Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses one crucial way in which capital has valorised in the Uzbek national via the exploitation and appropriation of 'cheap labour.' It deploys a Marxian-inspired framework that takes as the point of departure in the analysis capital accumulation on a global scale, whose concrete historical forms can be found in the policies and institutions of national states that mediate this global process. In this way, the paper critiques the methodological nationalism found in the literature on Uzbekistan under President Karimov (ex. IMF 2018: 6; Cooley & Heathershaw 2017; Batsaikhan & Dabrowski 2017: 306; Blackmon 2011: Chapter 2), including in the Uzbek government's self-representation (ex. Karimov 1998, 1995, 1993), placing the antagonistic relations between labour and capital at the centre of the analysis.

First, the paper explains the process of rural labour re-proletarianisation as critical to understanding the country's post-independence political economy. As collective farming ('shirkats') gave way to commercial farming ('fermerstvo') at the end of 1990s-beginning of 2000s, labour shredding created a rural army of labour for capital to exploit in and outside Uzbekistan. Second, the paper connects this turning point in the country's history to processes of formality/informality in the labour market in Uzbekistan, focusing on patterns of labour exploitation. Third, it closes in on informality to expose the gendered dimensions of labour's exploitation as well as the appropriation of women's work inside and outside the household. Finally, the paper connects re-proletarianisation in the Uzbek countryside with mass migration to third countries, explaining the key role of remittances in labour reproduction within the Uzbek political economy.