Triangulating Ethnicity, Networks and Informality

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By Endre Sik, Center for Social Studies (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary

In the following I will argue that informality is unavoidably and closely connected to two phenomena which themselves are intertwined: ethnicity and networks. These closely intertwined three institutions provide us a model sensitive and complex enough to offer a proper tool to better understand the operation of a fourth institution, the border.

It is a commonplace that ethnicity has crucial role in informal activities. Classic sociology texts confirm this association from all over the world and in regard with a large variety of informal activities (e.g. Light, 1977 and Wiegand, 1994. The role of networks in the course of various forms of informal processes is also well-known (Sik and Wallace, 1999, Sik and Wellman 1999).

The value added of this brief introductory treatise is that I first introduce the papers written for the chapter, and secondly I present the essence of a case study to demonstrate simultaneous and mutually reinforcing impacts of ethnicity, networks and informality.

Various forms of the combined impact of ethnicity and networks on informality is well-illustrated in the first two volumes of this series such as the traditional (adat, Chechnya or uruuchuluk, Kygyzstan) versus the modern (joro, Kyrgyzstan, taksovanie, Uzbekistan, a molestar a otro lado, Guatemala or KhTsB, Armenia), the illegal (blood revenge, Caucasus, mzungu price, East and Sub-Saharan Africa or tenderpreneur, South-Afrika) versus the a-legal (ta’arof, Iran, partiti, Corsica, sadaqa in several regions of Central Asia, ahbap-çavuş, Turkey or wantok and kastom, Melanesia).

There are case studies which lucidly illustrate the intertwined and mutually reinforcing role of ethnicity, informality and informality in the context of migration/mobility as well. For example, hemșehricilik in Turkey means that rural migrants in cities and/or migrants all over the Turkish Diaspora offer favors to those ‘near and dear’. This activity contributes to retaining and even strengthening ethnic identity but also offers informal advantages for those who belong into these circles such as getting job and/or higher income, jump a queue, etc. Ściągnąć in Poland is the equivalent of chain migration (literally meaning ‘pull down/off from’, e.g. an apple from a tree or pulling in a fish on a line. The ethnic networks which are embedded into this activity is also the fertile soil of various forms (and not necessarily tensionless) informal activity.

Instead of a summary, I present the main findings of a case study which not only illustrates the complex and strong relations among informality, ethnicity and networks but analyze them in a context which often plays important role in informal activities: the border.

According to the classic Simmelian concept, the border may act as a bridge, a window and/or a door (van Houtom and Strüver, 2002). The strength of control of various commercial activities and the selection criteria for travelers and traders define whether the border acts as a bridge or as a door, and whether there are any ethnicity and/or network based informal effects which oil the hinges of this door. The selection processes are often tailored to the needs of the actors involved: just as the border control officers need to show their effectiveness to the government, the petty traders and cross-border smuggling businesses deliver to their own clients, thus amounting to practical norms rangings from bribery to nepotism (de Sardan, 2002).

The border-specific intertwined effects of informality, ethnicity and networks can be found practically everywhere when new states with long borders (and more often than not with translocal ethnic diversity) emerge. This was the case in the 1960ies during the decolonization period in Africa and this was definitely a core element of the transformation process in the course of the collapse of the Soviet Union (especially if the new states were weak, then all forms of cross border informal activity had flourished). Between the newly established Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina there were about 400 border crossing points obviously without any chance of enforcing the law of the countries involved. The same is the case in Transnistria region (a quasi-country between Ukraine and Moldova recognised only by Russia) and in several post-colonial countries in Africa (Polese 2006).

Our case study describes cross-border relations in a tri-border zone between Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine (Sik and Surányi, 2014, Sik and Szeitl, 2015). This region is characterized by a special form of ethnicity the so called quasi diaspora, i.e. a non-migrant population living close to the current border that has been transformed from a majority (in their kin-state) to a minority (in the host-state) (Sik-Tóth, 2003, Sik, 2012). This ethnic group has a strong ethnic “We-consciousness” (often encouraged by kin-state politics and policies) and contains strong cross-border networks which are embedded into kin-based and clan-like formation of inter-household cooperation which offer the fertile soil of various forms of informal activities.

The mutually reinforcing characteristics of the four components of our model (ethnicity, networks, informality and border) help the smooth operation of cross-border traffic and explain the high inertia of this complex system are as follows: - they have well-defined but if necessary flexible boundaries - to strengthen ethnicity as “imagined community”, (Anderson, 2006) to maintain the path dependent feature of networks (Sik, 2010), to reinforce the self-defense mechanisms of informal activities, and to define whom to treat as a citizen (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller, 2002) - they have strong capabilities to channel the diverse form of human, network and financial capitals back and forth as well as to shift these capitals among various informal activities, e.g. identical mother tongue as a proxy of ethnicity, as the basis of selection of belonging to networks, as the communication form of informal group (secrecy), and applying for special treatment at the border (Hungarian ethnicity as the basis to claim compensatory citizenship (Harpaz, 2016)).

The role of quasi-diasporic situation in cross-border informal activity becomes especially strong if the border is “weak” or newly created borders like in case in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans after the transformation of the system (Hozic, 2004, Egbert, 2006). We can envision as a global phenomenon that such processes always start small i.e. in the beginning the pettiest forms of informal activities are embedded into ethnically reinforced neighborhood, friendship, family and kinship ties, later develop into a larger scale smuggling business of self-selected, smaller and specialized groups with the same characteristics. While informal trade was based on ethnic inter-household networks as well during and for some time after the collapse of the Soviet regime trading with everyday goods (Czakó and Sik 1999, Sik and Wallace 1999) little by little they converted their ethnicity forged human and network capital into large scale informal enterprises specialized always to goods with the highest profit margin due to high taxes and risk such as gas, alcohol and cigarettes, as well as by the various forms of more capital intensive but profitable forms of trafficking (prostitutes, migrants, refugees, etc.) as well as smuggling (e.g. organ, drug, weapon, animal, etc.).

References

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso books.

Czakó Ágnes – Endre Sik (1999). "Characteristics and Origins of the Comecon Open-air Market." Hungary International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, December, Vol- 23.. No- 4., pp. 715-737.

Egbert, Henrik (2006). "Cross‐border small‐scale trading in south‐eastern Europe: Do embeddedness and social capital explain enough?." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30(2), 346-361.

Harpaz, Yossi (2016). Compensatory citizenship. PhD dissertation, Princeton University, Manuscript.

Hozic, Aida. A. (2004). "Between the cracks: Balkan cigarette smuggling". Problems of Post-Communism, 51(3), 35-44.

Light, Ivan (1977). "The ethnic vice industry, 1880-1944." American Sociological Review, 464-479.

Polese, Abel (2006). "Border-crossing as a strategy of daily survival: the Odessa-Chisinau Elektrichka". Anthropology of East Europe Review, 24 (1): 28–37. http://scholarworks.dlib.indiana.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/viewFile/279/355

Sik, Endre and Barry Wellman (1999). Network Capital in Capitalist, Communist and Post-Communist Countries. Networks in the Global Village, Wellman, Barry (ed.), Westview Press, Boulder. pp. 225-254.

Sik Endre (2010). "Network dependent path dependency." Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol 1, No 1. pp. 77 – 102. http://cjssp.uni-corvinus.hu/index.php/cjssp/article/view/3/5

Sik Endre (2012). "Trust, Network Capital, and informality – Cross-Border Entrepreneurship in the First Two Decades of Post-Communism." Review of Sociology, No. 4 pp. 53-72. http://www.academia.edu/2913657/Endre_Sik_Trust_Network_Capital_and_Informality_-_Cross-Border_Entrepreneurship_in_the_First_Two_Decades_of_Post-Communism

Sik, Endre and Claire Wallace (1999). "The Development of Open-air Markets in East-Central Europe." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, December, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 697-714.

Sik, Endre and Judit Tóth (2003). "Joining an EU identity: integration of Hungary and the Hungarians." In Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration, eds.: Willfried Spohn, Anna Triandafyllidou, Routledge, London, pp. 223-244. http://europeanization.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/europeanization-national-identities-and-migration.pdf

Sik, Endre and Ráchel Surányi (eds.) (2014). The Hungarian/Slovak/Ukrainian tri-border region TÁRKI, Budapest. http://issuu.com/eltetatk/docs/tri-border_hungary/1?e=12707147/11841125

Sik Endre and Blanka Szeitl (2015). "Quasi-diaspora and Cross-border Diaspora in the Hungarian-Slovak-Ukrainian Triborder Region." Szociológiai Szemle 25(4) http://www.szociologia.hu/dynamic/107_125_oldal.pdf

van Houtum, Henk and Anke Strüver (2002). "Borders, Strangers, Doors and Bridges." Space and Polity, 6 (2): 141–146. http://ncbr.ruhosting.nl/html/files/SpaceandPolity2002.pdf

Wiegand, Bruce (1994). "Black money in Belize: The ethnicity and social structure of black-market crime." Social Forces, 73(1), 135-154.

Wimmer, Andreas and Nina Glick-Schiller (2002). "Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-state Building, Migration and the Social Sciences." Global Networks, 2 (4): 301–334