ABSTRACT
A narrative of exploitation and crisis typically defines scholarship on gendered migration out of Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (CEE&E) in the early 21st century. This chapter argues, however, that the mobility of women is marked not only by risks and crisis, but also by gendered experiences of intimacy and aspiration, often inflected by a politics of race. In focusing on the lives of post-Soviet migrant women employed in domestic work, sex work, and the garment trade, the chapter challenges two assumptions underpinning recent scholarship: that women on the move transnationally are in danger of being victimized and trafficked; and that mother-centric caregiving is a universal norm. Expanding the conventional understanding of the region of CEE&E, the chapter examines how women crossing borders between the former Soviet Union and Turkey from the mid-1990s into the 2010s forged new forms of intimacy in their households in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, but also in Istanbul, where they often worked for years. This ethnographic research shows that migrant women negotiate forms of intimacy in myriad ways, despite a plethora of impediments, as they move between global capitalist centers and their home communities.
