Everyday Transnational Lives of Uzbek Migrants in Russia: A Socio-Legal Perspective

One of the key themes in this research field literature is migrants’ legal transnationalism, that is, how migrants’ pre-migratory cultural and normative repertoires influence their everyday lives and experiences in their host society. However, the existing studies on migrants’ legal transnationalism largely focus on the case studies of immigrant communities in the West, whereas there has been little scholarly investigation of similar issues in the context of Russia that has become a “migration hotspot” after the fall of the Soviet Union, hosting large numbers of migrant workers from Central Asia. Another factor that adds to this lacuna is that we know relatively little on the gendered experiences of legal transnationalism, a research field that needs further empirical investigation. In this paper we aim to explore Central Asian migrants’ legal transnationalism and how these experiences unfold in the life trajectories of male and female migrants. This paper is based on a multisited transnational ethnography of Uzbek migrant workers in Russia and in their home village in Uzbekistan, conducted between 2014-2019.