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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.