ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Tajik borders and the redefinition of economic and political space in two contexts: the situation in the town of Tursunzoda with its company Tajik Aluminium Company (TALCO), close to the Uzbek border in central Tajikistan, and the Tajik-Kyrgyz border in the Ferghana Valley. The two examples illustrates simultaneous but different bordering processes in contemporary Tajikistan, the serious economic impacts of an unstable and unpredictable border regime with Uzbekistan, resulting from the collapse of Soviet production networks and deteriorated interstate relations, and the ethno-territorial instability connected to creeping migration that is significant on the Tajik border with Kyrgyzstan. The history of the small city of Tursunzoda on the Tajik-Uzbek border is a rather common one in the post-Soviet context. New nationalising states like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are struggling with the economic reorganisation of Soviet-time production and political space.
