Left Behind? Russia’s Entry Bars and Gender Relations in Tajikistan

Abstract

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.

Migration Destinations Beyond Russia: Central Asia’s Road to Economic Security and Diplomatic Autonomy

“…The majority were Uzbek citizens, then Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Moldovan nationals (Kluczewska, 2014). By the middle of 2016, the total number of migrants under the re-entry ban list had surpassed two million (Zotova & Cohen, 2020).…”

Familial Tensions: Morphing Gender Relations of Power Among Tajik Migrant Workers in Russia

“…Labor migration from Tajikistan to Russia captured the attention of many scholars across the world as it became a new important reality for a country that is highly dependent on remittances. While many of these studies do not engage extensively on gender relations, because migration is perceived to be a “male phenomenon” (Rocheva & Varshaver, 2017, p. 88), the body of literature analyzing labor migration from a gender perspective is growing (Reeves, 2011, 2013; Kasymova, 2012 (Kholmatova, 2018); Grogan, 2013; Ibañez-Tirado, 2018, 2019; Thibault, 2018; Thieme, 2008; Zotova & Cohen, 2020). I have built on this work, and in this article, I explore gradual change in gender relations through the reproduction of old gender relations and the production of new ones.…”