Central Asian Migrants Research Articles

Study of the value sphere of migrants from Central Asia as a factor of socio-psychological adaptation

The key direction of the state national policy of the Russian Federation is the successful social and cultural adaptation of foreign citizens in the Russian Federation, and their integration into Russian society. The article presents the results of a study of the value sphere of personality of young migrants from Central Asian countries. Both personal values and cultural values have been studied. The methodological framework of the study was the theoretical approach to the study of values by S. Schwartz and the cross-cultural approach to the study of the characteristics of different cultures by G. Hofstede. A comparative analysis of the value profiles of Russian youth and migrants from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan was carried out. The empirical study found that the dominant values of young migrants are: kindness, safety, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation. When comparing the values of individual values, it was found that among young migrants all values are more pronounced than among young people from Russia. Comparing cultural values, it was found that uncertainty avoidance and masculinity among young migrants are lower than among young people from Russia. Taking into account these features of the value sphere of Central Asian migrants, as well as their connection with psychological acculturation strategies, the authors come to the conclusion that it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the value profile of migrants as a factor of psychological adaptation when providing socio-psychological assistance.

Мигранты из стран Центральной Азии на рынке труда Свердловской области в зеркале социологического исследования

International migration significantly affects demographic and socio-economic development of regions. The study aims to assess the situation and characteristics of adaptation of Central Asian migrants in the regional labour market and identify general trends. The sociological study was conducted in March–May 2023 in Sverdlovsk oblast using a questionnaire survey and intelligence interviews. Selected questionnaires of migrants from countries seen as the main suppliers of labour power to the regional labour market — Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — were analysed. The obtained results confirmed some conclusions of previous relevant studies and revealed new trends. The labour market of Sverdlovsk oblast is characterised by a high proportion of immigrants from Tajikistan, a growing share of people employed in the industrial sector and the tendency of immigrants from Kyrgyzstan to organise their own business. The research described the factors that help migrants adapt to the regional labour market: specific legal regulation (in Kyrgyzstan), knowledge of the Russian language, family ties, education, formal employment, length of stay in Russia, naturalisation. To improve the migration policy, it is recommended to control and stimulate formal employment of foreign workers by establishing a unified database and constantly monitoring information about labour migrants and their family members. Results of this study may be useful for specialists in the field of labour migration. Considering the development of new migration policy tools, it is necessary to pay attention to this prospective area of research, particularly, to the issues of labour patents and organised recruitment.

From Workers to Entrepreneurs: Central Asian Migrants in the Russian Business Market

From Workers to Entrepreneurs: Central Asian Migrants in the Russian Business Market

Labor Migrants at Risk: Formal and Informal Insurance Strategies among Central Asians in Moscow

This article studies formal and informal risk-mitigating practices among Central Asian labor migrants in Moscow. The migration context is inherently uncertain, implying that migrants may try to protect themselves against potential risks by resorting to insurance mechanisms. However, migration is a unique situation that raises a number of questions. First of all, do formal protective institutions or insurance markets exist in the country of arrival? Secondly, if state or market insurance schemes exist, are they accessible to all migrants? What do at-risk labor migrants do when they cannot rely on formal schemes? Central Asian people are used to relying on social networks and informal practices in their home country. Previous articles have shown that these informal networks may be transposed in a migratory context, suggesting that informal risk-mitigating practices can be a substitute for formal insurance schemes and act as a social safety net for precarious migrants not covered by social security or insurance contracts. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between informal and formal insurance schemes and whether these can act as a substitute or complement among Tajikistani and Uzbekistani migrants, based on a survey of 1,213 labor migrants in Moscow.

Динамика численности среднеазиатских этносов в Томской области (конец XIX – первые десятилетия XXI в.)

The dynamics of the number of Central Asian migrants in the Tomsk region in the late nineteenth century to the first decades of the 21st century is considered. Based on the population censuses of the Russian Empire, the USSR and the Russian Federation, the author comes to the conclusion that immigrants from the Central Asian regions of the country in a small number (about 110 people) were registered in Tomsk and Tomsk County already in the 19th century. In Soviet times, the number of immigrants from Central Asia and Kazakhstan had a constant tendency to increase, their number it amounted to 7.7 thousand people in 1989. In the post-Soviet period, the number of representatives of titular ethnic groups of the Central Asian republics fluctuated: in 2002 – 4015, in 2010 – 8211, in 2020 – 6877 people, not all of them belonged to the titular ethnic group. Thus, the share of representatives of Central Asian peoples in the population of the region did not exceed 0.8 %.

IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE MOBILITIES OF CENTRAL ASIAN MIGRANTS

The COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictive measures introduced in Russia and Central Asian countries have seriously disrupted the mobility patterns of migrant workers from Central Asia. The purpose of this study is to describe the new patterns of mobility that emerged both domestically and internationally during the COVID-19 pandemic, to study the policy measures taken by the governments of Russia and Central Asian states and their consequences for the mobility of migrants from Central Asia. To identify salient pandemic-related events impacting mobility and changing patterns of mobility of Central Asian migrants, the study heavily relied on a combination of pandemic-related official documents and national and regional news media sources.

Broken Dreams in Ashkhabad

The purpose of this article is to present a discussion on the main political contradictions (both domestic and international) of post-independence Turkmenistan. As part of a broader effort to understand the social and power dynamics resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union for the countries of Central Asia, we apply a descriptive analysis of some of the principal domestic and foreign policy events involving the Ashkhabad government, as well as the main implications for the lives of Turkmen (and Central Asian) migrants in the Russian Federation, who have chosen to leave their country of origin in search of better economic and educational opportunities. As a result of the present effort, we observe that the Central-Asian country not only became a laboratory for the exercise of a local version of a 'Cult of Personality' of the leader (resembling the phenomenon occurred during the 1930-1950s within Stalin’s Soviet Union), as well as the precarious operationalization on the part of Turkmenistan of its political neutrality in view of an economic dependence from Moscow and, more recently, from China. Furthermore, the present article evidences the difficulties of adaptation and assimilation of Turkmen migrants (and Central Asians more generally) in Russia, due, in part, to a ‘stereotyped’ view about migrants on the part of Russian public opinion.

Employment of Central Asian Migrant Workers in Russia during the COVID‑19 Pandemic

In the context of the COVID‑19 pandemic and the economic crisis in Russia, the labour market has changed, affecting the foreign labour force, which is an important category of it. In these changed conditions, the study of the employment of labour migrants from Central Asia is becoming more relevant. Based on a sociological study conducted by the author in Russia in 2020–2021 among 900 labour migrants from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, the type and scope of their employment at home are analysed. The type and scope of their employment in Russia, the method of finding a job and competition with Russians, the type of colleagues and the length of stay in Russia are analysed. The analysis analyses the average monthly and hourly wages in Russia on average per year in rouble and dollar terms and participation in the formation of the family budget at home, the existence of a written agreement with the employer and the reasons for its absence in Russia during the COVID‑19 pandemic in the country and gender sections.

Central Asian Migrants at the Russian Labor Market: Before the Pandemic

Central Asian Migrants at the Russian Labor Market: Before the Pandemic

Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin by Eugene M. Avrutin

Reviewed by: Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin by Eugene M. Avrutin Kimberly St. Julian Varnon (bio) Eugene M. Avrutin, Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). 140 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-1-350-09728-5. Eugene M. Avrutin's Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin is a new release in Bloomsbury's Russian Shorts series. The brief, easy-to-read monograph is a timely and excellent addition to the literature on race and racism in Russia and the Soviet Union. The volume begins with the 2013 Biryulevo protests, which remain a frightening reminder of the power of racism in driving violence against Central Asians in contemporary Russia. Avrutin uses Biryulevo to underscore how Central Asian migrants in Russia are racialized as Black and how the Russian crowds use inflammatory, white supremacist language to mark Central Asians and Caucasians as others (P. 3). From these scenes, the reader learns that "Russia for Russians" and other racist sentiments are not new but a continuation of racialization and othering of ethnic minorities dating back to the tsarist period of Russian history. The introduction also provides readers with a cursory but helpful overview of the treatment of race in the secondary literature in Russian [End Page 377] and Soviet history. Avrutin argues that due to Russia's lack of an overseas empire, its absence in both the African slave trade and the Scramble for Africa, and the international image of the anti-racist Soviet Union, racism and racial thinking in Russia have often been overlooked in academic discourse. He correctly points out that race has often been portrayed as a nonissue in Soviet historiography. He asks: What factors account for this silence (dismissing race-based thought and practices)? Why have scholars shown so little interest in historical and theoretical discussions of race? (P. 4). Avrutin powerfully demonstrates that racial ideologies and racial hierarchies have been part of Russian cultural and social history throughout the 150 years that his book covers. From the premise of the "messy" color line – one in which the ideas and process of racialization are not fixed nor stable – Avrutin diagrams for readers the forms and functions of race in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. He argues that race did not dictate citizenship or social position in Russia or the Soviet Union, "but by rejecting the premise that an individual could belong to multiple identities, the state's classification system primed people to see the world in unambiguous racial terms" (P. 7). Thus, the classification and ordering of groups within the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union according to nationality or ethnicity can be better contextualized in a paradigm of race. The book is organized chronologically into four chapters. Chapter 1, "The Empire's Races," relates the development of anthropological and "scientific" thinking on race in the ethnically and culturally diverse Russian Empire. The chapter also places Russia within Western European discourses on race and racial differences in the nienteenth century. One of the most interesting sections of this chapter examines how Russian anthropologists and race ideologues approached Jews and other ethnic minorities within the empire. Race scientists such as the anthropologist Aleksei Arsen'evich Ivanovskii were confounded by Russia's Jewish population and categorized them as a distinct, non-Russian, race. Imperial expansion merged with the development of social sciences making the myriad of ethnic groups within the empire's borders a boon for Russian anthropologists and reified the idea that Russia was unique relative to its European imperial counterparts. Chapter 2, "Boundaries of Exclusion," builds on the previous chapter's explanation of how race and racial difference were discussed and applied in academics and research. It explores the execution of racialization through how Russianness was defined and utilized by the [End Page 378] tsar and the imperial government to engender public support, maintain political order, and oppress minority nationalities. This chapter draws on Avrutin's expertise in Jewish history with a fascinating discussion of the 1913 Beilis trial that ties the Russian reaction to the case to similar racist attitudes in the United States toward African Americans in the post–Reconstruction Era. Another...

Analysis of cultural values of Russian youth and Central Asian migrants at the present stage by G. Hofstede methodology)

Analysis of cultural values of Russian youth and Central Asian migrants at the present stage by G. Hofstede methodology)

Central Asian and Chinese Migrants in Public Opinion: Ural and Siberian Cases

Central Asian and Chinese Migrants in Public Opinion: Ural and Siberian Cases

Highly Skilled Migrants from Central Asian States at the Russian Labor Market

The article examines the features of employment in the Russian labor market of highly skilled labor migrants from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The main attention is paid to their economic activities, occupations, wages and labor intensity in comparison with similar characteristics of less skilled Central Asian labor migrants and highly skilled migrants from other post-Soviet states. It is concluded that highly skilled migrants from Central Asia, being more successful than their less skilled compatriots, lose in competition for the best jobs to highly skilled migrants from other countries. Special attention is paid to the behavior of highly skilled Central Asian migrants during the pandemic in 2020, when they demonstrated a high potential for adaptation to the extraordinary transformation of the labor market. Regarding the situation as temporary during the first wave of the pandemic (spring 2020), confident in their ability to find a job in Russia and not wanting to leave it, highly qualified Central Asian migrants did not err in their expectations, strengthening their position in the Russian labor market. During the second wave of the pandemic (autumn 2020), their optimism, based on assessing the possibilities of finding a decent job in Russia, satisfaction with conditions and wages, increased even more. The empirical base of the study was the results of sociological surveys of labor migrants from the CIS countries, Ukraine and Georgia in 2017, as well as during the first and second waves of the pandemic (2020).

Social Integration of Migrants from Central Asia and other post-Soviet States (Comparative Study)

The article examines the relationship between migrants to Russia and the host society, using surveys taken in the spring of 2017 and in the autumn of 2020. According to German-speaking authors, social integration is one of the stages of forming comprehensive integration of foreigners. Public opinion surveys show that migrants from Central Asia are the most undesirable for Russians. That is why the article gives comparative study of social integration of immigrants from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan compared to other post-Soviet states (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine). The central focus is given to migrants’ self-perception of their place in the Russian society and to evaluation of quality of interpersonal interaction with the citizens. The results obtained from the study show that migrants from Central Asia are the least integrated into the host society and more oriented towards the sending state compared to migrants from other countries. Also, despite reasonable Russian language proficiency, migrants from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan communicate with the representatives of their own ethnos in every aspect of their lives more often than migrants from other Soviet republics. At the same time, they identify themselves with the citizens of Russia less frequently. The reason for such low social integration of Central Asian migrants compared to other migrant groups could be their desire to return to their homeland and that they may view migration to Russia just as a way of survival in the unfavourable conditions in their country of origin.

Uchyot and Foucault: Drug Users and Migrants in Post-Soviet Central Asia and Russia

Abstract In this paper, we unpack the uchyot (“registration”) system using Foucault’s regime-based approach. Uchyot is a Soviet tool for controlling populations by requiring them to register personal information and then sharing this information with the relevant state institutions. This paper explores how uchyot is used to control drug users in Uzbekistan and Central Asian migrants in Russia. It argues that social and economic pressures, combined with strict policies, push unwanted citizens and migrants to engage in risky behaviors or into the shadows of informality and illegality.

The (im)possibility of sociolinguistic hybridity: Power and scaling in post‐soviet, transnational life

AbstractThis paper contributes to disentangling hybridity from assumptions about marginality, resistance and the dissolution of boundaries in sociolinguistic scholarship. To do so, it examines how speakers make certain types of hybrid identities (im)possible through their discursive practices of scaling. Focusing on post‐soviet, Central Asian migrants in the United States, I demonstrate how their discourses on ethnolinguistic identity rely on multiple scalar perspectives, which (re)make boundaries in different ways that (dis)allow for hybrid identities to emerge. I show that speakers engage in such discourses in order to navigate their marginal transnational positionings, and that their emergent hybrid identities do not ensure resistance to national norms or transcend categorical boundaries. These empirical observations, I argue, have implications for conceptualizing the relationship between power, marginality and hybrid forms more broadly.

African Immigrants in Russia

While the Russian migration literature captures well social and economic realities of Central Asian labour migrants, it takes only an infrequent notice of other less visible groups of immigrants. One of such groups, African immigrants, is estimated to consist of about 40,000 individuals, mainly from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper looks at the African immigrants in Russia. After identifying the African immigrants, the article focuses on refugees and economic migrants in more detail. Who are the African immigrants in Russia? How do they see Russia and Finland as the countries of immigration? The study is based on scholarly literature of African immigration to Russia and asylum interview documents of the African asylum seekers in Finland. The most prominent group of Africans in Russia are immigrants distributing advertisements at metro stations in large cities such as Moscow. However, these immigrants struggling with their poor status are only part of the Africans in Russia. The highly educated African diaspora and businessmen trained in the Soviet Union, as well as the staff of the delegations, live well- off lives in Russia and there is little interaction between the above-mentioned “new” immigrant groups. In this article, we focus especially on the “new” immigrants who arrived in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union and their stories of everyday insecurity. International crime and human trafficking enable asylum seekers to move around in Europe today. At the same time, it puts several groups of people, such as women, children and the low-skilled, particularly vulnerable to various forms of exploitation during the journey.

Soviet in Form, National in Content: Central Asian Migrants in the Cultural Infrastructure of Moscow

Unlike the leisure practices of migrants from Central Asia in large Russian cities, which recently came to the attention of researchers, the presence of this population in the urban cultural infrastructure has hardly been studied so far. This research, based on in-depth interviews with members of community-based organizations and artistic groups established by people from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as observation of their activities at various cultural venues in Moscow, discusses the peculiarities of post-Soviet diversity management. In this article I am making two main points: (i) The self-presentations of people of Central Asian origin on various public platforms in Moscow largely involve performing the role of ambassadors of a homogenous 'national culture'. Such a form of cultural behaviour, inherited from Soviet past, allows the participants of corresponding events to achieve guaranteed recognition from both the host site and their compatriots. It legitimizes their presence in the public sphere as agents of the 'dialogue of cultures,' since it fits the dominant discourse of ethnic diversity in Russia. Thus, for the majority of informants, culture turns out to be a kind of 'safe space,' cleansed of the daily troubles associated with labour migration; (ii) it may seem that this kind of self-expression for migrants is determined by social powers: whether the latter are officials, responsible for national policy in Moscow, embassies of Central Asian republics, or public organizations calling themselves 'diasporas'. But with a deeper study of the issue, it turns out that the aforementioned scenarios of self-presentation are still playable without direct influence from the authorities. The explanation is that Central Asian migrants voluntarily accept this representation that is Soviet in form and national in content as far as it makes it possible to symbolically overcome the marginalization that they face.

Habitus and imagined ideals: Attending to (un)consciousness in discourses of (non)nativeness

ABSTRACT This study responds to scholarship that has examined “folk concepts” of (non)nativeness through the lens of imagined ideals of the native speaker, by proposing a framework that integrates both ideals and habits. We operationalize these concepts by drawing from the theoretical notions of chronotope, scale, and habitus. Using data from interviews with Central Asian transnational migrants, we demonstrate how attending to both the habitual and idealized aspects of speakers’ metalinguistic commentary offers a more holistic approach to the study of multilingual repertoires and speakers’ social positionings in relationship to (non)nativeness. Our findings demonstrate how identification as a “(non)native” speaker may become more or less important to participants depending on whether they orient to habits or ideals. We also show that speakers’ use of “discourses of habit”, which emphasize their less conscious linguistic behaviors, may lead to a blurring of the lines between nativeness and non-nativeness. This in turn has implications for theories of agency as resistance to linguistic marginalization, and contributes to applied issues related to language education.

Stereotypes regarding Central Asian migrants’ perception as representatives of the single region culture

The relevance of the studies regarding all levels of cultural interactions between the nations of Central Asia and the Russians can be explained by a number of factors. The people from these countries used to belong to one territorial-political entity of the USSR; these countries used to be geographically closed to Russia. Today the Central Asian countries share similar economic and political interests, stick to the similar strategic priorities as does Russia. The Sverdlovsk region (the Russian Federation) annually receives large migration flows. Significant amount of migrants come from CIS countries, in particular, from Central Asia. In general, the majority of migrants from the CIS countries (The Commonwealth of Independent States) who are currently living in Russia (the data 2018) come from Central Asian countries (67,7 %). The migrants of foreign ethnicities from Central Asia not only fall into the ranks of labour and student migrants on annual basis, but also obtain Russian citizenship. Thus, the issue of perception of Central Asian migrants’ cultural characteristics by the Russians remains relevant. The results of the surveys of Ekaterinburg citizens (2016 and 2019) show that according to their perception they see the migrants from Central Asia as the representatives of the single cultural environment; there is no differentiation between ethnic groups in their views. This fact was confirmed by the content analysis of comments from Russian residents in the group “Science in the Urals”. It showed that the a percentage of Russians interested in this problem, first of all, shows a negative attitude towards migrants from Central Asian countries, stereotypically equating all ethnic groups of migrants from this region.