Tajiks in the South Urals in the Post-Soviet Years
The article is devoted to the formation and development of the community of Tajik migrants in the Post-Soviet period in the South Urals. The source database was made up of archival documents from the archive of the Chelyabinsk region, data on international migration and field materials of the author. Using this set of sources, the author reconstructs the quantitative and qualitative parameters of cross-border movements from Tajikistan, shows the time and circumstances of arrival migrants, reveals the participation of Tajiks in internal Russian and cross-border migrations. In total, the author collected 56 interviews with immigrants from Tajikistan, implemented 115 hours of included observation. The sample of objects for observation and establishment of contacts with informants included: cafes, “points” selling clothes in the markets “Chinese”, “Vostochnyi Gorod” and “Kashirinsky” in Chelyabinsk, residential buildings and schools near them, as well as public transport. The methodological basis of the research is transnationalism. The use of transnational optics made it possible to see the life of migrants simultaneously in two contexts - “there” and “here”. In the structure of Central Asian migration to the South Urals since the 1990s Tajiks predominated. Against their background, the Kyrgyz were small and “invisible” for the host country; Uzbeks joined labor migration only relatively recently. Dynamic movements from Tajikistan have led to the formation of stable transnational ties, connected, first of all, with the supply and sale of fruits and vegetables, seasonal work at construction sites, etc. People from the Khatlon and Sughd regions come to the South Urals. At the same time, Tajik migrants demonstrated a high level of mobility within Russia already in the 1990s, they actively moved around Russian cities (Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk) in search of work, higher earnings, and prospects for starting a business. Labor migration from Tajikistan is due to steady population growth in the country of origin, combined with low rates of economic development, unemployment, and low incomes. According to informants' estimates, in the coming years, one should hardly expect a significant reduction in migration from Tajikistan to the Chelyabinsk region.