Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Shuttling More Than Goods: Collective Support Among Turkish-Bulgarian Shuttle Traders, Nikolina Stoykova

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Given that the European Union is a free trade, market-oriented economic zone that should, theoretically, eliminate market distortions that fuel the informal economy, why are we seeing continued participation in the informal economy, specifically, the shuttle trade between Bulgaria and Turkey? Many scholars frequently cite price distortions, market gaps, lucrative exchange rates, and economic survival as prominent reasons, however, these explanations do not suffice in explaining why the shuttle trade thrives 25 years after the communist collapse in Bulgaria. Through the use of meta-linguistic analysis of the interviews and analysis of the individuals that I interviewed, I argue that, in …