Beyond the economic: migration as moral navigation in the post-Soviet space

当代全球移徙进程的一个重要特征体现在流动的悖论中。随着资本、信息、更好生活的想法和形象的日益流通改变了世界许多角落的期望(Chu 2010；Gaibazzi 2015；Schielke 2020)，日益严重的不平等，加上日益严格的流动制度，将许多人排除在合法可行的流动模式之外。在这样的背景下，移民通常被描绘成恶棍或受害者，而关于“危机”的公开叙事强化了流动的证券化。将移民痛苦的身体置于分析的中心，最近的移民学术很大程度上属于“痛苦槽人类学”(Robbins 2013)，这使得人们除了关注揭露边境政权的暴力之外，几乎没有留下探索人们流动动机和经验的多样性的空间(Rozakou，2019年)。考虑到这一点，通过对最近从塔吉克斯坦(世界上最依赖汇款的国家之一)到俄罗斯城市的大规模移民的案例研究，我在这一奖学金下工作的目的是超越《绝望的分析》(Elliot 2020)--一种认识论假设，即主要是贫困和结构性暴力的力量是全球南部人口流动的核心。这个项目基于我的博士研究，该研究植根于与塔吉克移民及其家人进行的人种学田野工作，考察了后社会主义结构调整导致的经济丧失框架之外，大规模移民到俄罗斯的动态。在人种志方面，我的论文着眼于人们在移民规则、不稳定的劳动条件、法制和社会建设以及公民制度的不断变化的现实背景下，如何驾驭做一个好人和过上美好生活的不同方式。在分析上，它提出了这样的论点，即有必要解开移民的物质、想象力和道德方面之间的复杂关系，以便了解当代移民运动的范围、速度和重要性。它表明，移民决策远不是对普遍的经济和政治崩溃的“自动”反应，而是嵌入到当地的价值体系中，并植根于在一个地方生活和想象一个人的现在和未来的经历中，这个地方由多层流动历史构成，在那里，现在的社会性形式和人的类别受到苏联现代化项目带来的空间和社会变化的影响。在我的博士学位的基础上，我将在研究金期间产生的主要学术成果--一本专著和一篇学术文章的草稿--将我的研究结果与关于不同地理和社会政治背景下的移徙和流动的更广泛文献进行对话，从而进一步推进我的论点。作为全球第三大移民接收国，俄罗斯的移民在全球移民和流动性研究中仍是一个相当边缘的话题，这些研究主要集中在欧洲和美国。我的工作旨在克服这种边缘化，同时也超越后社会主义研究的地区性和主题性孤立。就与学术界以外更广泛的受众接触而言，我在本奖学金下的工作将挑战关于移民的公开陈述，这种陈述在将移民定为犯罪或成为受害者之间摇摆。与移民权利活动家、非政府组织和媒体接触，并从广泛的非学术界人士那里获得反馈，将有助于我确定进一步产生影响的机会和潜在的合作。最后，该奖学金将为我提供一个机会，通过为资助机构制定提案来进一步追求我的研究兴趣，这些机构支持早期职业研究人员的第一个完全独立的项目。

A key feature of contemporary migration processes worldwide is encapsulated in the paradox of mobility. As the increased circulation of capital, information, ideas and images of a better life had changed the horizon of expectations in many corners of the world (Chu 2010; Gaibazzi 2015; Schielke 2020), growing inequality, coupled with increasingly restrictive mobility regimes, exclude many people from legally viable modes of mobility. Against this backdrop, migrants are usually portrayed as either villains or victims, with public narratives about 'crisis' reinforcing the securitization of movement. Placing a migrant suffering body at the centre of analysis, much of recent migration scholarship falls under the 'suffering slot anthropology' (Robbins 2013), which leaves little space for the exploration of multiplicity of people's motivations for and experiences of mobility beyond the focus on exposing the violence of border regimes (Rozakou 2019). With this in mind, through the case study of recent mass migration from Tajikistan, one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world, to Russian cities, the aim of my work under this Fellowship is to move beyond the 'analytic of desperation' (Elliot 2020) - an epistemological assumption that it is predominantly the forces of poverty and structural violence that lie at heart of mobility in the Global South.This project is based on my PhD research, which, rooted in ethnographic fieldwork with Tajikistani migrants and their families, examined the dynamic of mass migration to Russia beyond the framework of economic dispossession resulting from post-socialist restructuring. Ethnographically, my thesis looked at different ways in which people navigated what it means to be a 'good person' and to have a 'good life' in the context of the constantly shifting realities of migration rules, precarious labour conditions, legal and social constructions of (il)legality, and citizenship regimes. Analytically, it advanced the argument that it is necessary to unpack the complex relationship between the material, imaginative, and moral aspects of migration in order to understand the scope, speed, and salience of contemporary migratory movements. It showed that, far from being an 'automatic' response to general economic and political breakdown, migration decisions are inserted in local systems of value, and embedded in the experiences of living and imagining one's present and future in a place, constituted by the multi-layered histories of mobilities, where present forms of sociality and categories of person are informed by spatial and social transformations brought about by the Soviet modernisation project.Building on my PhD, the main academic outputs I will produce during the Fellowship - the draft of a monograph and an academic article - will further advance my argument by putting my findings in dialogue with broader literature on migration and mobility in different geographical and socio-political contexts. As the third highest migrant receiving country in the world, migration in Russia is still rather a marginal topic in global migration and mobilities studies, which mostly focus on Europe and the US. My work aims at overcoming this marginality, while also moving beyond the regional and thematic isolation of the studies of post-socialism. In terms of engagement with wider audiences outside academia, my work under this Fellowship will challenge the public representations of migration, which oscillate between criminalisation or victimisation of migrants. Reaching out to migrant rights activists, NGOs and media, and receiving feedback from a wide range of non-academics will help me identify further opportunities for impact and potential collaborations. Finally, the Fellowship will provide me with an opportunity to further pursue my research interests by developing proposals for the funding bodies that support early career researchers with their first fully independent projects.