More Remote Yet More Connected? Physical Accessibility and New International Contacts in Tajikistan’s Pamirs Since 1991

Abstract

After the end of the USSR, the mobility infrastructure in Tajikistan followed a trajectory of decay. Transport systems had to be reorganized, mobility practices had to be reshaped, and some areas became less accessible. Meanwhile, new international connections have emerged thanks to new political openness. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2022, this paper offers an empirical analysis of the nexus between remoteness and connectivity by looking at the evolution of physical infrastructure in Tajikistan’s VMKB province over the past thirty years and discussing the rather contradictory yet simultaneous processes of internationalization and marginalization.