New shop owners in old buildings: spatial politics of the apparel industry in Kyrgyzstan

Spector, Regine A.; Botoeva, Aisalkyn

doi:10.1080/1060586x.2016.1251024

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…For instance, by the end of the Soviet period, Kyrgyzstan's light industry sector employed over one hundred thousand people, of which fewer than ten thousand people remained by 1995. 59 Poverty and unemployment triggered internal and external migration.…”

Section: Neoliberal Finance Debt and Family Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Neoliberal Dreams to Precarity: Micro-Entrepreneurs and Family Debt in Kyrgyzstan

Satybaldieva,

Sanghera

2023

Inter. Labor Working-Class Hist.

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This article argues that precarity partly arises from the growth of household debt in the age of rentier capitalism. It examines the mechanisms of neoliberal finance and its debt-based economic growth model in shaping precarious work and life in Kyrgyzstan. The unequal social relationship between lenders and borrowers generates considerable economic dispossession, appropriation, precarity, and harm. For debt-ridden micro-entrepreneurs, some of the pressures and consequences of debt are acutely felt within their family context, where members struggle to negotiate and ameliorate the impact. By drawing on three case studies of a small farmer, a bakery owner, and a petty trader turned petty producer, the article examines how usurious interest loans plunged them and their families into distress, insecurity, fear, loss, and powerlessness. The first-person accounts of these micro-entrepreneurs-cum-borrowers explain how debt was produced and experienced, and how it was inseparable from the country's rentier capitalist transformation. The study also draws on twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with financial institutions and thirty-three semi-structured interviews with borrowers conducted in Kyrgyzstan.

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Section: Neoliberal Finance Debt and Family Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Neoliberal Dreams to Precarity: Micro-Entrepreneurs and Family Debt in Kyrgyzstan

Satybaldieva,

Sanghera

2023

Inter. Labor Working-Class Hist.

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“…Since the 1990s, the Bishkek municipality has been engaged in selling this unclassified land to private individuals. These transactions often conflict with the law: land is allocated to private owners without a bidding process, without specifying the exact type of use, land reserved for "public use" is sold, and sometimes land 80 Spector and Botoeva analyze how owners of smallscale sewing businesses rent space inside such former industrial sites because the latter do not suffer from electricity blackouts, which are common in other parts of the city and can disrupt the workflow. The new owners of industrial buildings, who lease their spaces, are primarily interested in making profit, so they do not invest into renovation and regularly increase the cost of rental.…”

Section: Bishkek: the City Of Two Revolutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%