BASEES/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://www.routledge.com/BASEES -Routledge-Series-on-Russian-and-East-European-Studies/book-ser ies/BASEES 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 URINBOYEV 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 KUZNETSOVA 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 AMON 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 HEUSALA 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 PIIPPONEN 11 ‘Ask us decently and then we will not reject anyone!’: Providing informal healthcare in a Kazakh medical space 214 BAKYT MURATBAYEVA AND BENJAMIN QUASINOWSKI 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 Contributors 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