ABSTRACT
The concept of ‘informality’ has become a trendy topic of research in the scholarly literature about post-Soviet societies. The amount of literature focusing on informal practices, institutions and networks in the post-Soviet space has grown rapidly over the last two decades, producing theoretically and empirically grounded accounts of different forms and manifestations of informality, such as clans and regional patronage networks, clientelism, blat networks, bribery, embezzlement, cronyism, kickbacks. In this connection, the review of existing research shows that the distinct focus on ‘post-Soviet informality’ highlights at least nine main themes: (1) economic informality (Alexeev and Pyle 2003; Wallace and Latcheva 2006); (2) blurred boundaries between informality and corruption (Werner 2000; Polese 2008; Urinboyev and Svensson 2013a); (3) informal political institutions and practices (Gel’man 2004; Hale 2011; Ledeneva 2013); (4) informality as a mixture of cultural and economic practices (Misztal 2002; Smith and Stenning 2006; Urinboyev and Svensson 2013b); (5) informality as a reflection of broader sociopolitical and sociocultural traditions (Ledeneva 1998; Collins 2006; Hayoz 2015); (6) the relationship between formal and informal economies (Round et al. 2008; Williams et al. 2013); (7) the (dis)continuity between Soviet and post-Soviet informal economies (Kurkchiyan 2000; Rodgers and Williams 2009; Aliyev 2015a); (8) informal practices of redistribution as an alternative to state-driven welfare distribution (Urinboyev 2013, 2014; Morris and Polese 2014); and (9) definitional, conceptual and terminological ambiguity surrounding the concept of informality (Williams et al. 2013; Aliyev 2015b; Polese 2015). Despite the existence of a large diversity of scholarly explanations for and
approaches to ‘post-Soviet informality’, one idea common to the aforementioned scholarship is that the bulk of studies focus on informal practices and institutions and their regulatory structures that take place within the boundaries of a single nation state (i.e. the scholarship is confined to a particular
nation state, not taking into account the increased transnational links between different places and people). Another factor that adds to this complexity is the growing use of information and communication technologies in the post-Soviet region, which may facilitate the daily exchange of information and reduce the importance of distance between different countries and people, possibly leading to the emergence of ‘transnational informality’. Hence, with a few exceptions (Cieslewska 2013; Yalcin-Heckmann 2013; Turaeva 2014), not much has been said about how multidimensional flows of people, ideas, goods, social practices and cultural symbols between different post-Soviet countries mould the nature and geographic scope of informal practices in the region. This chapter situates itself within these ‘informality’ debates by suggesting
that the nature of informal practices in post-Soviet societies is changing, not only in terms of content, forms, actors and magnitude, but, more importantly, in terms of geographical scope, due to ongoing large-scale migratory processes, e.g. the massive inflow of migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus to Russia. Moving beyond the methodological nationalism still prevalent in much informality research (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), I argue that informal practices in post-Soviet societies are becoming increasingly transnational. Migrant workers, living their lives across the border of two (or more) nation states, become part of the fabric of everyday life and social relations in their home state, while simultaneously becoming part of the socio-economic processes in their receiving state, thereby facilitating the daily flow of ideas, social practices and cultural symbols between migrant sending and receiving societies. These processes are especially visible in the construction sector in Moscow, Russia, where the informal employment of migrant workers is widespread and carried out through so-called po rukam (‘handshakebased’) labour contracts, which involve multiple formal and informal actors with different kinds and locations of power: migrant workers, intermediaries, construction firms, Russian police officers, Chechen racketeers, and migrants’ left-behind families and communities (e.g. village residents, local community leaders, leaders of mosques). Hence, this chapter, through an ethnographic study of po rukam experiences of Uzbek migrant workers in Moscow, aims to show how the interaction of the aforesaid actors across borders (via smartphones and the Internet) serve as an enforcement mechanism of the informal migrant labour market in Moscow. In doing so, I show how informality operates across borders, through different means and has an identifiable impact on the outcomes of many practices that Uzbek migrants (and other actors) engage with in Moscow. Thus, I use this case as a lens to pursue broader questions – that is, to offer a transnational framework for the study of informality in the post-Soviet context by drawing upon ideas and concepts developed within the informality literature, migration studies, law and society, and legal pluralism literature. The rest of the chapter proceeds in the following manner. The next section
presents the sociolegal context of the Russian migrant labour market, which
is crucial in understanding the nuances of Russian migration governance and the perspective I take on informality. The chapter then provides the theoretical framework of the study by using the concepts of transnational social field, translocal village and the legal pluralism perspective. I then discuss the methodological considerations and present the results of multi-sited transnational ethnographic fieldwork conducted in January-September 2014 in Moscow, Russia and Ferghana, Uzbekistan. Finally, the chapter draws out the implications of the ethnographic material for informality debates and highlights the most important findings of the study.
