The displaced body and the body politic: The formation of a bounded, 'permanently temporary' population of internally displaced persons following internal conflict in post-Soviet Georgia

In the wake of the 1992--93 internal conflict in post-Soviet Georgia, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgian former residents of breakaway Abkhazia were displaced. In the absence of a peace agreement, most of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain settled "temporarily" elsewhere in Georgia. The Government of Georgia stresses their right to return to Abkhazia, staking its claim to lost territory on the location of the bodies of the displaced; and it juridically excludes them by failing to grant them the voting privileges and privatization rights enjoyed by other citizens. The international humanitarian community stressed from the beginning the need for temporary assistance, not resettlement, since the IDPs would eventually be returning "home"; this focus has been reflected in the kinds of aid provided. The government-in-exile of Georgians displaced from Abkhazia, making use of the organizational networks crafted to support humanitarian initiatives, distributes its own information and assistance with the explicit goal of reminding the displaced that they will soon be returning to Abkhazia. The United Nations-led peace process is predicated on the safe return of the displaced to Abkhazia, and this goal is underscored through both extensive coverage by the mass media of the negotiations process, and daily interactions between the local population on the ground along both sides of the cease-fire line with the military component of the UN mission. Members of the local population of Georgia engage in daily interaction with the displaced, in many cases working rhetorically to name and bound them as "other". And the displaced themselves incorporate these practices into their daily lives, and further strengthen them in their interactions with one another by re-telling stories of wartime violence and developing shared understandings of the situation.; While not specifically so intended by any of these sets of actors, the net effect of the intersection of these practices with the daily lives of the displaced is the formation of a bounded, "permanently temporary" population of internally displaced persons, effectively a secondary category of membership in the Georgian state.; This study uses an optic derived from Michel Foucault to analyze the way this sub-population is constructed through discrete material and discursive practices, and to explore the nature of "resistances" by displaced persons caught up in these networks. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...