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

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

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.