Reconstructing ‘Home/lands’ in the Russian Federation: Migrant-Centred Perspectives of Displacement and Resettlement

Abstract

One of the most significant migration movements that has taken place in the former Soviet space has been that of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking communities from the other former Soviet republics to the Russian Federation after the collapse of the USSR. In 1991 these communities were displaced within their former ‘homeland/s’, located beyond new political borders and resident within newly independent states, which were undergoing mass social, economic, political and cultural transformation. This article draws upon empirical work conducted amongst those who ‘chose’ to return—members of migrant communities in a number of regions of the Russian Federation—to understand how, at an individual and community level, their displacement, migration and resettlement are being negotiated. The processes of both dislocation and re-location are understood through a ‘home/land’ framework which provides a deeper understanding and interrogation of what underpins changing attachments to place. The article demonstrates how, upon ‘return’, the migrant prioritises the re-creation of an immediately-located ‘home’ in what is often an unknown wider ‘homeland’ territory, a process of re-creation that is more often hindered than facilitated by Russian state and society.