Neda Deneva Current Project Neda Deneva Curriculum Vitae Current Project The focus of my research is the complicated and ambivalent relationship, which Bulgarian Muslims (or Pomaks, as they are often referred to) engaged in transnational migration, have developed with the two states in which they are simultaneously embedded – Bulgaria and Spain. More precisely, I focus on the interactions and intersections between official state-proposed, imposed, institutionalized categorizations and the everyday enactments, appropriations, re-interpretations and evasions of those very categorizations by Bulgarian Muslims within migration context. In this respect I am exploring How do Bulgarian Muslim migrants experience and negotiate their position on the margins of two states? Consequently, what are the mechanisms and strategies which they deploy in relation to their re-positioning vis-à-vis two states? Analytically I approach the state both as an embodiment of an idea, and in its particular institutional faces and practices. I look at it through the categorizations which states craft and impose on Bulgarian Muslims through different definitions both as citizens and as immigrants. At the same time, I also focus on the everyday practices and interactions with the state institutions and the conceptualizations and images of the state which Bulgarian Muslim migrants have developed. Theoretically my research is placed at the intersection of three broader analytical fields: transnational migration and questions related to the development of a transnational social field and simultaneity of incorporation; anthropological understandings of the state which allow exploring everyday interactions with and imaginings and discourses of the state; and, discussions of citizenship which transcend the formal and normative aspect of the concept and turn to alternative conceptualizations like social citizenship.

Methodologically, my study is based on an ethnographic research of a certain Bulgarian Muslim migrant community which I first encountered as a field researcher several years ago. The community stretches over two places: a village in Bulgaria and a small town in Spain where most of the village migrants are concentrated. For my dissertation, I have been working in the field both in Bulgaria and in Spain since September 2007 and I plan to continue my fieldwork for 12 months altogether until August 2008. I have been using standard ethnographic techniques such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, life histories etc. At the same time I am attempting to incorporate a historical overview into my research that focuses both on Bulgarian state policies targeting Bulgarian Muslims over the last century, and on current relevant immigration legislation and social policies in Spain that particularly affect people coming from accession countries and new member countries of EU. Bulgarian Muslims – a social and cultural group with flexible boundaries – are estimated to make up approximately 3% of the Bulgarian population. While their self-identification has been described as often relational and situational, from the outside they are often most broadly defined as ethnic Bulgarians who are Muslim by religion, which has turned them into a social group defined mainly by its existence on the margins of other groups (like Christian Bulgarians or Bulgarian Turks). Their “ethnic marginality”, however, does not necessarily lead to internal coherence or a clearly expressed sense of group-belonging. While offering the migrants better economic conditions Spain places the Bulgarian Muslims in yet another marginal and ambivalent position. They are immigrants and Muslims at the same time. Yet Bulgarian Muslims are not Muslims in Europe, but Muslims of Europe, who have to cope with the process of both migration and EU integration, of difference and (pseudo) equality. This ambivalence opens up various possible positionings vis-à-vis other social groups, but also vis-à-vis institutions. It is the extent to which Bulgarian Muslims enact those different aspects of their potential social identity that I want to explore empirically in my research. Based on my field research up till now, I would argue that migration is conceived by the Bulgarian Muslims migrants as an empowering mechanism which allows them to circumvent the Bulgarian state categorizations and other ethnic and social groups’ marginalizing definitions, as well as neoliberal economic marginalization. In Spain they are able to reinvent themselves and choose other labels to which to subscribe, while at the same time becoming economically more confident. Thus, while keeping their Muslims names and Muslim identification for the internal village community which is reproduced in Spain, they at the same time present themselves to the outside world, both institutionally and socially, with their alternative Bulgarian names and their Bulgarian citizenship as the identification markers of their choice. Consequently, while sustaining and reproducing the village community migrants more and more differentiate themselves from the group of other Bulgarian Muslims through this duality. Downplaying their Muslimness, or rather disclosing it only within the narrow confines of the village community, they offer their Bulgarian nationality and European citizenship as a distinctive marker of their group identity to the outside world. Once again, their situational or relational identity is being activated, in this case by using Europeanness as the beneficial marker. In the subsequent months of my fieldwork I would like to continue exploring everyday enactments and interactions with institutions both in Bulgaria and in Spain.