Suffocating borderlands: enduring coping mechanisms amidst tight control in Abkhazia

This article focuses on the solidification of de-facto sovereignty through socio-political and cultural suppression within the contextual framework of temporality and crisis in the borderland environment, of Gal(i), Abkhazia. It highlights the short - and long-term consequences of tight control within a borderland environment and its border communities through the notions of suffocation to conceptually illustrate the embodiment of the socio-cultural and political disenfranchisement and disentanglement from both Abkhaz and Georgian society of the ethnic Georgian minority and their presence in the Gal(i) borderlands. It aims to show how de-facto national (Abkhazian) authorities use multiple socio-political, cultural and material strategies to control an (unwanted) Georgian border population and consolidate dominance for the long term. Lastly it focuses on how a disenfranchised borderland minority handles these situations through the coping strategies of enduring, assimilating and departing.