(R)E-TIES: Managing mobility and human relations in digitally saturated social worlds
Description
The objective of the project "(R)E-TIES: Managing mobility and human relations in digitally saturated social worlds" is to ethnographically examine, analyse and theoretically further the knowledge on the dynamics between various kinds of human ties, work-related mobility policies, and digital platforms that mediate human relationships.
The duration of the project is 24 months, during which researchers will:
- collect new empirical data through interviews, digital ethnography and social network analysis;
- analyse the institutional policies pertaining to mobility and human ties;
- re-analyse the empirical material collected during the previous research projects in light of the new data;
- utilise the combination of the above to engage in theoretical debates on mobility, strategic management of human ties (relations, networks and structures), and digital environments from a variety of scholarly perspectives.
The central question of the (R)E-TIES project is how migration and labour policies aimed at attracting highly skilled workforce are reconciled with the human networks within which the desired employees are embedded. More specifically, we will examine the usage of the digital social media platforms and inquire to what extent and how the human relationships and networks facilitated by and embedded in digital platforms shape work-related movements across borders.
The project focuses on the relationship-management practices of two specific groups: research workers and business professionals.
Publications
Articles
Lulle, Aija. 2025. "How Return Migration Becomes a Viable Option in Older Age." International Migration 63, no. 2 (April): e70006.
https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.70006
Puzo, Ieva, and Lulle, Aija. 2025. "Recentring Intimacy in Hopping (Im)mobilities of Academic Precarity." Population, Space and Place 31, no. 8 (November): e70132.
https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.70132
News
Events
05.12.2024 - Seminar Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora
Conferences
- Presentations at international conferences
Sedlenieks, K. 5.11.2025. Reconceptualising Europe as a society governed by kinship. In: World Anthropological Union Congress 2025. Unearthing Humanity: Critical and Urgent Epistemic Redefinitions in World Anthropologies. Antigua, Guatemala.
I invite to look at the European kinship as if through the eyes of an alien – that is without the received wisdom of European tradition of self-image and by that re-think the core elements of European society.
If we adapt the view proposed by Needham half a century ago and later followed by others that kinship is about a particularly salient relations in any given society, then what are these “particularly salient relationships” in Europe? It has been argued by Needham, Schneider, Sahlins, McKinnon and others that the concept of kinship represents the European view on the bonds between people and that these bonds in European view stem naturally from the fact of birth; alternatively they can also be rooted in “law”, that is in marriage and perhaps - friendship. But the first is more important and the second is only mimicking the first. However, surprisingly, European thinkers and lay people alike constantly downgrade the ties that stem from birth as inappropriate and somehow backward and contaminated – in particular when it comes to the public and adult affairs or the society and the state.
Taking this in consideration I propose that we need to dismantle the theory of European kinship as rooted in the fact of birth and instead propose that the “particularly salient relationships” is a dynamic concept in Europe, tied to the process of “growing up” – when one is born the kin ties dominate, but with growing up, these are supposed to wither away to be substituted by ties that are constructed on the basis of more or less rational choice. Europe in this view is a thoroughly kin-based society. Not only birth-related issues are fundamental for understanding European citizenship and economy (though inheritance), but the general setup of the state is also deeply tied with this dynamic concept of kinship as integrated with growing up.Kiscenko, D. 30.10.2025. Performative or Transformative? Gender Equality Plans and the Researcher Experience. In: Third Annual BASEES Baltic Study Group Workshop. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland.
This study examines the current state of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) at Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU), Latvia, with a particular focus on gender equality. Conducted between March and May 2025, the research combines institutional document analysis with qualitative data from ten semi-structured interviews involving academic staff, early-career researchers, human resources personnel, and senior university leadership.
The findings reveal a significant disconnect between RSU’s formal commitments to gender equality - such as its Gender Equality Action Plan - and their practical implementation. While institutional policies meet procedural standards at the national and EU level, they lack transformative ambition. Identified shortcomings include the use of binary and non-inclusive language, absence of intersectional data collection, insufficient leadership diversity targets, and weak accountability mechanisms for discrimination and harassment.
Interview data further illuminate how entrenched hierarchies, informal expectations, and work overload inhibit progress toward equity goals. Although women are numerically dominant in teaching and mid-level roles, men retain control over strategic and reputational leadership positions. Structural barriers persist in recruitment, career advancement, and caregiving support, particularly affecting early-career and international staff. Additionally, DEI-related training and feedback systems are fragmented and under-resourced.
Sedlenieks, K. 22.10.2025. The state and the Afterworld. In: Shifting States: EASA Anthropologies of the State Network Conference. Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
How can we understand what individuals think about the state or the political community, and how they imagine the relationships within it? The most straightforward approach would be to observe their actions – yet this offers limited insight into the concepts and ideas they hold. Alternatively, one might conduct interviews, though their reliability is often contested. In this presentation, I propose an indirect method: examining conceptions of the afterlife as a means of reflecting on this life and its political order. This approach, admittedly, also depends on interviews or self-reflection and thus lacks the advantages of direct observation or participant observation. The theoretical framework draws on classical assumptions – from Marx to Weber and Durkheim – concerning the relationship between social reality and religious ideas. Empirically, it builds on examples from preliminary interviews conducted in recent years in Latvia.
Kiscenko, D. 4.06.2025. Embodied mobility and relational entanglements: fertility rituals, pregnancy, and the enduring field. In: 17th International Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore: Unwriting. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland.
This paper reflects on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017-2018 on fertility rituals in Montenegro, where son preference remains present in both historical and contemporary contexts (Stump 2011, UNDP 2012). While participating in womb massages and rituals aimed at conceiving a male child, my body became both a site of knowledge and entanglement. After returning to Latvia, I discovered I was pregnant. Several months later, I gave birth to a boy.
This experience challenges conventional notions of fieldwork as a detached or bounded activity. I argue that fieldwork can remain embedded in the researcher’s everyday life, continuing to shape their understanding of the field and themselves. My pregnancy, as an outcome of embodied participation, illustrates the enduring presence of the field and the fluid boundaries between personal and academic realms.
By centring the researcher’s body as a site of knowledge production, this paper engages broader questions around mobility, relational ties, and lived entanglements. It highlights how movement - physical, emotional, or reproductive - is shaped by and shapes the networks in which it occurs.
Ultimately, I propose that fieldwork is not something we leave behind - it moves with and within us. This perspective invites a rethinking of ethnography as an ongoing, embodied process that blurs binaries such as researcher/research participant, field/home, and personal/professional, offering new insight into the relational dynamics that underpin knowledge production.
Krebs, V. 7.–11.07.2025. Weaving Networks of Rural Economic Sustainability. In: 30th European Society for Rural Sociology Congress. Rīga Stradiņš University, Rīga, Latvia.
We will look at how a rural area of high unemployment and poverty grew into a sustainable local economy, first focused around local food, and later expanded into a place of national vacation/entertainment attraction by partnering with other local communities – such as artists, musicians, and similar folks in nearby towns.
It all started with a local economic development professional making her weekly visit to the local Farmer’s Market. The market was in an area of high unemployment and poverty after the local steel mill and coal mines all closed down. After several failed attempts to spur the local economy, the leader of this economic development organisation saw the future of this rural area in the transactions and interactions taking place in the Farmer’s Market. There was a vibrant, although very small, economy self-organizing every week – they just needed some organizing and financial help to scale this budding economy.
Through weaving networks of many fragmented communities in this poor region, the economic development organisation connected “many to many others” and the local economy grew in activity, size, and resilience. This growth soon included neighboring communities, which brought their own unique resources and abilities to this expanding diverse regional network.
Having studied Sociology, Complex Adaptive Systems, Network Science and Rural Economics the leadership of this economic development organisation took a guided bottom-up, “social” approach to building this local economy. Several top-down approaches of economic development had already failed in this area. A different approach was needed... and succeeded!
We will share the history of this economic emergence using stories and social/economic network maps showing how connections and collaboration created a vibrant community.
Puzo, I. 27.02.2025. Between knowledge and intimacy? Employment-related decision-making among international scholars in Japan and Latvia. In: Conference: New Pathways, New Perspectives: Migration to Non-Traditional Destinations. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
In this paper, I critically examine oft taken for granted rhetoric about academic mobility as a desirable move. I do so by zooming in on how mobility decisions are coproduced by researchers and people important to them. Based on semi-structured interviews with international scholars in Japan and Latvia as well as other ethnographic data, I highlight the ways in which researchers center personal relationships, intimacies and kin ties—including hopes for creating them—when making decisions about their potential employment locales. Through these narratives, I question assumptions about the centers of knowledge production in “the West” as the most desirable places for advancing careers and building lives.
While the “ideal” researcher is often portrayed as someone unencumbered by close personal ties and dedicating their life to science, the lived reality for many scholars, however, is quite different. They struggle to balance a multitude of professional and personal facets of their lives, especially as they grow older, create families of their own, and assume increasing care responsibilities. These struggles are exacerbated by research policies and employment structures that increasingly prioritise short-term employment contracts facilitating, in turn, the movements of research workers from one institution to another, both within one country and across borders. It is in this context that, through the perspectives discussed in this paper, I subtly destabilise the geographical hierarchies of global knowledge hubs and highlight how, when centering intimacies and other personal ties, more peripheral locales—or non-traditional migration destinations—may turn into desirable destinations for research workers.
Morell, M. 23.–26.07.2024. On the sacredness of the concrete scale in urban conflict. A dispatch from the Maltese frontline. In: European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) 18th Biennial Conference: Doing and Undoing with Anthropology. Barcelona, Spain
In this paper I aim to explore the sacralisation of the scale of the concrete that many social movements across world profess in their opposition to development projects. While on the one hand the character of the concrete is expressed through the denunciation and mobilisation against urbanisation projects located in a specific time and place, on the other such concreteness manifests itself in the severing these from the economic model that encourages them, hence precluding any kind of struggle against it.
By illustrating this double movement with the heuristic capacity of the changing economic vision of the Maltese state in the last half century (from tourism development to the attraction of financial assets), I determine a continuum based on the spurring of the brick-and-mortar economy opposed by the laudable struggle carried out by organisations such as Moviment Graffitti, one that among other programmatic axes opposes these speculative projects. Yet the ritualised form that its protest takes privileges the local scale to the point of sacralising it, thus avoiding the questioning of the economic policy encouraged by the Maltese authorities.
I conclude that although the sacralisation of the concrete scale is strategically positive to be able to create alliances between agencies of all sorts where these projects take place, the lack of a connection of these with the national dynamics of the promotion of tourism and the attraction of financial assets only reinforces a Sisyphean struggle that does not seem to have an end date.
- Panels at international conferences
Sedlnieks, K., Brkovic, C., Dzenovska D. 05.11.2025. Panel: Rethinking anthropological categories for understanding Europe. In: World Anthropological Union Congress 2025. Unearthing Humanity: Critical and Urgent Epistemic Redefinitions in World Anthropologies. Antigua, Guatemala.
Anthropology has been much criticized from within and outside the discipline for its Eurocentric and colonial past. Anthropological concepts are routinely found to be rooted in Eurocentric assumptions. This critique cuts to the very foundations of the discipline, namely its scientific approach and its comparative method. In other words, anthropology has been subject to relentless critique, on occasion raising the question of whether it is possible or worthwhile to engage in anthropological research at all. And yet, a view from outside and thinking across differences has remained a landmark analytical tool in anthropology. In this aspect European societies, including their ways of producing knowledge, remain understudied: they have rarely (if ever) enjoyed the analytical benefits of a distanced perspective. Most of the time, European societies tend to be analyzed either as centres of modernity to be deconstructed with the help of home-grown critical theory or as “home” by minority scholars–for example, from Eastern Europe–using the tools that might be rooted through a non-European trajectory, but are ultimately subordinated to it (for example, postcolonial theory).
If scholars from other parts of the world venture to study Europe, they too use the concepts of the natives (that is, Europeans), but don't necessarily distance from them via a non-Western perspective. We believe that such a hegemonic approach, whereby both analytical concepts and their critiques start and end in Europe–or the West more broadly–impoverishes anthropology in general and European/American ethnography in particular, curtails non-euro-centric theoretical developments, and hinders the world-wide decolonization efforts underway.
In this panel, we invite authors to present papers that distance themselves from (or even discard with) the Euro-centric theoretical and analytical perspectives. We welcome attempts at studying Europe from a radically distanced perspective (which might come also from minority traditions inside Europe or the West). The intention here is to free the imagination and think about how anthropology might be practiced if it were less rooted in European/Western tradition and perspective as it has been.
Blog
Research team
- PhD Ieva Puzo
- Assoc. prof. Klāvs Sedlenieks
- Assoc. prof. Aija Lulle
- Assoc. prof. Olga Cara
- PhD Marc Morell
- MLIR Valdis Krebs
- PhD cand. Diāna Kiščenko
- PhD Elza Lāma
Cooperation partners
- PhD Christian S. Ritter, Karlstad University
- Asoc. prof. Zane Vārpiņa, The Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies
