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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.
KEY WORDS
New Silk Road, geopolitics, geoeconomics, Georgia, Free Industrial Zones, labour
Introduction
The post-Soviet republic of Georgia is currently the recipient of large-scale infrastructural investments. This development [or developments] is only partially a response to the long-standing need for enhancing connectivity within the country. On the contrary, it is pitched by local and foreign actors alike as a bid to solidify the nation s position as a transit corridor in the context of the grandiose assemblage of logistical projects known as The New Silk Road (Zabakidze & Beradze, 2017) or officially as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiative, launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. While the extension, the routes and the territorial impact of this project are still under discussion, the Chinese government expects a traffic of US$24 trillion worth of commodities by 2030 and is engaged in an unprecedented infrastructural effort, initially allocating almost a billion dollars to activate the BRI s various component corridors.
As many have argued, logistics entails far more than just the business of transporting commodities from one place to another; instead, it produces spaces, engendering new relations and spatial dynamics both locally and transnationally (Cowen, 2014; Easterling, 2014; Neilson, 2012). The network of corridors that is projected to compose the New Silk Road is expected to generate new markets on its way - a much sought-after outlet for restless Chinese...