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Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Russia (2017-2019) and on virtual research into the present, to ask how Congolese migrant women forge futures for their children, even as states and aid organizations circumscribe the forms of intimacy, kinship, and reproduction women can enact.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines Congolese women’s efforts to navigate a detention regime on the edge of Europe and asks how women are forging futures for their children, even as states and aid organizations circumscribe the forms of intimacy, kinship, and reproduction they can enact. As of the late 1990s refugee women and men from various sub-Saharan countries--including Congo, a site of ongoing strife with a history of connection to the Soviet Union and recently renewed Russian military funding—began seeking asylum in Russia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Moscow (2017-2019) among women asylum seekers, my research is framed within a vibrant literature on how the policing of mobility transforms migrants’ experience of kinship and care (e.g., Coe 2013; Constable 2014). I present portraits of several women and their efforts to sustain kinship ties and care for children-- one of them sustaining strong ties to Congo (DRC), and others avoiding such ties, and instead focused on safeguarding care for their children born in Russia. In some cases migrant interlocutors describe young children as key to easing life’s travails, and even mobility across Moscow; especially small children, usually born in Russia and possessing a Russian birth certificate (but not citizenship), can provide a certain protection from police harassment, costly fines, or even deportation. Overall, I argue that in portraying how migrant mothers make decisions about reproduction and imagine a future for children, in Russia or elsewhere, their lives are deeply entangled in the politics of the state where they seek refuge.