Tajikistan is one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world. Moving beyond economistic push-pull narratives about post-Soviet migration, Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan foregrounds the experiences of those who “stay put” in the sending society and struggle to reproduce their moral communities. In this first book-length ethnography of migration in Tajikistan, Elena Borisova examines the role of mobility through historical and cultural ideas about the good life. She demonstrates how mobility becomes entwined with people’s efforts to become good, moral, and modern subjects. Addressing the complex relationship between the economic, imaginative, and moral aspects of (im)mobility, Borisova shows that mass migration from Tajikistan is as much a project of navigating ethical personhood as it is a quest for economic resources.
This book is a beautifully crafted ethnographic account that reveals how transnational regimes and structures of mobility, citizenship, and histories map out in the intimate spheres of the body, the person, and the family. It is a major contribution to contemporary migration research, which is mostly centered on Europe and North America, and to the field of Central Asian studies. Highly readable, it will be of interest to researchers of migration, (im)mobility and citizenship, and to scholars of all disciplines working on Central Asia.
260 pages | 33 halftones | 6.14 x 9.21
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Political Science: Political and Social Theory
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Reviews
Table of Contents
List of figures
Note on transliteration
Glossary and abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
Interlude: Journeys
1 The mobile place
Interlude: Living with Farhod’s family
2 From a ‘cultured man’ to a migrant worker
Interlude: Becoming a fiancée
3 Negotiating tradition: between custom and law
Interlude: A dutiful son
4 Ambivalences of care
Interlude: An ‘illegal’ citizen
5 Chasing the red passport
Conclusion
Epilogue
References
Index
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