Suchergebnisse

In this article, we take a look at transitions to employment in Armenia for the highly qualified, focusing on students and graduates. Theoretically, we acknowledge the importance of insights from prior research, including the idea of the transition-to-work as a journey, with our research questions aimed at highlighting specific challenges facing Armenian youth following spatialized and sedentary transition pathways; moving abroad for work and entering the local labour market respectively. As evidence, we make use of interviews conducted with 51 young Armenians in the months that followed the Velvet Revolution of 2018. Discussion highlights factors that inhibit highly qualified youth from finding jobs at home, including perceptions of corruption in the workplace, difficulties associated with entering foreign labour markets and the salience of recent political events.

This working paper presents some initial reflections from a research project on social inclusion in international student mobility, focusing on Erasmus+ and other forms of student exchange in Armenia. Discussion starts with a brief overview of recent developments in the student mobility research field and an identification of geo-political factors that make Armenia strategically important for the European Union, and explain choice of research site. In what follows, we integrate perspectives from a workshop conducted with 45 students in Yerevan along with responses to follow-up questions, with additional perspectives provided by representatives of the Caucasus Research Resource Centre (CRRC) Armenia and Armenian Progressive Youth (APY). Considering the limited scope our research to date, this working paper is exploratory rather than a definitive statement on international student mobility to the EU in Armenia; however, in the forthcoming months we will be expanding the scope of our work, integrating emerging findings into future publications.

With the advent and development of the theory of metafiction, the range of works that can be referred to this phenomenon is constantly expanding, with the deepest origins of metafiction being found in the history of novel as a genre. Modern Russian metafiction, developing in the context of literary centrism rebooting and new practices being created, is widely represented in different strata of modern Russian literature: in elite literature (Pushkin House by A. Bitov, t by V. Pelevin, Blue Fat by V. Sorokin, etc.), in fiction (Happiness Is Possible by O. Zayonchkovsky, Quality of Life by A. Slapovsky, Medvedki by M. Galina, Self- Taught by A. Utkin, etc.), in mass literature (Stylist by A. Marinina, Boys and Girls by E. Kolina, Point of No Return by P. Dashkova, etc.). The article analyzes different metafictional strategies in modern prose. The process of creating literary text is found to be one of the crosscutting subjects of modern metafiction. This is primarily connected with the writers' desire to capture and reflect the complex and contradictory strategies of writing in the 21st century. The article considers different manifestations of metafictional strategy, such as: 'triple literary matryoshka' (Literary Slave: Weekdays and Holidays by N. Sokolovskaya), the theme of translation and mystification (Interlinear Translation by E. Chizhov and Stylist by A. Marinina), the author's reflection (Adaptor by A. Slapovsky), 'novel about a writer' (Happiness is Possible by O. Zayonchkovsky), text created in collaboration with the new type of the reader (Arbeit. The Wide Canvas by E. Popova). All the analyzed texts raise questions about the changing role of the writer and the reader in the modern world and about the new relations between the writer and the publisher.