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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.
List of contents
Chapter 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 the book, Chapter II Russia's post-Soviet migration regime, Migration to Russia, The Russian immigration regime, The securitization of migration, Russian migrantophobia, Chapter III Navigating Russia's shadow economy, Legality for sale, CH? Chim - Sadovod market, The migration industry, The Go-betweener, Chapter IV Market ethos and the volatile radius of trust, Uncertainty and market moralities, One for oneself, Money matters, Chapter 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, Chapter 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, Methodology, References, Index
About the author
Lan Anh Hoang is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Melbourne, Australia.
