Table Of ContentBASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies
LABOUR, MOBILITY AND
INFORMAL PRACTICES IN
RUSSIA, CENTRAL ASIA AND
EASTERN EUROPE
POWER, INSTITUTIONS AND MOBILE ACTORS IN
TRANSNATIONAL SPACE
Edited by
Rano Turaeva and Rustamjon Urinboyev
Labour, Mobility and Informal Practices
in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern
Europe
This book explores daily survival strategies of people within the context of failed
states, flourishing informal economies, legal uncertainty, increased mobility and
globalization, where many people, who are forced by the circumstances to be
innovative and transnational, have found their niches outside formal processes
and structures. The book provides a thorough theoretical introduction to the link
between labour mobility and informality and comprises convincing case studies
from a wide range of post-socialist countries. Overall, it highlights the importance
of trust, transnational networks and digital technologies in settings where the rules
governing the economic and social activities of mobile workers are often unclear
and flexible.
Rano Turaeva is a senior scholar affiliated with the Institute for Social and
Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich and an associ-
ated senior researcher at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle
Saale in Germany
Rustamjon Urinboyev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology
of Law at Lund University and Senior Researcher in Russian and Eurasian Studies
in the Aleksanteri Institute at University of Helsinki
BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European
Studies
For a full list of available titles please visit: https :/ /ww w .rou tledg e .com /BASE ES
-Ro utled ge -Se ries- on -Ru ssian -and- East- Europ ean -S tudie s /boo k -ser ies /B ASEES
Series editors:
sociology and anthropology: Judith Pallot (President of BASEES and Chair),
University of Oxford
economics and business: Richard Connolly, University of Birmingham
media and cultural studies: Birgit Beumers, University of Aberystwyth
politics and international relations: Andrew Wilson, School of Slavonic and East
European Studies, University College London
history: Matt Rendle, University of Exeter
This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for
Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-qual-
ity, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of
Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social
science subjects.
137. Governing the Soviet Union’s National Republics
The Second Secretaries of the Communist Party
Saulius Grybkauskas
138. Putin’s Fascists
Russkii Obraz and the Politics of Managed Nationalism in Russia
Robert Horvath
139. Building Communism and Policing Deviance in the Soviet Union
Residential Childcare, 1958–1991
Mirjam Galley
140. Translating Great Russian Literature
The Penguin Russian Classics
Cathy McAteer
141. Labour, Mobility and Informal Practices in Russia, Central Asia and
Eastern Europe
Power, Institutions and Mobile Actors in Transnational Space
Edited by Rano Turaeva and Rustamjon Urinboyev
Labour, Mobility and
Informal Practices in
Russia, Central Asia
and Eastern Europe
Power, Institutions and Mobile Actors in
Transnational Space
Edited by Rano Turaeva and Rustamjon
Urinboyev
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Rano Turaeva and Rustamjon
Urinboyev; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Rano Turaeva and Rustamjon Urinboyev to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: [978-1-032-01013-7] (hbk)
ISBN: [978-1-032-01014-4] (pbk)
ISBN: [978-1-003-17676-3] (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Contributors vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Labour, mobilities and informal practices in Russia,
Central Asia and Eastern Europe 1
RANO TURAEVA AND RUSTAMJON U RINBOYEV
PART I
Labour in times of uncertainty 17
1 The struggle for formal work: The everyday experiences of
Russia’s Central Asian labour migrants 19
JOHN ROUND AND IRINA K UZNETSOVA
2 Driving in the shadows: Rural–urban labour migrants as informal
taxi drivers in post-socialist Tashkent 36
NIKOLAOS OLMA
3 Deportation regimes in the post-Soviet space: Producing
deportable migrants in the Russian Federation 51
RANO TURAEVA AND IZZAT A MON
4 The migration infrastructure of posting: Transnational informality 69
ALEXANDRA VOIVOZEANU
PART II
Mobility as blurring national, transnational and digital
boundaries 87
5 Smartphone transnationalism in non-Western migration regimes:
Transnational ethnography of Uzbek migrant workers in Russia 89
RUSTAMJON URINBOYEV
vi Contents
6 Central Asian female migrants’ transnational social spaces:
Straddling illegality and tradition 114
SHERZOD ERALIEV AND ANNA-LIISA H EUSALA
7 Spiritual mobility: Alternative healing practices amongst Central
Asian migrants in Moscow 133
ANNA CIEŚLEWSKA
8 Roadsides of mobility: Informal socioeconomic strategies in
suburban western Poland 149
AGATA STANISZ
PART III
Informality as state practice dealing with mobility 173
9 Symbolic state imagery, informal state practice 175
CARESS SCHENK
10 Informal practices and the rule of law: Russia, migration and the
‘Arctic route’ 192
JONI VIRKKUNEN AND MINNA P IIPPONEN
11 ‘Ask us decently and then we will not reject anyone!’: Providing
informal healthcare in a Kazakh medical space 214
BAKYT MURATBAYEVA AND BENJAMIN Q UASINOWSKI
12 Dual citizenship and twofold informality: The interstices of state
power and transnational lives amongst Meskhetian returnees
in Georgia 232
JVAN YAZDANI
Index 249
Contributors
Izzat Amon is an independent researcher and practicing human rights activist
and lawyer based in Moscow in Russia. Amon is a popular representative of
Central Asian migrants in Russia and participates actively in political and aca-
demic events around the world with speeches addressing current situation of
Central Asian migration to Russia.
Anna Cieślewska is a researcher at the Department of Iranian Studies, Institute
of Oriental Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2019 she got
her postdoctoral degree in Religious and Cultural Studies at the Faculty of
History, University of Warsaw (UW). She wrote her doctoral thesis at the
Institute of Applied Social Sciences (UW). She graduated from the UW’s
School of Cross-culture Relations with a MA degree, and earned a MSc degree
in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies at
the University of London, as well as completing the Academy of Fine Arts in
Warsaw. On account of her interest in Central Asian socio-economic devel-
opment issues and the geopolitics of Central Asia and Caucasus, as well as
in Islam and local traditions in the post-Soviet region, she has spent the last
15 years working on various research and development projects in the CIS
region and the Middle East. At present, she leads the project, ‘Changes in reli-
gious tradition of migrants from Tajikistan in the Russian Federation’, and is
preparing a research project related to transmission of Islamic knowledge and
religious leaders in contemporary Georgia.
Sherzod Eraliev is a postdoctoral researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute,
University of Helsinki. He defended his PhD thesis on Russia´s policies vis-
á-vis labour migrants from Central Asia at the University of Tsukuba, Japan,
in 2018. His research interests include state and migration policies, migration
regimes, skilled migration, migration and religion, and state and society in
Central Asia.
Anna-Liisa Heusala is a political scientist and university lecturer in Russian
and Eurasian Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. Her
research focuses on Russian public administration, migration and legal cul-
ture, migration and human security, and comprehensive security, in which
her publications examine cross-border crime prevention and border security.
viii C ontributors
Irina Kuznetsova is a Research Fellow and a Lecturer in the School of Geography,
Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, the UK.
Irina works on migration from Central Asia in Russia exploring government’s
policies, everyday experiences of migrants and social policy and the impact
of migration on rural communities. Her recent projects focus on social conse-
quences of population displacement from Ukraine’s war-torn territories and
are supported by AHRC, British Academy and Wellcome Trust.
Bakyt Muratbayeva received a diploma in International Relations from the
German-Kazakh University (Kazakhstan) and an MA in Sociology from the
University of Bielefeld (Germany). She is currently writing her dissertation
for PhD (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale), in which
she analyses different uses of ethnic categories in the ordinary language of the
medical staff of a rural hospital in Kazakhstan.
Nikolaos Olma is a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient
in Berlin, Germany. His current research project focuses on how the conse-
quences of chronic exposure to low doses of radiation is negotiated. He pre-
viously worked as a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social
Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany and as a PhD Fellow at the University
of Copenhagen, Denmark, where his dissertation explored the nexus of embod-
ied memory and urban infrastructure in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Minna Piipponen received her doctoral degree in Human Geography at the
University of Eastern Finland (UEF, previously University of Joensuu) in 2007.
Dr Piipponen has worked in research and educational positions at the UEF,
e.g., as Lecturer (2008–2009), Head of Education (2011–2014) of the VERA
Centre for Russian and Border Studies, Project Researcher (2015–2019) and as
Research Amanuensis (since 2020). Her research interests include international
migratory processes especially in Russia, regional and local development pro-
cesses with particular emphasis on Russian resource sectors and border areas,
as well as cross-border cooperation especially in North-West Russia.
Benjamin Quasinowski received his diploma in Sociology from Bielefeld
University, Germany. For his dissertation (University of Konstanz) he inves-
tigated the relationship between local, universal and global micro-structures
of social interaction in a village hospital of Kazakhstan. Benjamin is currently
working in the DFG-funded project, ‘Travelling knowledge: the glocalization
of medical professional knowledge and practice’ (University of Duisburg-
Essen, Germany), which investigates mechanisms that lead to the worldwide
diffusion of medical treatment standards and practices.
John Round is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Earth and
Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. His main research
interests revolve around the nature of everyday life in post-socialist spaces
and the ways in which individuals/households cope with socio-economic mar-
ginalisation. To date, he has worked extensively in Russia and Ukraine and
Contributors ix
employs the work of de Certeau and Lefebvre to theorise everyday practices
and Mbeme’s theories of necropolitics to understand state responses to them.
His current research explores the problems migrants face in Russia and the
ways in which they cope with it.
Caress Schenk is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Nazarbayev
University (Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan) with teaching and research expertise in
the politics of immigration and national identity in Eurasia. Her book, pub-
lished with the University of Toronto Press in 2018, is called Why Control
Immigration? Strategic Uses of Migration Management in Russia. Her cur-
rent research is funded by research grants from Nazarbayev University and
the competitiveness improvement programme of Tomsk State University. Her
previous research has been funded by the American Councils for International
Education, Nazarbayev University and the Fulbright Scholar Program and has
been published in Demokratizatisya, Europe-Asia Studies, and Nationalities
Papers, and in edited volumes published by Edinburgh University Press
and Oxford University Press. Dr Schenk is also a Senior Researcher in the
Laboratory for Social and Anthropological Research at Tomsk State University,
a member of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in
Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia) and a regional manager of the CoronaNet Research
Project.
Agata Stanisz is a Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań at the
Department of Anthropology and Ethnology. A field researcher and fiel-
drecordist as well as a committed photographer. An author of books. Research
interests: anthropology of infrastructure, new rural paradigm, road studies,
multisite and mobile ethnography, de-visualizing research methods (anthro-
pology of sound and audioethnography), cyberanthropology. Research areas:
Western Europe, Poland.
Rano Turaeva is a senior scholar at the Ludwig Maximillian University and
an associated researcher at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in
Halle Saale in Germany. She is currently working on the project, ‘The Role
of Mosques in Integration of Migrants in Russia’, and has been writing on
the topics of migration, entrepreneurship, informal economies, gender, bor-
der studies, identity and inter-ethnic relations, among many others, which
have been published in such journals as Central Asian Affairs, Central Asian
Survey, Inner Asia, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Anthropology
of Middle East, among other journals. Her book based on her PhD thesis was
published by Routledge in 2016 under the title, Migration and Identity: The
Uzbek Experience.
Rustamjon Urinboyev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology
of Law at Lund University and Senior Researcher within the ERC-funded
‘GulagEchoes’ project in the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki.
Rustamjon works at the intersection of sociology of law and ethnography,
studying migration, corruption, governance and penal institutions in the
