Class dynamics in Tajikistan: Development of urban middle class at the intersection of migration and capital

Abstract

AbstractThis study explores the formation of the urban middle class in Tajikistan, a low‐income country in which large outmigration has developed over the past decades. Our study uses a Bourdieusian framework to note the ways international migration creates opportunities for class in the context of socio‐political constraints, which hinder upward social mobility of Tajikistan's population. Drawing from ethnographic research in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, our study investigates the cultural production of the urban middle class and contextualises its contested nature. We address the dynamic quality of class distinctions through the lens of culture, status, and symbolic values to unpack social and cultural processes that shape the formation of class in post‐Soviet Tajikistan. We argue that although managing competing constraints, Tajik migrants use migration‐related capital to become a part of the growing middle class. Our study contributes to scholarship on migration and class and suggests that analytical attention to different types of capital allows for a better understanding of class formation in sending countries.