Bordering and Strategic Belonging in Gagauzia

Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores bordering practices and the politics of belonging in Gagauzia, an autonomous region in Moldova, historically and currently on the periphery of various spheres of influence. I trace the trajectory of Gagauzian as a category and draw attention to weak nation-building and economic dependence as contributing to Gagauzia’s ambiguous positionality, where seemingly-conflicting bordering practices and identity narratives can coexist. Showing how they draw on different categories concurrently to access entitlements through nation-states’ overlapping policies, I bring to light how locals can articulate and experience simultaneous claims of belonging strategically. I explore discourse on commonalities claimed in terms of language, ethnicity, and/or territorial dominion by Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova, ultimately illustrating how a less-clearly-defined, more inclusive space can exist within their convergence. The article places Gagauzia in a broader post-communist borderlands context, utilizing a sub-cultural theoretical lens to contribute to the literature on patterns of belonging “in-between” dominant nation-state structures.