Central Asian Migration: Practices, Local Communities, Transnationalism

Abstract

The article discusses the theme of Central Asian migrations and the ways in which it has been perceived both in the Russian public consciousness and in the scholarly research. The author analyzes the strategies of classifying migrants and ascribing individuals to the migrants, and points to their contradictory character and ideological underpinnings. He further suggests that migration should be looked at from an ethnographic standpoint and the question of who the migrants are be restated as the question of how the migrantness emerges. As an introduction to the thematic discussion on Central Asian migration, this article makes a proviso that everyday practices will be held within this discussion as a subject of study; local communities as its object; and transnational space as its field.