The project is innovative and promising. It focuses on an extremely sensitive topic for Bulgarian society, namely the dynamics of Bulgarian migration after 1989 and the significant number of Bulgarian citizens who chose to live outside Bulgaria.
The scale and seriousness of the object under consideration make the project a fundamental scientific study that aims to develop a new understanding of the relationship between Bulgarian emigrants and Bulgaria through the perspective of the opportunities they can generate for the country and not through the perception of emigration as a loss of human capital.
The starting thesis for the current project is that mobile Bulgarian citizens in the EU have the potential to contribute significantly to the development of Bulgaria in key areas such as economy and entrepreneurship, socio-cultural transfer of values and experience, political stability, and quality of democracy.
ConnectBG is an interdisciplinary research project combining diverse expertise in migration and integration, demography, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, economics, and political science. The research is based on an analysis of documents, a large set of media archives, and on-field research, including a significant number of interviews with Bulgarians living abroad a study of the specific case. The triad of mobility, citizenship, and a digital turn is the conceptual framework of this innovative project, which, although based on the specific example of Bulgaria, theoretically fits into current social science debates of global significance.
ConnectBG has the ambition to develop an innovative conceptual and methodological framework for valorizing the impact of migration on countries of origin, using the example of mobile Bulgarian citizens in the EU and Bulgaria.
The project also promotes a change in perceptions and practices by adopting a participatory approach. Due to the complex and ambitious nature of the project, achieving the research objectives is only possible with the joint work of a broad interdisciplinary scientific team, together with the involvement of stakeholders and media in the project activities.
The research unfolds in three main directions: a study of the civil trajectories of mobile Bulgarian citizens in the EU; an analysis of national policies regarding Bulgarian citizens living abroad, and a review of good practices in achieving positive results of migration and development policies.
Fundet by National Science Fund 2023-2026