Tracing the Labor Migration Treadmill: A Global Political Economy Analysis of Central Asians on the Move

Abstract

The migration corridor between Central Asia and Russia is one of the busiest in the world. In this article, we intend to answer the following question: which political economy dynamics animate labor migration from Central Asia to Russia? To do so, we provide a sketch of the labor migration treadmill by detailing its structural and “cruelly optimistic” affective logics. We identify four structural themes in the treadmill: (1) dispossession, (2) politics of belonging and racialization, (3) gender and patriarchal dynamics, and (4) externalization of social reproduction. A scrutiny of these themes shows that the treadmill of Central Asian labor migration is grounded in a specific but globally resonant political economic condition of “post-Soviet precarity.” This article is based on solicited journals written by migrant workers and analyzed jointly by an artist and an academic. Consequently, the interplay of drawings and textual narration is integral to the article’s logic of inquiry.