ABSTRACT
This chapter applies the category of ‘informality’ to issues of (dual) citizenship through the lens of the anthropology of diaspora, return migration and postcoloniality in the post-Soviet context. The interlocutors of my research are Muslim Meskhetian returnees in Georgia, the victims—and their descendants—of the 1944 Stalinist deportation of an entire population. I start from the premise that disempowered individuals as well as the state often rely on ‘informal’ practices, resulting in the creation of a grey area of interaction. Such practices are sometimes interpreted as ‘hidden agendas’ by those who feel victimised by the combined effects of the immigration and citizenship regimes of the countries across which they live—in this case, Azerbaijan and Georgia. I thus turn to the concept of dual citizenship, which I argue could provide a horizon of existential and practical possibilities—and maybe historical compensation—for people whose citizenship practises and necessities are already irreducible to the strictures of a single, monopolising nation-state.
