Paper abstract:

What meaning is given to female work in the context of a gradual liberalization of Uzbekistan's economy? Based on four months of ethnographic fieldwork in a city of the Fergana Valley, I explored how women who work in the recently privatized educational sector make sense of their everyday work life. In this paper, I focus on ethnographic examples of female teachers' social interaction at a private language school. Thus, I aim to show how they navigate and reformulate the gendered notions around female work, while being embedded in the changing working conditions of teachers in this new economic sector. I argue that doing anthropological research with women at their workplace is crucial to shed light on the ambiguity of meaning-making of female work in this social space, which might be different compared to idealized gender norms that are formulated by their husbands or in-laws. Hence, this allows researchers on Central Eurasia to gain more differentiated understandings about the relationship of work and gender. Taking these ethnographic examples, I show the interlinkages of the workplace, consumption, home, the social environment, Islam, and class in which women draw on and challenge gendered notions around female work. Contrary to seeing Islam as an inhibitor of female work, Islam is often used by my research participants to justify their everyday work life and complain about 'wrong' gender norms and expectations.

Paper abstract:

The Russian Federation hosts the fourth-largest population of foreign-born migrants in the world, mobilities that have significantly changed the ethno-racial makeup of 21st-century Russian cities. However, unlike migrant residential patterns typical to North American and Western European cities, it is the absence of segregation or “ethnic” neighborhoods that characterizes Central Asian migrants' presence in Russia’s cities (Demintseva 2017). Social scientists have tended to focus on segregation as a primary analytic or taken-for-granted starting point for understanding social stratification and processes of migrant racialization in metropolitan areas. In contract, this research asks: How does a lack of spatial segregation affect the navigation and contestation of social difference? Do the enduring remains of Soviet housing systems mitigate differential treatment of migrants on the part of the contemporary Russian state and local citizens, or rather, do these high levels of cohabitation exacerbate existing tensions and fuel ethno-nationalist attunements? This paper specifically examines the impacts of housing discrimination on strivings for citizenship and belonging among Tajik migrants in Russia's two largest cities. I draw from 12 months of ethnographic research in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In addition, I draw from 6 months of ethnographic research among return migrants in Tajikistan, as well as interviews and encounters with landlords and digital ethnography conducted on Russian housing websites and residential listings. Tajik centrality in this research allows me to ethnographically probe Moscow and Saint Petersburg as spaces for those visibly non-Russian whose lives are most impacted by the overlapping constraints of racism, xenophobia, and economic precarity in the country. I argue that within the post-Soviet Russian city, it is precisely the lack of racial segregation and high degrees of conviviality that have led to the proliferation of housing discrimination, such as the stipulation that properties be leased to "Slavs Only" (tol'ko slavianie) or only Russian citizens. Thus, I seek to contribute to how ethnographers of urban areas can theorize racialized registers of citizenship in a context devoid of segregation. Ultimately, I aim to examine more closely how some of the most explicitly and successfully articulated Soviet projects—built environments—possess the ability to shape repertoires of citizenship and race within the hierarchies of belonging in the Russian post-imperial landscape.

Paper abstract:

[Please note, this paper was accepted for the Summer Conference but I was unable to attend and had to withdraw.]

Queer migration has been studied among different groups and in different regions of the world but so far no comprehensive study has been undertaken in Central Asia. Much existing queer migration research focuses on specific destination countries or specific migratory pathways, and is often explored after the fact. This study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 15 diverse aspiring queer migrants in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Through examinations of the decisions to migrate, which migratory pathway to take, and where to go, this paper offers the first academic insight into the phenomenon of queer migration in Kazakhstan. It brings new contributions on the factors behind queer mobility and immobility, explores the ‘queer lens’ through which aspiring queer migrants view migratory processes and decisions, and explores how their queer, national and ethnic identities intersect in these processes.

This study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 15 queer migrants and aspiring queer migrants in Almaty, Kazakhstan with a range of life experiences and sexual or gender identities. Analysis generates new empirical insights into the factors that lead queer people in Kazakhstan to pursue migration, the pathways they choose, from asylum to education to work, and the destinations they seek. The study explores how and why Kazakhstani queer migrants differ from general migratory patterns in Kazakhstan and from queer migrants in other contexts.

Keywords: Kazakhstan, migration, queer migration, LGBTQ+, Central Asia, mobilities, immobilities, migration pathways, temporalities, migration destination choice.