Abstract:

In 2023, we conducted research to understand how female care workers from Central Asia function in the Russian labor market today. Pilot interviews conducted a year earlier with experts in Moscow and St. Petersburg showed that over the last year or two employers have begun to hire women from Central Asian countries to provide care for elderly people. We are talking primarily about the market for unskilled labor. This is a partially shadow market, especially when it comes to hiring migrant women to care for the elderly in the context of the households. We conducted 60 semi-structured interviews with women from Central Asian countries who have been working in Russia for at least two years. We also conducted 22 interviews with employers who hire migrant women.

In my presentation, I will show how women from Central Asian countries enter this shadow job market, how they find themselves trapped in unstable and precarious conditions and build their own strategies for legalization in Russia without the participation of an employer.

In my arguments I follow the logic of researchers who write about post-Soviet informality. Their works show the importance of such practices as the use of social networks that include friends, relatives, and acquaintances in post-Soviet countries (Uslaner, 2004; Morris and Polese, 2014). Informality is a survival strategy for certain groups and is common in everyday social practices (Williams, Round, Rodgers 2013).

It is also important for my research that, on the one hand, it focuses on the most marginalized and disenfranchised members of society - migrants. For these migrants, it is important to rely on their fellow countrymen and relatives in almost all areas of life - from legalization in the country to understanding strategies for receiving treatment and obtaining for their children access to schools. On the other hand, the study shows that informal practices are perceived by all parties as the only possible solution to any difficulties that arise in my respondents’ lives. In the report, I will show not only the strategies that the migrants choose, but also the ways in which employers (refuse to) make choices to formalize relationships with those who work for them. I note that informality is the norm for many migrants: it allows them to avoid unnecessary communication with the state and employer, while also to abode breaking the laws.