Introduction: Part I

Anlam Filiz is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Turkish-German University in Istanbul. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at Emory University, USA, with a dissertation analyzing how Turks in Berlin negotiate their cultural difference through their labor in small businesses and through this process make themselves integral to the workings of the German capital. Her research focuses on questions of migration, work, globalization, temporality, and cultural difference in urban settings.

Oksana Ermolaeva holds a PhD degree in the history of Central and Eastern Europe from the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary). She is a visiting researcher at the Complutence University of Madrid, Spain, under the aegis of a grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Dusseldorf, Germany. Among other topics, she is interested in Russian borders during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.