Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at Moscow’s wholesale markets from 2013 to 2016, Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty provides original insights into how uncertainty shapes social practice, identity and belonging in the context of irregular migration from Vietnam to Russia. The study speaks to various debates in migration and mobility studies -- particularly those focused on brokerage networks, the political economy of sexuality, and social belonging -- deepening our knowledge of how the core social values and cultural logics that underpin Vietnamese personhood are challenged and reconstituted by the ethos of the market economy. This book sheds important light on processes of mobility and social change in post-socialist societies that continue to grapple with yawning chasms between old and new ways of life, the local and the global, policy and practice, and obsolete governance techniques and rapidly changing socio-economic realities.
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Tặng Một Người Bạn (For a Friend)
- I. Introduction
- The Market
- Vietnamese migration to Russia
- Mobility in times of uncertainty
- Uncertain time, uncertain life
- Uncertainty: conceptual debates
- Productive and destructive uncertainty
- Structure of this book
- II. Russia’s post-Soviet migration regime
- Migration to Russia
- The Russian immigration regime
- The securitization of migration
- Russian migrantophobia
- III. Navigating Russia’s shadow economy
- Legality for sale
- Chợ Chim – Sadovod market
- The migration industry
- The Go-between
- IV. Market ethos and the volatile radius of trust
- Uncertainty and market moralities
- Each person for themselves
- Money matters
- V. Love and sex in times of uncertainty
- Provisional intimacies
- ‘Better safe than sorry’
- What’s love got to do with it? Narratives of sex, money and morality
- VI. Transient existence and the quest for certainty
- I’m here to make money, not to live
- Consumption as belonging
- Renegotiating the ‘Con buôn’ identity
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- References
- Index
- List of Maps, Photos and Tables
- Map
- Photos
- Photo 1 Moscow Trade Complex (Tоргово-ярмарочный комплекс Москва), which is often referred to as Liublino market (Chợ Liu) by Vietnamese migrants
- Photo 2 Yuzhnyie Vorota (Южные ворота – Southern Gates) market (also known to Vietnamese traders as Km 19 market)
- Photo 3 Inside Yuzhnyie Vorota market
- Photo 4 Sadovod market (Садовод рынок), which is often referred to as Birds’ market (Chợ Chim) by Vietnamese migrants
- Photo 5 Sadovod market at 5am in November 2016; traders arriving to set up their stores for the day
- Photo 6 Sadovod market at 5am in November 2016; northern car park facing Verkhniye Polya Road
- Photo 7 Sadovod market in November 2016; stores on the eastern side of the pavilions
- Photo 8 Sadovod market in November 2016; a Vietnamese itinerant vendor apprehended by market security guards for working without a permit
- Photo 9 A room shared by a family of three in an apartment in Belaya Dacha suburb; between the mattress and the bed is an ancestors’ altar
- Photo 10 A living room converted into a bedroom shared by a couple (mattress in far left corner) and three single men, in an apartment in Belaya Dacha suburb; in the right corner is a Thổ Địa (Spirits of the Place) altar
- Photo 11 A room shared by two families (four adults, two young children) in Rybak hostel. A couple and their two children sleep in a bed in the left corner while the other couple sleep on a raised wooden platform (about 3m2) above the woman’s head.
- Photo 12 A room shared by eight people in Mekong hostel
- Photo 13 A nanny feeding a little girl on a landing inside Mekong hostel. This is as much of a glimpse of Russian society as they can get.
- Photo 14 An en suite room shared by six people in the Red Chinese Dormitory (Ốp Tàu đỏ)
- Photo 15 Communal kitchen in the Red Chinese Dormitory (Ốp Tàu đỏ)
- Photo 16 The inconspicuous façade of a building housing several illegal garment factories (xưởng may đen)
- Photo 17 An illegal garment factory compound
- Photo 18 The night shift at an illegal garment factory
- Photo 19 Sleeping quarters inside an illegal garment factory
- Tables
- Table 1 Under- and Unemployment rates by region in 2014
- Table 2 Socio-economic profile of research participants
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