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Black Work, Green Money: Remittances, Ritual, and Domestic Economies in Southern Kyrgyzstan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Madeleine Reeves
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Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic and survey data, Madeleine Reeves explores the meanings and impact of large-scale seasonal labor migration to Russia on a group of four kin-related villages in southern Kyrgyzstan. Although remittances have come to figure centrally in domestic budgets of migrant families, it is to questions of political economy that we must turn to understand the shift away from small-scale farming toward migrant work. Reeves examines a range of factors mediating decisions to migrate, including the role of social networks and sibling hierarchies; the emergence of growing economic differentials between migrant and nonmigrant households, and the growing importance for young men of a period of work “in town” (shaarda) in proving their eligibility for marriage. Although patterns of economic activity in southern Kyrgyzstan have changed dramatically in recent years, Reeves argues that new forms of engagement in distant labor markets are also being used to sustain patterns of ritual gifting and expressions of ethnic and religious identity that are imagined and articulated precisely as expressions of social continuity.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 108 - 134
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2012

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References

Research for this article has been variously supported by an Economic and Social Research Council doctoral training grant, a Research Councils UK postdoctoral research fellowship, a Nuffield Foundation small grant, and a travel fellowship from Newnham College, University of Cambridge. I am grateful to all of these organizations, and to the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester for supporting my research. An earlier version of this article was presented at a Social Science Research Council workshop, “Post-Collective Economic Lives and Livelihoods,” in 2008, organized by Beth Mitchneck and John Pickles. I am grateful to the convenors and fellow workshop participants for their valuable feedback. The article has benefited from the opportunity to present working versions to seminars in Bishkek, London, Manchester, Sheffield, and Paris, as well as from the valuable feedback of the Slavic Review editor and reviewers.

1. Kyrgyz oblus is an equivalent administrative unit to the Russian oblast'. I alternate between Kyrgyz and Russian in the text according to the language in which the interview was conducted and/or the dominant terminology in my fieldsite, retaining Batken dialect when quoting directly. Names of all informants have been changed.

2. Kyrgyz kök can translate either “green” or “blue” according to context. Younger people in the village would often refer to dollars simply as “greens” (jashyl) without the qualifier “money. On the impact of economic crisis on social networks in Kyrgyzstan during the 1990s, see Kuehnast, Kathleen and Dudwick, Nora, Better a Hundred Friends than a Hundred Roubles? Social Networks in Transition—the Kyrgyz Republic (Washington, D.C., 2004), 15-22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. On the importance of incorporating the household into discussions of migration, see Massey, Douglas A., “Social Structure, Household Strategies and the Cumulative Causation of Migration,” Population Index 56, no. i (Spring 1990): 3-26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brettell, Caroline B., “Theorising Migration in Anthropology: The Social Construction of Networks, Identities, Communities and Global scapes,” in Brettell, Caroline B. and Hollifield, James F., eds., International Migration: Talking across Disciplines (London, 2000), 97-136.Google Scholar

4. During my period of research, Russia was the exclusive destination for migrants from Ak-Tatyr and its neighbors, though Kazakhstan is an increasingly popular destination in other parts of Kyrgyzstan. In 2011, Jengish, one of my key informants, traveled to Dubai in the hope of obtaining work with a tourist visa. To my knowledge he was the first person from his village to do so. He returned after one month, however, departing soon thereafter for Moscow.

5. Interviews in 2008 and 2010 in Ak-Tatyr and neighboring Ak-Sai support the findings of official migration statistics from Kyrgyzstan, which indicate that the financial crisis did not lead to a significant reduction in the numbers of people leaving Kyrgyzstan in search of work in Russia. It did, however, have a dramatic impact on the rate of return migration, as those already in Russia decided to stay put in the hope of keeping or finding work, rather than returning home for the winter months. See also Lukashova, Irina and Makenbaeva, Irina, Vozdeistvie mirovogo ekonomicheskogo krizisa na trudovuiu migratsiiu iz Kyrgyzstana v Rossiiu: Kachestvennyi obzor i kolichestvennoe issledovanie (Bishkek, 2009).Google Scholar

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7. “Household,” for the purpose of this research, refers to all those who live together birqazan (“one cooking-pot“)—that is, as a single economic unit, living around the same garden plot, sharing resources, and eating together. The average household size in the villages surveyed was 6.2 people (3.2 adults and 3.0 children); thus, the survey covered a total of 1,395 people—or just over a quarter of the total population of the four villages.

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9. Reeves, Madeleine, “Migrations, masculinite et transformations de l'espace social dans la vallee de Sokh,” in Laruelle, Marlene, ed., Dynamiques migratoires el changements societaux en Asie Centrale (Paris, 2010), 131-47.Google Scholar

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11. Asian, “Labor Migration,” 14.

12. Adeeb Khalid shows how the Jadids, reformist intellectuals in early twentiethcentury Central Asia, criticized excessive ritual expenditure as profligate and contrary to “true” Islam; for Soviet rulers, such expenditure was criticized as contrary to the modest consumption expected of socialists. Khalid, Adeeb, Islam after Communism (Berkeley, 2007), 120.Google Scholar On the more general transformation of Muslim ritual practice under communism, see Saroyan, Mark, Minorities, Mullahs and Modernity: Shaping Community in the Former Soviet Union (Berkeley, 1997), 64-65.Google Scholar

13. The law, “On the Regulation of Traditions, Celebrations and Rituals in the Republic of Tajikistan,” stipulated the number of people who could be invited to a wedding ceremony (150 guests) or circumcision feast (60), as well as the amount of food that could be served and the number of cars that could be included in a wedding cortege (no more than four). Zakon Respubliki Tadzhikistan Ob uporiadochenii traditsii, torzhestv i obriadov v Respublike Tadzhikistan ot 8 iiunia 2007 goda, no. 272, at http://www.agencynau.tj/zakoni/z.%20u%20t.html (last accessed 1 December 2011).

14. “I. Karimov: ‘Pyshnye torzhestva i zastol'ia diskreditiruiut nashi national'nye tsennosti …’ (vystuplenie),” Centrasia.ru, 9 December 2002, at http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA. php?st=1039412040 (last accessed 1 December 2011).

15. “Prezident K. Bakievdin Yntymak kurultaiyna kairyluusu,” Azattyk unalgysy, 23 March 2010, at http://www.azattyk.org/content/Kyrgyzstan_Bakiev_Speach/1991474.html (last accessed 1 December 2011).

16. Ibid.

17. The term gastarbaiter, borrowed from the German, entered popular usage in Russia in the early 2000s and is today widely used to refer to migrant laborers from the former Soviet Union.

18. Beth Mitchneck and John Pickles, “Inter-Asian Connections and Post-Collective Economic Lives: A Report on the SSRC Dubai Workshop, February 23-25, 2008” (unpublished manuscript, 2008), 1.

19. My characterization of neoliberalism here draws upon the work of Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, who stress that neoliberalism designates more tfian a simple process of “rolling back the state.” They describe it as a distinctive rationality of governance, which aims to “produce a degree of ‘autonomization’ of entities of government from the state” resulting in an “autonomization of society.” Neoliberal interventions are exercises in governance but also of self-governance, by creating “chains of enrolment, ‘responsibilization’ and ‘empowerment’ to sectors and agencies distant from the centre, yet tied to it through a complex of alignments and translations.” See Barry, Andrew, Osborne, Thomas, and Rose, Nikolas, eds., Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Governance (Chicago, 1996), 11-12.Google Scholar

20. Keough, Leyla J., “Globalizing ‘Postsocialism': Mobile Mothers and Neoliberalism on the Margins of Europe,” Anthropological Quarterly 79, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. I borrow the term postcollective from Beth Mitchneck and John Pickles, who use it as a way of avoiding the overworked binaries of planned versus market, socialist versus postsocialist, or collective versus individualistic economy. They define postcollective economies as those that “share—to some extent—the experience of de-collectivizauon and political and economic liberalization, even as they may remain socialist and/or collective, as they reform, or as they (re)build socialist and collective institutions.“John Pickles, “The Spirit of Post-Socialism: Common Spaces and the Production of Diversity,” European Urban and Regional Studies 17, no. 2 (April 2010): 133.

22. Hoffman, Lisa, DeHart, Monica, and Collier, Stephen J., “Notes on the Anthropology of Neoliberalism,” Anthropology Nexus 47, no. 6 (September 2006): 9-10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Rofel, Lisa, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clarke, John, “Living with/in and without Neoliberalism,” Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology 51 (Summer 2008): 135-47.Google Scholar

23. Humphrey, Caroline, The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism (Ithaca, 2002), xx.Google Scholar

24. On the importance of salt in organizing social relationships in Kyrgyzstan, see Judith Beyer, “According to Salt: An Ethnography of Customary Law in Talas, Kyrgyzstan” (PhD diss., Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, 2009).

25. On the politicization of these resources in the Isfara Valley, see Bichsel, Christine, Conflict Transformation in Central Asia: Irrigation Disputes in the Ferghana Valley (London, 2009), 113-23Google Scholar; Reeves, Madeleine, “Materialising State Space: ‘Creeping Migration’ and Territorial Integrity in Southern Kyrgyzstan,” Europe-Asia Studies 61, no. 7 (2009): 1277-1313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. In their research on Arslanbob in Jalalabat oblast, Matthias Schmidt and Lira Sagynbekova similarly found that 60 percent of migrants from this village left for the single city of Sverdlovsk, with the trigger initially having been a marriage between an Uzbek man and a Russian woman from Sverdlovsk following the man's military service there in the 1960s. Schmidt, Matthias and Sagynbekova, Lira, “Migration Past and Present: Changing Patterns in Kyrgyzstan,” Central Asian Survey 27, no. 2 (June 2008): 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Sending apricots by train is more lucrative than by lorry in part because of the greater volume that can be transported, but also because it is easier to conceal the difference between real and declared volume when passing through customs points at borders. See Madeleine Reeves, “Border Work: An Ethnography of the State at Its Limits in the Ferghana Valley” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2008), 80-82.

28. Rohner, Compare, National and International Labor Migration, 114-16.Google Scholar In her research from the village of Sai, also in Batken district, Bichsel found that “men almost exclusively work on construction sites.” Bichsel, Hostettler, and Strasser, “Should I Buy a Cow or a TV?” 18. This shift toward construction accelerated with the passing of legislation in Russia in 2007 restricting the presence of foreign citizens in market trade. Rahmonov-Schwarz, Delia, “Destination Russia: Migration Policy Reform and Reality,” OSCE Yearbook 2006 (Hamburg, 2006), 289-99Google Scholar; Mukomel, Vladimir, “Immigration and Russian Migration Policy: Debating the Future,” Russian Analytical Digest, no. 7 (3 October 2006): 2-8 Google Scholar; Anne Le Huerou and Amandine Regamay, “Necessaires et indesirables ? Les migrants en Russie,” La Revue Nouvelle, August 2007, at http://www.revuenouvelle.be/rvn_abstract.php3?id_article=659 (last accessed 1 December 2011).

29. In rural parts of Batken, most school-leavers today understand some Russian but have difficulty sustaining a conversation in the language. There is a marked generational (and gender) difference in this respect, with many middle-aged men acquiring fluency in Russian during military service in the Soviet army. On Russian becoming a “foreign language” in the Batken region, see Reeves, Madeleine, “Schooling in Ak-Tatyr: A Shifting Moral Economy,” in DeYoung, Alan, Reeves, Madeleine, and Vlyayeva, Galina, eds., Surviving the Transition ? Case Studies of Schools and Schooling in the Kyrgyz Republic since Independence (Greenwich, Conn., 2006), 188-93.Google Scholar

30. Determining the real volume of money remitted and circulating in the village is, of course, an inexact science. Just as the migration of family members reflects collective decisions, so the investment of remittances is rarely an individual decision. The earnings of several extended family members are likely to be pooled by a household head, and those who are able to send money from Russia by post, bank, or through acquaintances may have litde control over how or on what the money they send is spent.

31. This figure is the mean of all of the responses for migrant households; the median and mode are significandy lower. The mean is skewed by the fact that a small number of people were able to remit large sums of money. Approximately one-third of all respondents were able to send and bring back less than 20,000 rubles ($713).

32. Although a majority of respondents indicated that the migrant(s) in their household had been able to send money home in their absence (71.2 percent who were able, versus 28.8 percent who were not), banks and money-transfer firms such as Western Union were, in 2004-5, still regarded with some degree of suspicion, and “private,” informal transfers of money through friends and acquaintances tended to be more common. This has changed significandy in subsequent years, with multiple banks opening in Batken.

33. In Ak-Tatyr, a significant minority of nonmigrant households were also unable to send family members to Russia because of an absence of appropriate travel documents. It is characteristic of border regions of southern Kyrgyzstan that many village residents (particularly women) are not in possession of valid Kyrgyzstani passports: this is particularly true of those women who moved or married into the village from Tajikistan during the 1990s and who are now unable to deregister from Tajikistani citizenship. “Kyrgyz Republic: Powerful Neighbours Imperil Protection and Create Statelessness,” Refugees International Bulletin, 20 December 2007, at http://www.refugeesinternational.org/sites/default/files/kyrgyzstan122007.pdf (last accessed 1 December 2011).

34. Priya Deshingkar and Daniel Start, “Seasonal Migration for Livelihoods in India: Coping, Accumulation and Exclusion” (Overseas Development Institute, Working Paper no. 11, 2003), 13; Haan, Arkan de, “Livelihoods and Poverty: The Role of Migration—A Critical Review of the Migration Literature,” Journal of Development Studies 36, no. 2 (December 1999): 1-47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Uma Kathari, “Migration and Chronic Poverty” (Institute for Development, Policy and Management, University of Manchester, Working Paper no. 16, March 2002).

35. Economic Policy Institute “Bishkek Consensus,” Assessment of Workers’ Remittances (Bishkek, 2005)Google Scholar; Larissa Jones, Richard Black, and Ronald Skeldon, “Migration and Poverty Reduction in Tajikistan” (Development Research Center on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty, Working Paper Cll, 2007).

36. An unskilled laborer from Ak-Tatyr working on a building site in Moscow in the summer of 2005 could hope to earn around 9,000 rubles per month (about $320 at the time). With a double teaching load, a teacher in the “highest category” was earning $56 at the same time. On the economics of schoolteaching in rural Batken, see Reeves, “Schooling in Ak-Tatyr,” 184-87.

37. On the value and status attached to a university education in Kyrgyzstan, see De Young, Alan J., Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary KyrgyzRepublic (Greenwich, Conn., 2011).Google Scholar

38. Jengish's family had, like most in their village, been allocated two kinds of agricultural land: irrigated (suuluu) and dry (kairak). On the former they had previously grown rice; on the latter, wheat. The relatives who leased the land would pay Jengish's family back in rice (half of their harvest). By 2010, these relatives had also ceased cultivating rice, however, departing instead for Russia.

39. The degree of localization of these destinations is vividly illustrated if we compare the survey data from the neighboring river valley of Sokh, where I conducted an identical survey in February and March 2005, with 282 household heads. From the Sokh Valley, not a single journey captured in the survey was to Moscow (a city widely regarded in Sokh as an excessively dangerous destination); the most popular destinations were Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, and Tomsk—cities not mentioned once by interviewees in Ak-Tatyr.

40. On the social significance of weddings and circumcision ceremonies as enactments of community membership and as sites for ritual gifting, see Sergei Abashin, “Vopreki ‘zdravomu smyslu'? (K voprosu o ‘ratsional'nosti/irratsionarnosti’ ritual'nykh raskhodov v srednei Azii,” in Sergei Panarin, ed., Evraziia: Liudi i mify (Moscow, 2003), 217-38 on Uzbekistan; Sophie Roche and Sophie Hohmann, “Wedding Rituals and the Struggle over National Identities,” Central Asian Survey SO, no. 1 (March 2011): 113-28 on Tajikistan; and Cynthia Werner, “Household Networks, Ritual Exchange and Economic Change in Rural Kazakhstan” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1997), 238-69 on Kazakhstan.

41. The resultant sums were indicated in three different currencies (typically Russian rubles or U.S. dollars, but occasionally also in Kyrgyz som). I have converted all of the figures relating to remittances into rubles and then into their dollar equivalents based on average exchange rates for the twelve months to July 2005 to allow for ease of comparison.

42. Beyer, “According to Salt,” 33-36.

43. Abashin, “Vopreki ‘zdravomu smyslu'?” 223.

44. Ibid., 217-38.

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