Migration and Hybrid Political Regimes: Navigating the Legal Landscape in Russia

by Rustamjon Urinboyev

Overview

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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.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520299573
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	12/01/2020
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Rustamjon Urinboyev is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University and Senior Researcher in Russian and Eurasian Studies at University of Helsinki, Aleksanteri Institute.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Note on Transliteration and Naming xi

1 Understanding Migrants' Legal Adaptation in Hybrid Political Regimes 1

2 Migration, the Shadow Economy, and Parallel Legal Orders in Russia 27

3 Uzbek Migrant Workers in Russia: A Case Study 48

4 Uzbek Migrants' Everyday Encounters with Employers and Middlemen 62

5 Uzbek Migrants' Everyday Encounters with Street-Level Institutions 81

6 Uzbek Migrants' Everyday Encounters with Police Officers and Immigration Officials 97

7 The Life Histories of Three Uzbek Migrant Workers in Russia 117

8 Informality, Migrant Undocumentedness, and Legal Adaptation in Hybrid Political Regimes 136

Notes 143

References 145

Index 163