Log in to star items.
- Convenors:
-
Tsypylma Darieva
(ZOiS, Centre for East European and international Studies, Berlin Humboldt University Berlin)
Kristina Jonutytė (University of Cambridge)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Timur Dadabaev
(University of Tsukuba)
- Discussant:
-
Caress Schenk
(Nazarbayev University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- Sociology & Social Issues
Abstract
Mass migration from Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has generated a new north-south pattern of migration reconfiguring social, economic, political constellations in host societies, including those in Central Asia, South Caucasus and East Asia. Wartime mobility from the north to the south provides a useful lens for identifying new inequalities and changing pathways of belonging in the context of geopolitical shifts. In some of these contexts, the influx of Russian citizens became a polarizing issue because of the added tensions to the labour and housing markets as well as local experiences of Russian imperialism and ambiguous relations towards Russia. Depending on political regimes, in some cases, the newcomers came to be “undesirable migrants” (Darieva 2025), or guests that overstayed their welcome (Mühlfried 2023). Conceptually the recent wave of wartime migration is associated with political migration and exile (Darieva et al 2023, Krawatzek & Sasse 2024, Jonutytė & Ivanskis 2025), brain drain or lifestyle migration (Benson & O’Reilly 2009, Baranova & Podolsky 2024).
This panel brings together early career and established researchers exploring wartime migration from Russia to Central Asia, South Caucasus and East Asia. We ask, how do migration regimes in different host societies influence migrants’ social, economic, and political incorporation? How do receiving societies shape migrants’ belonging and pathways for agency? In what ways do ethnicity, class and gender shape migrant-host relations? Our aim is to engage with broader issues in the politics of mobility and pathways of migrants’ agency in the context of Central Eurasian area studies, by placing the recent wave of Russian migration at the heart of the debate.
Accepted papers
Abstract
Political opportunities and the decision to engage in transnational activism may depend on various factors and the conditions in the host country (Chaudhary and Moss 2019; Baser and Féron 2022). I suggest taking a closer look at Georgia as a case study and the role of the host society, as it is important for understanding Russian emigrants’ “exit” and “voice” dynamics in a rapidly changing political environment. Based on qualitative research data, this paper will discuss social dynamics and divergent attitudes toward migrants in the host country that affects the visibility of diasporic activism and leads to migrants’ self-sustaining cementing their isolation. The recent political changes in Georgian society, such as the democratic backsliding and the creation of an illiberal state through the introduction of the controversial “Law on Transparency,” brought an additional sense of legal insecurity for Russian migrants in Georgia. This paper addresses the following questions: To what extent is the potentiality to exercise “voice” after “exit” affected by the complexity of relations with the host society? Why did Russian activists decide to disengage from collective actions and visible protests in Georgia and how do they explain their limited willingness to cooperate with local civil society?
Abstract
The Russia-Ukraine war has had profound effects on minoritised populations in the Russian Federation. There are substantial claims of disproportionate wartime losses as well as disproportionate conscription in many ethnic minority regions. In addition, the broader effects of wartime economy and society are acutely felt, such as changing patterns of transnational mobility, precarious livelihoods, and ever-tightening restrictions on internet communications. These factors have contributed to a large wave of migration out of Russia since 2022, especially since “partial mobilisation” took off in September 2022. Yet even in this dire situation, migrants of minority background often resist victimisation. They find themselves in a complex and ambiguous situation where narrativizing victimhood may be instrumental in pursuing certain goals (e.g., building a case as an asylum seeker in a foreign country), while it may feel inappropriate, be it for personal reasons such as lack of strong political opinions or cultural ones such as gendered stigmatisation of powerlessness. At the same time, the current migrants are part of longer histories of outmigration from the Inner Asian parts of Russia, be it Buryats fleeing the violence of the Russian/Soviet state in the early 20th century to Mongolia, or Asian Russians in South Korea since the 2000s engaging in stints of (often irregular) labour migration driven by financial hardships at home. This paper explores such negotiations of agency and victimhood among wartime migrants and the ways in which they are shaped by the local context in two destinations with a substantial history of migration from Russia’s Inner Asian regions: Mongolia and South Korea. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous migrants from the Inner Asian regions of Russia in Mongolia and South Korea between 2022-2025.
Abstract
Focusing on Russian migrants who left amid war and intensifying repression for Georgia, Armenia, and the EU, this chapter examines the conditions under which migrants engage in cross-border activism in their new host contexts. Drawing on qualitative interviews, it identifies types of activism based on risk exposure and durability of engagement and then develops a model of migrant activism structured around three interrelated dimensions: legal security, economic security, and perceived efficacy. The paper argues that legal security in the host country provides a necessary foundation for sustained engagement, while economic security shapes migrants’ capacity to mobilize resources. Perceived efficacy mediates between structural opportunity and action, influencing whether migrants believe collective efforts can produce meaningful change. By situating activism within varying migration regimes and contexts of precarity, the paper highlights how geopolitical shifts and differential incorporation policies shape migrants’ agency and political engagement across borders. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on wartime mobility and transnational collective action.
Abstract
Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, tens of thousands of Russian citizens have relocated to Kyrgyzstan. Having long served as one of the primary sources of migrant labor for the Russian economy in the past, Kyrgyzstan has unexpectedly emerged as an affordable and accessible destination for a young generation of Russians fleeing political repression, military conscription and the effects of economic sanctions back home. Unlike many other communities of exile, Russian new arrivals in Kyrgyzstan occupy a relatively privileged position in post-Soviet Central Asia. My research examines how self-exiled Russians are adjusting to life in a country marked successively by Russian colonial expansion, Soviet rule and a continued post-Soviet geopolitical and economic dependency on Russia.
This research looks at the lived experiences of this new Russian diaspora in terms of its social, cultural and economic adaptation. In particular, my research asks in what ways relocation to Kyrgyzstan is making exiled Russians rethink their own positionality within ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic hierarchies shaped by the dual legacies of Soviet and Russian power. Based on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, this study captures the diversity, in terms of class, education, employment and ethnic background, within the Russian community of relokanty, a new umbrella term for those who have fled Russia since the start of the war. Broadly speaking, the project examines the response of Russian migrants to a new life in Kyrgyzstan, more than thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the center of the study is the contradiction between the precarity of forced migration and the historically contingent privileged status of Russians in the region.