is it one of secured liberation or of unexpected limitation? This chapter engages with some of the contradictions in the notion of freedom of movement and the emerging hurdles that confront anti-capitalist movements. I invite the reader to think of freedom of movement not as the antithesis to unfreedom of movement. I break out of such binary definitions. Instead, I look at freedom of movement's implications for labour subjectivities and its productive power under capitalism.
I explore the conditions pertaining to the employment of Vietnamese workers in Bulgaria in the ea... more I explore the conditions pertaining to the employment of Vietnamese workers in Bulgaria in the early 1970s and the different politico-economic temporalities constitutive of the relations between Vietnamese workers and the Bulgarian state. This article is as much about the systemic logics in which the Vietnamese workers were modeled to attain to principles of what constitutes a proper socialist laborer, as about the rupture that took place in Bulgaria with the fall of the socialist regime and the explicit racialization of the Vietnamese. I demonstrate that while the socialist state consolidated a relation that was in continuous integration of foreign laborers, liberalism instead mobilized race in order to marginalize and exclude the Vietnamese from the transition to free markets.
I argue that the economic/political migrant binary belongs to a particular ideological presupposi... more I argue that the economic/political migrant binary belongs to a particular ideological presupposition which is present in classic economic liberalism. In migratory systems, this ideology construes the 'economic' and the 'political' vis-à-vis violence and lays the ground for subject differentiation. This logic, furthermore, imposes itself on the migratory system and its empirical reality (e.g. detention and reception centres). The struggles that we witness at borders and detention centres attempt to disintegrate definitions of what constitutes violence. The struggles against the imposed categories take place at two interconnected levels: at the border and in the repositioning of migrants from detention to reception centres. I empirically trace these levels within the practice of the asylum-system in Bulgaria.
The “economic migrant” must leave. From Berlin’s widening of the definition of “safe country” zon... more The “economic migrant” must leave. From Berlin’s widening of the definition of “safe country” zones and the fast execution of deportation orders, to hunters of economic migrants along the Bulgarian–Turkish border, our memory is persistently being pressed on the idea that the European space is reserved for “genuine refugees” only. Refugees are welcome. Their counterpoint—the economic migrant—is not. In the second post of this series, Manuela Bojadzijev and Sandro Mezzadra write, “One can see … a ‘difference machine’ at work, which discriminates between ‘first-class’ refugees of brutal war (the Syrians) and potential seekers of political asylum (the Iraqis) while branding people from the Balkans as ‘economic migrants.’” We see, however, that this “difference machine” works in a complete oscillation; it moves back and forth from one extreme to the other and it feeds on the contradictions it breeds. It produces unstable categories and where “first class” qualities could be sensed ostensible for a moment, they quickly retreat to previously engendered anxieties. The temporal protection that is currently being distributed to Syrians is precisely this: a temporal protection from being labeled an “economic migrant.” What does it mean, however, to accept one’s refugee-ness but not one’s economic migrant-ness? How does the so-called “refugee crisis” articulate the economy, the labour market, and humanitarianism?
Tsvetelina Hristova, Raia Apostolova, Mathias Fiedler (2015): On some methodological issues concerning anti-Dublin politics. In: movements. Journal für kritische Migrations- und Grenzregimeforschung 1 (1), May 29, 2015
In this paper, we discuss our experiences in writing a report on the social situation of asylum-s... more In this paper, we discuss our experiences in writing a report on the social situation of asylum-seekers and status-holders in Bulgaria vis-a-vis the socio-political context in Bulgaria. We raise issues of methodological importance and argue that the current form of knowledge production in the field of European asylum politics creates dichotomic spaces.
To better grasp what is at stake in today’s international movement of labour power, we need to lo... more To better grasp what is at stake in today’s international movement of labour power, we need to look at its opaque form. This piece looks back in history to argue that the organization of labour migration in socialist international relations points to a different material reality for thousands of foreign workers who took part in the ‘building of socialism’: a moral and material economy that was often used to exercise political influence over the postcolonial world. This economy created a peculiar migratory category: the foreign friends (Menge, 2007).
It is not exaggerated to say that "refugee" has become, over the past two weeks, a safe and conse... more It is not exaggerated to say that "refugee" has become, over the past two weeks, a safe and consensual substitute for the discredited notion of 'migrant' in public discourse. As Bono, the voice of mainstream, Western good conscience put it : "We should not use the word migrant. Migrant is a political word that used to take away the real status of these people. They are refugees."
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Papers by Raia Apostolova
through severe social exclusion and forced exoduses—in the name of anticommunism. The expulsion of nonwhite foreigners was objectively inscribed in institutional settings and procedures. These processes entrenched deep structures of meaning that conditioned postsocialist xenophobic nationalisms, constituting a rupture with socialist practices and logics. Racializing grammars found in “actual postsocialism” run on an imposed memory loss of the practice of “friendship” Bulgaria had once established with countries outside the Euro-Atlantic axis. “Real postsocialism” thrives on constant reinstitutionalization of whiteness—in education, in international migration practices, and in international
relations—that allows for further implementation of budget cuts and desocialization of public services. The early 1990s continued to display longue durée effects on the local experiences of African, Asian, and Arab communities in postsocialist Bulgaria. The historical force with which anticommunism and anti-internationalism promised to end bad governance, in fact, reinforced a real existing postsocialism inhibited by violent makings of whiter streets, educational institutions, grammars, and political spaces.
and socialist states as a form of moral economy that attempted to reconcile the notions of socialist internationalism and ‘mutually beneficial’ migration. Focusing on the relationship between Vietnam and Bulgaria, the article traces key logics of socialist migration and internationalism that informed, broke, and reshaped the relationships between different units of solidarity. These include links between the Party, mass organizations, and economic enterprises; between economic units, political organizations, and foreign workers; and essentially between the two countries,
Vietnam and Bulgaria. The essay contends that the constant renegotiation of the meaning of internationalism between economic enterprises and ministries, on the one side, and the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and foreign workers, on the other, produced two competing logics on whether labor-import from postcolonial states was politically valuable. To explore the clash, I concentrate on the years between 1975–1985, when some voices required the halt of labor exchange programs. This notwithstanding, in this period, the number of Vietnamese workers to arrive in Bulgaria more than tripled. The essay enters the spaces where socialist internationalist theory and the social practice of migration interacted, to make internationalism an open-ended domain.
Koffman, 2012; Ferguson and McNally, 2015; Hopkins, 2017) is especially critical in the context of a geography of EU enlargements to Eastern Europe, where austerity politics have destroyed stable employment and social welfare in the years since 1989 (Smith, 2000; Koffman, 2012, 2014). Such a composition has consequences for the relationship between labour, social reproduction and migration that shapes specific trajectories of antagonism and are defining for what we see as a geography of class struggles. The notion of the geography of class struggle is defined as a political field conditioned upon the dialectic between the fixing and the freeing of labour power, where class struggles concerned with the reproduction of life unfold transnationally.
Commentaries by Raia Apostolova
through severe social exclusion and forced exoduses—in the name of anticommunism. The expulsion of nonwhite foreigners was objectively inscribed in institutional settings and procedures. These processes entrenched deep structures of meaning that conditioned postsocialist xenophobic nationalisms, constituting a rupture with socialist practices and logics. Racializing grammars found in “actual postsocialism” run on an imposed memory loss of the practice of “friendship” Bulgaria had once established with countries outside the Euro-Atlantic axis. “Real postsocialism” thrives on constant reinstitutionalization of whiteness—in education, in international migration practices, and in international
relations—that allows for further implementation of budget cuts and desocialization of public services. The early 1990s continued to display longue durée effects on the local experiences of African, Asian, and Arab communities in postsocialist Bulgaria. The historical force with which anticommunism and anti-internationalism promised to end bad governance, in fact, reinforced a real existing postsocialism inhibited by violent makings of whiter streets, educational institutions, grammars, and political spaces.
and socialist states as a form of moral economy that attempted to reconcile the notions of socialist internationalism and ‘mutually beneficial’ migration. Focusing on the relationship between Vietnam and Bulgaria, the article traces key logics of socialist migration and internationalism that informed, broke, and reshaped the relationships between different units of solidarity. These include links between the Party, mass organizations, and economic enterprises; between economic units, political organizations, and foreign workers; and essentially between the two countries,
Vietnam and Bulgaria. The essay contends that the constant renegotiation of the meaning of internationalism between economic enterprises and ministries, on the one side, and the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and foreign workers, on the other, produced two competing logics on whether labor-import from postcolonial states was politically valuable. To explore the clash, I concentrate on the years between 1975–1985, when some voices required the halt of labor exchange programs. This notwithstanding, in this period, the number of Vietnamese workers to arrive in Bulgaria more than tripled. The essay enters the spaces where socialist internationalist theory and the social practice of migration interacted, to make internationalism an open-ended domain.
Koffman, 2012; Ferguson and McNally, 2015; Hopkins, 2017) is especially critical in the context of a geography of EU enlargements to Eastern Europe, where austerity politics have destroyed stable employment and social welfare in the years since 1989 (Smith, 2000; Koffman, 2012, 2014). Such a composition has consequences for the relationship between labour, social reproduction and migration that shapes specific trajectories of antagonism and are defining for what we see as a geography of class struggles. The notion of the geography of class struggle is defined as a political field conditioned upon the dialectic between the fixing and the freeing of labour power, where class struggles concerned with the reproduction of life unfold transnationally.