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Among the Orthodox Christians on the Balkans, the rituals of Christian baptism and marriage traditionally give rise to ritual kinship relationships, not only among individuals but also among family groups that were until then unrelated. Only among Bulgarians, Serbians, and Macedonians, these relationships are carried on hereditarily and are constructed according to the patrilineal kinship model. The godfather's role ( kumstvo) is inherited as symbolic capital by the family-kin groups of both the godparents and the godchildren. These are relations of symbolic inequality and have a ritual character: both the calendar feast cycle and the lifecycle rituals are marked by symbolic rights and obligations, which are still observed until the present day in most Bulgarian families, for example, mandatory gift exchange. The belief in the power of the godparent's curse is still alive today in a number of regions in Bulgaria. On the other hand, the godparent tradition among Bulgarians acquired new meaning and new dimensions during the decades of socialism and postsocialist transition. During the last two or three decades, the godparent relationship has become a way of building new social networks, often of a clientelist nature. More and more often, ritual kinship relations are used for benefits and hierarchical ascent, similarly to nepotism. This process leads to the reformation of social networks—it still functions as social capital, but to each new generation. Every new family chooses different godparents, thus creating new social networks. Research about godparent relations among Bulgarians and, more generally, on the Balkans, is based on both existing studies on the subject and on the author's personal fieldwork research in Bulgaria.

This volume includes nine contributions by authors from Bulgaria, Germany, Serbia and the United States and provides innovative interdisciplinary research on the Balkans on the interface of linguistics and anthropology. It has a focus on current phenomena of exile, diaspora, minorities, ethnic groups, and changes in the identity of local communities and individuals as globalization unfolds on the Balkans. This approach adds narrative inquiry, linguistic biographies and sociolinguistics to the new tools for Balkanology. This book deals with numerous aspects of mobility and migration, such as: bi-/multiculturalism, bi-/multilingualism, the relation of mobility to space and time, space as an interacting phenomenon, the problematization of the border, mobility in everyday life of the community and individuals, the relationship of the individual towards the community, migration discourse, the relationship between narration and migration, transnational identities, rituals of separation, rural-urban mobility, the phenomenon of para-urbanity, second and third generation migrants, changes in social networks and the gender aspect of migrations.

The article reveals the peculiarities of migration processes of the Bulgarians to the Ural regions, the formation and development of Bulgarian communities in the 1920s - 1930s. The main sources of the study include archival documents, especially the materials of investigation cases and statistical outputs that are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The study defines two migration flows of the Bulgarians to the Ural - from the places of their traditional settlement in the Western regions of the USSR due to collectivization and dispossession of kulaks and from different regions of Bulgaria - as a consequence of political emigration. Ural Bulgarians that came to the region as a result of voluntary and forced migrations took part in industrialization process and worked mainly in industrial enterprises and forestry administration. Many of them were subjected to repressions during the period of 1937-1938.