Azerbaijan

Nostalgia for the Soviet era is out of fashion in Azerbaijan, just as it is in the rest of the post-Soviet countries. Looking back at the old days with sympathy is rarely encouraged, if not shunned upon, yet there are still those that do. The authors of this article tried to find out what makes them miss the USSR.

Ramil writes about the urgency of intersectionality by studying the narratives of Azerbaijani LGBTQI+/queer individuals who have been facing multi-layered discrimination in Azerbaijan. 

Ali Malikov is an queer activist and journalist. They are also one of the founders of the feminist-queer platform "Qıy vaar!" and 'Femkulis'. Ali shares stories of queer teachers in urban and rural Azerbaijan and clearly shows the challenges they face on a daily basis, both in their professional and personal lives

We are glad to announce a call for contributions to a book project that seeks to reflect on masculinities in the South Caucasus through various angles, including personal, artistic, and scientific.

Germany leads as a destination country for migrants from Azerbaijan ahead of other European states. It is hard to provide an accurate number but according to various expert estimates, Germany is home to approximately 20 to 30 thousand Azerbaijani migrants. 

Vusala Hajiyeva, a transgender woman from Baku, Azerbaijan, tells about the isolation, which did not start during the covid-19 pandemic. She shares her personal story describing the multifaceted difficulties that transgender people face in her country, both on an individual and systemic level. Vusala tells stories of failure, hatred, love, and hope.

On October 11-12, 2021, the Heinrich Boell Stiftung/Foundation (hbs) Tbilisi Office – South Caucasus Region, together with Ilia State University and the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SOVLAB), organized the South Caucasus Regional Conference on Memory Politics to address the foundations and legacy of the first independent republics (1918-1920/21) in the South Caucasus (SC).

Informality is a form of solidarity economy and post-pandemic survival mode for the most economically active population of Azerbaijan. Women, consisting 62% of the informal workers, should be situated in the center of conversations on reproduction, labor rights, social protection and welfare support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article points out how the various consolidated apparatuses render feminism and feminists the most visible other by utilizing different othering techniques such as criminalization and securitization. What is more, it depicts how feminism and women's issues started to get politicized, shifting from the "social/safe" to the "political/dangerous" space on a discursive level.  

"There is a house in Baku where cis and trans women live together and support each other. They also don't allow any transphobic people or anyone who could potentially be a threat to move in," said a friend to me in a conversation that one usually has when you haven't seen each other in months and want to share the world over a cup of tea.