Clean fake: Authenticating documents and persons in migrant Moscow

Abstract

What does it mean for Kyrgyzstani migrant workers in contemporary Russia to be legally legible to the state when informal agencies market fictive residency documents and “clean fake” work permits? Examining the uncertainty around being authentically documented provides insight into a mode of governance in urban Russia that thrives less on rendering subjects legible than on working the space of ambiguity between life and law. This dynamic has significant social consequences for the way certain bodies come to be scrutinized as particularly untrustworthy, particularly liable to fakery, and, thus, particularly legitimate targets for document checks, fines, and threats of deportation. The ambiguity with which migrants are forced to live highlights the need to explore how documentary regimes, structures of feeling, and racializing practices coincide.

‘Only by learning how to live together differently can we live together at all’: readability and legibility of Central Asian migrants’ presence in urban Russia

“…This comparison confirms the classic thesis by Kevin Lynch (1960) about the values of urban semantics and their readability and legibility as qualities of the urban environment which make the urban experience more positive and satisfactory. It also confirms more recent critiques of uncertainty and ambiguity (Abashin 2012;Reeves, 2013) as urban conditions, which make the experiences in urban space of migrants very difficult and result in growing xenophobia and racism in the local community. My third conclusion draws on the previous one to suggest that just as clarity and distinctiveness of a spatial identity are necessary for peaceful coexistence of diverse urban communities, a successful policy of migrant integration must not sacrifice their unique cultural and religious identities.…”

“…The conceptual inspiration for this paper is drawn partly from Reeves's (2013) concept of the 'space of uncertainty' -the product of a specific 'mode of governance in urban Russia that thrives less on rendering subjects legible than on working the space of ambiguity between life and law' (p. 508). Reeves examines how a 'boundary between being legible and illegible to the state is blurred and fraught with social and moral uncertainty ' (p. 509), and how the uncertainty and ambiguity of Central Asian migrant workers' legal status breeds suspicion, racist thinking and everyday humiliation.…”

Legality, Racialization, and Immigrants’ Experience of Ethnoracial Harassment in Russia

“…However, as all other foreigners who seek employment in Russia, they must fulfill a complex set of requirements to obtain a work permit and temporary resident registration. Because these requirements are convoluted and costly, and corruption is endemic (Malakhov 2014), many migrants stay and work in Russia in violation of at least some of the numerous immigration and labor regulations, often using fake or other people’s documents (Reeves 2013b). Importantly, even migrants who do not violate any law are often perceived as having done so as migrant status typically connotes illegality (Abashin 2014).…”

Privileged Exclusion in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Ethnic Return Migration, Citizenship, and the Politics of (Not) Belonging

“…Yet some individuals have attempted to register relatives who do not actually migrate, while others have produced fake documents (including fake Kazakhstani passports) to register a household, collect the quota money, and then return to Mongolia (Oka 2013). As Reeves (2013) points out in the case of Kyrgyz migrants in Moscow, migrants in post-Soviet spaces go to great effort to create credible fakes. Stories about repatriates cheating the system are frequently circulated in Kazakhstani newspapers (Dobrota 2008;Kupriyanova & Raspopova 2012), including one case mentioning that, out of 2,000 individuals registered as oralman, only 400 actually crossed the border (Sheriyazdanova 2010).…”