My project interrogates the transnational solidarity networks delivering aid to Romania during the 1980s as a de-territorialized pluri-functional and polycentric system of interconnected actors, a model fostering an alternative reading of the second economy. Working on a broad range of sources and within a framework nuancing Cold War binaries, my proposal contributes to local and international scholarship assessing less visible patterns of economic and social change during late socialism. Building on current scholarship on “social remittances”, my study adds a historical and sociological understanding of the role of diasporas in maintaining transnational ties, in the material culture of migration, as well as in the processes of the emergent globalized world of economic, technological, and cultural flows.

A full-length study is available here.