Migration and Hybrid Political Regimes: Navigating the Legal Landscape in RussiaA free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. While migration has become an all-important topic of discussion around the globe, mainstream literature on migrants' legal adaptation and integration has focused on case studies of immigrant communities in Western-style democracies. We know relatively little about how migrants adapt to a new legal environment in the ever-growing hybrid political regimes that are neither clearly democratic nor conventionally authoritarian. This book takes up the case of Russia—an archetypal hybrid political regime and the third largest recipients of migrants worldwide—and investigates how Central Asian migrant workers produce new forms of informal governance and legal order. Migrants use the opportunities provided by a weak rule-of-law and a corrupt political system to navigate the repressive legal landscape and to negotiate—using informal channels—access to employment and other opportunities that are hard to obtain through the official legal framework of their host country. This lively ethnography presents new theoretical perspectives for studying immigrant legal incorporation in similar political contexts. |
Contents
Migration the Shadow Economy and Parallel Legal Orders in Russia | 27 |
A Case Study | 48 |
Uzbek Migrants Everyday Encounters with Employers and Middlemen | 62 |
Uzbek Migrants Everyday Encounters with StreetLevel Institutions | 81 |
Uzbek Migrants Everyday Encounters with Police Officers | 97 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Abashin Baha Balashikha border guards bribe brigada members Central Asian migrants Chechens construction sector context covillagers dacha daily deportation employers employment entry ban ethnic everyday experiences factors Farkhod Fergana Valley fieldwork foreign citizens hybrid political regimes hybrid regime identity documents illegal immigration documents immigration laws immigration officials intermediaries interviews Kazansky Kubal Kyrgyz Kyrgyzstan labor migration law-enforcement legal culture legal environment legal order legal pluralism legal status legal system lives mahalla Malakhov middlemen migrant labor market migrant legal adaptation migrant workers migrants in Russia Misha Moscow networks Nodir norms passport percent permit police corruption post-Soviet protection racketeers residence registration rubles rule of law Russian Federation Russian migration regime Russian police officers salary shadow economy smartphones social sociolegal Soviet street law Tajik Tajik migrants Tajikistan Timur tion transnational understanding migrants undocumented migrants Urinboyev Uzbek migrant workers Uzbek migrants Uzbek posrednik Uzbekistan village weak rule weak rule-of-law Zaur