The Precarious Everyday of Moscow's Labour Migrants: Rising Xenophobia and the Migrant As a Political Subject of Disgust

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union Moscow has positioned itself as a global city (re)built on the profits of its energy boom and the efforts of, currently, over four million labour migrants, the majority from Central Asia. Far too many migrants endure an extremely precarious everyday as they are forced to live in what the paper describes as a city wide state of exception, within which legal frameworks protecting migrants are ignored or misinterpreted to the benefit of the market. Many migrants who desire ‘legality’ are forced into ‘illegality’ by their employers and landlords refusing to register their documents correctly, increasing their vulnerability. Based on in-depth qualitative research this paper explores the human rights abuses that labour migrants experience, ranging from arbitrary fines by the police, a total disregard for their workplace safety to xenophobic attacks. The research demonstrates that migrants are simultaneously visible and invisible to the state, as for the latter the legal uncertainty denies them access to welfare and a voice within the city but they are visible for exploitation both in terms of their labour and the political capital gained from their presence. Migrants, the paper demonstrates, are constructed as ‘illegal’ regardless of their documentation status and politicians, pandering to growing nationalistic sentiments, castigate the migrant body (in all meanings of the word) as ‘diseased’ or ‘criminal’, to be seen as separate from the rest of the city. This is feeds into xenophobic attitudes making migrants even more vulnerable with, for example, volunteer groups emerging to check their documents as they are seen as a danger to the city. Drawing upon the work of Lefebvre and de Certeau the paper concludes by exploring how migrants develop informal tactics to try and negate these problems to ensure their general well being.