Natalia Zotova

In this paper we investigate the growth and use of social remittances in Tajikistan. Russia became the destination country of choice for labor migrants from former Soviet states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Tajik migrants also seek new destinations including settlement in the US. International migration to Russia and the US continues to shape economic realities for Tajik communities and migrants. In this paper, we use ethnographic evidence from rural communities in Tajikistan and from Tajik migrants who are settled in major Russian cities as well as New York City, NY to address the role migration plays for families and household and the meaning of social remittances for local communities. We explore the role that remittances play in the changing social landscape of Tajikistan and its local communities.  

In this paper we investigate the growth and use of social remittances in Tajikistan. Russia became the destination country of choice for labor migrants from former Soviet states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Tajik migrants also seek new destinations including settlement in the US. International migration to Russia and the US continues to shape economic realities for Tajik communities and migrants. In this paper, we use ethnographic evidence from rural communities in Tajikistan and from Tajik migrants who are settled in major Russian cities as well as New York City, NY to address the role migration plays for families and household and the meaning of social remittances for local communities. We explore the role that remittances play in the changing social landscape of Tajikistan and its local communities.

Russia remains the destination of choice for Tajik migrants. Its migration policies have profound implications for migrants’ legal status and capacity to remit and return home. This article draws on ethnographic research in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and explores how the enforcement of Russia’s immigration laws affects Tajik migrants and their families. By 2016, over 300,000 Tajik migrants were issued entry bars ( zapret na v’ezd ) for three or more years for two or more administrative offenses, including the lack of a work permit or a residential registration and a traffic violation. Migration and the transnational lifestyle increase agency among Tajik men and women, informing gender transformations. Entry bars produce temporary constraints to spatial and social mobility as migrants readjust to well-defined gender roles in their home country. We note how immigration laws affect men and women in different ways, contextualizing the gendered effects of entry bars through the lens of gender relations and understandings of masculinity and femininity in Tajikistan. We argue that the constraints to migrants’ mobility developed by Russian migration policies inform the reconstitution of gender relations in Tajikistan.

Central Asian migrants – people who originate from Muslim-majority countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – are a relatively new addition to the global population flows. Migration from Central Asia is rooted in geography and historical connections with China, Russia, and Turkey, yet large contemporary mobility has developed over the past thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United States is an emerging destination for Central Asian migrants who draw on their aspirations along with cultural and geographical imaginaries of the US to move and settle in the country. My study centers on the relationship between migration, psychological well-being, and mental health and draws on data from 124 ethnographic interviews, a large number of expert interviews and observations along with physiological data and assessments of mental health. My analyses of different types of data help to unpack biocultural and social dimensions of migration stress and point that common mental disorders are more prevalent among Central Asian migrants compared to native-born US populations. Working with Central Asian migrants in four sites - New York City, Chicago metropolitan area, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and Dushanbe, Tajikistan – I examine how socio-economic and legal vulnerabilities and racialization affect migrating and non-migrating individuals and identify their cultural models of mental health. Employing the framework of aspirations and desire as essential drivers of mobility, I contextualize migration as an ongoing process of biocultural adaptations to the new environment. My work elucidates the contested relationships between migration and mental health because, beyond biocultural stress and risks of poor mental health, migration allows for perceived accomplishments, self-efficacy, and elevated social status associated with greater well-being. I note the ways that migrants navigate broader structures that endanger their mental health and draw on culture that defines how individuals and communities relate to mental distress and shapes their help-seeking behaviors. I argue that aspirations – culturally constructed visions of the future - are essential for migrants’ well-being because aspirations help them cope with difficulties posed by socio-economic vulnerabilities and racialization practices, and provide migrants with the motivation to work towards the realization of their potential and support positive thinking. I argue that analytical attention to aspirations can help us to move beyond structural vulnerability frameworks that essentialize foreign-born minorities towards a better understanding of how migrants cope and maintain their mental health.

This study explores the formation of the urban middle class in Tajikistan, a low-income country in which large outmigration has developed over the past decades. Our study uses a Bourdieusian framework to note the ways international migration creates opportunities for class in the context of socio-political constraints, which hinder upward social mobility of Tajikistan’s population. Drawing from ethnographic research in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, our study investigates the cultural production of the urban middle class and contextualizes its contested nature. We address the dynamic quality of class distinctions through the lens of culture, status, and symbolic values to unpack social and cultural processes that shape the formation of class in post-Soviet Tajikistan. We argue that although managing competing constraints, Tajik migrants use migration-related capital to become a part of the growing middle class. Our study contributes to the scholarship on migration and class and suggests that analytical attention to different types of capital allows for a better understanding of class formation in sending countries.

The Russian Federation is the scene of one of the fastest-growing HIV epidemics in the world. In dialogue with the scholarship on gendered connections between migration and HIV/sexually transmitted infection (STI), this study employs unique survey and qualitative data to examine HIV/STI-related risks and attitudes among working migrant women from three Central Asian countries and their native counterparts in three Russian cities. The analyses focus on involvement in risky sexual relationships, negotiation of trust and safer sexual practices in permanent partnerships, worries about HIV infection, and experience of HIV testing by comparing natives and migrants as well as migrants of different legal statuses. The results suggest that while migrant women are generally less likely to engage in risky behavior, they are also less able to establish trust and to negotiate safer sex within their permanent partnerships, compared to native women. Migrants are less worried about HIV risks than are native women. Finally, migrant women are less likely to get tested for HIV than natives, but the analyses also point to a particular disadvantage of migrants with temporary or irregular legal status. The findings are interpreted within the structural and cultural constraints that shape migrant women’s lives in Russia and similar migrant-receiving contexts.

Migration creates opportunities but also bring challenges that cause stress and affect mental health of migrants. Stress among Muslim immigrants can be intensified by experiences of discrimination. This study addressed the meaning and role of religion as a mediator of stress and mental health among Central Asian Muslim immigrants. This paper explored whether religious coping worked for recent Muslim immigrants in the US, and how religion buffered migration and discrimination-related stress that negatively affected mental health of Central Asian immigrants. Drawing from different types of ethnographic and biological data, collected in Chicago Metropolitan Area, this study explored culturally embedded stress responses, and tested the religious coping framework upon experiences of a new minority group of Muslim immigrants in the US, expanding our knowledge on factors that inform health outcomes of immigrant population.

In this paper we investigate the growth and use of social remittances in Tajikistan. Russia became the destination country of choice for labor migrants from former Soviet states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Tajik migrants also seek new destinations including settlement in the US. International migration to Russia and the US continues to shape economic realities for Tajik communities and migrants. In this paper, we use ethnographic evidence from rural communities in Tajikistan and from Tajik migrants who are settled in major Russian cities as well as New York City, NY to address the role migration plays for families and household and the meaning of social remittances for local communities. We explore the role that remittances play in the changing social landscape of Tajikistan and its local communities.

Демографическое обозрение [Demographic Review]. 2014, 1(2):85-109.

Abstract:
Взаимосвязь между миграцией и ВИЧ-инфекцией-предмет растущего числа международных исследований. Демонстрируя повышенные риски ВИЧ среди мигрантов, исследования выявляют и гендерную специфику этих рисков. В настоящей статье используются данные опроса и глубинных интервью, проведенных в трех российских городах среди работающих женщин из трех среднеазиатских стран – Киргизии, Таджикистана и Узбекистана, а также работающих местных женщин для анализа рисков и взглядов, связанных с ВИЧ. В частности, анализируются рискованные половые отношения, безопасные сексуальные практики между постоянными партнерами, опыт тестирования на ВИЧ и пользование услугами в области полового и репродуктивного здоровья; сравниваются местные женщины с женщинами-мигрантами, а также женщины-мигранты из разных стран. Результаты показывают, что вероятность рискованных сексуальных связей в целом ниже среди мигрантов, чем среди местных женщин. В тоже время мигранты менее способны договориться о безопасных сексуальных практиках с постоянными партнерами. Вероятность тестирования на ВИЧ ниже среди мигрантов, их доступ к услугам в области сексуального и репродуктивного здоровья более ограничен по сравнению с местными женщинами. Однако анализ также показывает значительные различия между мигрантами из трех стран. Эти различия нуждаются в дальнейшем изучении. Ключевые слова: миграция, гендер, ВИЧ/СПИД, сексуальные риски.