Ep3(S5) Migration & Russia: Understanding the Broader Context and Impacts of the War in Ukraine

The Migration Podcast

In this episode I talk with two researchers about the lives of migrants from Central Asia in Russia, both before, and since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is probably no surprise that this conflict is affecting migrants in Russia, and you’ll hear all about this from the guests in this episode. You’ll also hear a bit about the people behind the numbers, when we talk about the millions of migrants from central Asia in Russia, as well as how their lives are shaped by the formal and informal legal constraints in Russian society. Finally, we touch on some intriguing areas of research emerging as a result of the limited access to data in Russia today and that focus on new trends in Central Asian migration. To discuss all of this, I’m joined by Rustam Urinboyev and Nodira Kholmatova. Rustam Urinboyev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University in Sweden. His research is on socio-legal approaches to Migration, corruption and informality (among other topics.) He is also the principal investigator of the EU-funded project “MARS: Non-Western Migration Regimes in a Global Perspective”. Nodira Kholmatova, who works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam. She is a sociologist and migration researcher who studies social and gender inequalities in return migration and deportation regimes as well as the impact of migration policies on migrants and their families. Her geographic focus is Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and more recently Western Balkans and Southeast Asia. Let’s get into it! Info for episode description: Rushtam: https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/rustamjon-urinboyev 1. Urinboyev, R. (2020) Migration and Hybrid Political Regimes: Navigating the Legal Landscape in Russia. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Available at: https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.96/. 2. Urinboyev, R. and Eraliev, S. (2022) The Political Economy of Non-Western Migration Regimes: Central Asian Migrant Workers in Russia and Turkey. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (International Political Economy Series). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99256-9 (Accessed: 20 May 2022). 3. Urinboyev, R. and Pallot, J. (2024) ‘Ethnic and religious identities in Russian penal institutions: A case study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim prisoners’, Open Research Europe, 3(122), pp. 1–35. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.16142.2. 4. Eraliev, S. and Urinboyev, R. (2024) ‘“What have you done, brother Putin?”: Everyday geopolitics and Central Asian labour migration to Russia’, Central Asian Survey, 43(2), pp. 215–234. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2023.2266519. Nodira: https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/k/h/n.kholmatova/n.kholmatova.html Project webpage: https://reintegrateerc.com/nodira-kholmatova/ 1.Kholmatova, N. (2022). Gender. Introduction: critical appraisal. In R. Isaacs (Ed.), A Critical Reader in Central Asian Studies : 40 Years of Central Asian Survey (pp. 139-143). (Central Asian Studies; Vol. 42). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200338-8 2. Kholmatova, N. (2021). The precarity of transnational migration and the COVID-19 pandemic: addressing female return migration in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. (Policy Brief of the Migration Governance and Agricultural and Rural Change (AGRUMIG) Project]. London, UK: SOAS University of London. 8p. (AGRUMIG Policy Brief Series 3)). European Union Horizon2020 work programme. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/131900 3. Kholmatova, N. (2021). Navigating contradictions : female return migration and social change in Tajikistan, Florence : European University Institute, 2021, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/72723