The Georgian logistics revolution: questioning seamlessness across the New Silk Road. (1st April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gambino, Evelina
• Is Part Of: Work, organisation, labour & globalisation. Volume 13:Number 1(2019)
• Page Start: 190
• Page End: 206
• Publication Date: 2019-04-01
• Subjects: New Silk Road -- geopolitics -- geoeconomics -- Georgia -- Free Industrial Zones -- labour; Work -- Periodicals; Labor -- Periodicals; Division of labor -- Periodicals; Industrial relations -- Periodicals; Division of labor; Industrial relations; Labor; Work; Periodicals; 331
• DOI: 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.13.1.0190
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1745-6428

Abstract

Abstract : Georgia, the post-Soviet republic in the South Caucasus, is undergoing its own logistics revolution. The government has pledged to complete by 2020 a spatial plan which aims to turn the country into a transit corridor for the New Silk Road. While this development is still underway, logistics zones - infrastructural hubs, free industrial zones (FIZ), manufacturing areas and malls - are emerging across the Georgian space. The New Silk Road initiative is promoting a perspective of a world without barriers, where logistics is not a means but an end: a world in which connectivity is productive in itself and where geopolitical reasoning has succumbed to geoeconomic calculations. This article aims at problematising this view by providing a grounded analysis of the workings of logistical spaces in Georgia, exploring the discourses, frictions and histories which engender capital accumulation within and beyond the Georgian space.