Migration is destructive to the nuclear family and wider village life, but it provides an opportunity for lineages to be mobilized for collective social action that is both local and translocal. This book aims to share experiences of people in Alma, a village in Kyrgyzstan, and how they created a ‘moral economy of migration’ that became territorialised as kinship was de-territorialised.
- Migration and Welfare Austerity has three important comparative aspects.
- First, the manuscript compares informality as practiced in the post-Soviet era to informality as practiced during the Soviet and pre-Soviet eras. As I said above, the practice has been transformed over time in response to radical political, economic, and social shifts. Migration and Welfare Austerity traces the evolution of this practice, and contributes to enhanced understanding of kinship during both the Soviet era and in post-Soviet times.
- The second comparative aspect of the manuscript lies in its focus on informality as currently practiced in the other Central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
- Third, the conclusion of Migration and Welfare Austerity will compare informality in Central Asia to informality in migration in Africa and the Middle East. These regions contrast in many ways with the experience of Central Asia: but they are all regions where transnational activity has brought a new flexibility to local patterns of social life in general, and kinship in particular, rendering them translocal in character. This has major implications for our understanding of globalization in the third decade of the twenty-first century.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, residents of Alma, a village in Kyrgyzstan, were faced with many challenges. Economic crisis and the elimination of welfare support forced an entire generation to become labour migrants in Russia. Those ‘left behind’ were sustained by migrants’ remittances and charitable activities, but at a cost. As villagers built upon existing kinship structures to create new practices of mutual aid on the lines of Islamic teaching, they suffered from the ‘dark side of kinship.’ This book shares experiences of people in Alma and its Moscow-based diaspora and how they created a ‘moral economy of migration’ that became territorialised as kindship was de-territorialised.
Arvustused
What makes this book particularly appealing is its ability to present both a fresh perspective on the everyday lives of migrants and a broader view of kinship in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts. The author skillfully and convincingly weaves together local, Russian, Western, and Soviet perspectives. Sherzod Eraliev, Lund University
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter
1. The Central Asian Family in Historical Context: The Bright Side
and the Dark Side of Kinship
Chapter
2. Silent Voices and a Lack of Parental Authority: The Dark Side of
Kinship
Chapter
3. Dark Side of Kinship and Uncertain Marriages: Shame, Temporary
Nike and Divorce
Chapter
4. Performance and Competition: House Building and Migrants Care of
Elderly Parents
Chapter
5. Almagrad: The Mobilization of Translocal Lineage-Based Community
in Moscow
Chapter
6. Doing Good Aid Within Translocal Lineages
Chapter
7. Silence, Performance: International Migration, Internal Migration
and Village-Level Infrastructural Development
Conclusion: The Bright Side and the Dark Side of Kinship
References
Index
Aksana Ismailbekova is Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on the importance of gender, kinship and religion in negotiating socioeconomic change. She is the author of the book Blood Ties and the Native Sons: Poetics of Patronage in Kyrgyzstan (Indian University Press, 2017), and the co-editor of Surviving Everyday Life: The Security Capes of Threatened People in Central Asia (Bristol University Press, 2020).
