Three essays on economic consequences of new accounting regulation and bank accounting

Abstract

This doctoral research in human geography examines the relation between disaster risks and human (im)mobilities through a case study in Tajikistan's Pamir Mountains. This work constitutes a longitudinal ethnography of the residents of the Bartang Valley, who live under the threat of environmental hazards such as floods, avalanches, and rockslides. Qualitative methods were implemented, including observations, interviews, mobile methods, autoethnography, and audiovisual methods. The research touches upon issues of post-Soviet transition, livelihood sustainability, environmental hazards, and risk perceptions, and gives insight into everyday activities and spirituality in the Bartang Valley. The work is structured around two main research topics: involuntary immobility induced by physical inaccessibility and voluntary immobility enhanced by place attachment. Hazards impact the state of roads and vehicles and impair rural-urban mobilities, which are essential to the livelihoods of the Bartangi people. The vulnerability of these livelihoods-and of the mobility infrastructure-to environmental hazards is increased by the general level of economic poverty in the Valley. Frequent mobility disruptions reduce the accessibility of the Valley and can lead to involuntary immobility. Despite these risks and low accessibility, place attachment is deep among residents who generally express strong bonds with their valley. Many remain in their villages or return after years spent working in other parts of Tajikistan or in Russia. Most of those who are displaced by destructive hazards choose to stay in the Valley, relocating within or not far from their village. Place attachment, immobility, and adaptive capacity are envisioned as mutually reinforcing phenomena, and the mobility-immobility and voluntary-involuntary continuums are explored in their dynamic and fluctuating dimensions.Taking accessibility, mobility disruptions, and place attachment as core research topics has led to a rather hybrid work at the intersection between studies on the environment-migration nexus, on rural-urban, daily, or circular mobilities, and more classical ethnographic works on rural mountainous communities. At the theoretical level, this work argues for a better integration of concepts of the "mobilities turn" into research on environmental mobilities in order to encompass a wider range of mobility patterns on multiple spatial and time scales, to examine (im)mobility aspirations and potentials, to explore infrastructure and materialities, and to include immobility. Through an analysis of individual place attachment and risk perception, this work also reaffirms the importance of cultural geography for the field of environmental mobilities.

Pluralising the climate change-migration nexus: explorations of environmental im/mobilities, perceptions and politics

“…First of all, given its focus on grounded realities, much of the research is focused on ethnographic data examining how people practice, negotiate and give meaning to their everyday im/mobilities. A growing number of studies for instance examines the emotional dimensions connected to im/mobilities in the context of environmental change, looking at daily experiences and perceptions of moving or of resistance towards moving (Adams, 2016;Blondin, 2021a;Kothari & Arnall, 2019;Parsons, 2019;Suliman et al, 2019). Such work takes into account the cultural situatedness of mobilities, such as the roles of indigenous knowledge, history and context (Suliman et al, 2019;Whyte et al, 2019).…”

“…Also non-migration, i.e. staying in place despite adverse environmental changes, has been increasingly a focus of research in this field (Adams, 2016;Ayeb-Karlsson et al, 2019;Blondin, 2021aBlondin, , 2021bFarbotko & Lazrus, 2012;Mallick & Schanze, 2020).…”

“…One of the central principles of the environmental mobilities approach is the multi-scalar relationality between mobilities and immobilities. Simply put, this means that mobilities should not be considered as isolated, but as always in relation to each other and to the non-mobile (Blondin, 2021a;Zickgraf, 2018a). Socio-economic power relations affect climate mobilities in multiple ways.…”

“…Just as the relationality of mobilities and immobilities can stretch across space, it can also stretch across temporal scales. As for example Blondin (2020Blondin ( , 2021aBlondin ( , 2022 shows, residents in the isolated Bartang valley in Tajikistan depend on adequate infrastructure to be able to engage in necessary short-term mobilities, such as travelling to urban centres for educational, health and public services. Without access to such necessary short-term mobilities, for example when roads are increasingly blocked due to climate change-related extreme weather events or when they decay due to lack of maintenance and public funding, remaining in the isolated valleys becomes increasingly difficult.…”

“…digital communication or road infrastructures for im/mobilities (e.g. Bettini, Gioli & Felli, 2020;Blondin, 2021a;Boas, 2020;Madianou, 2015), they primarily take human movements as the starting point of analysis. Future research could take the environmental mobilities approach further on this point, by centring for example on an object or environmental event and its im/mobile dynamics in order to understand its implications (Boas, Kloppenburg, van Leeuwen & Lamers, 2018;Iles, 2004).…”