Introduction

According to the 2021 Rule of Law Index, one of the leading global indicators on the rule of law published annually by the World Justice Project, Russia and Turkey ranked 101st and 117th, respectively, among 139 countries (World Justice Project, 2021). The low positions of these two countries in the Rule of Law Index is unsurprising given that both Russia and Turkey are non-democracies where law enforcement remains arbitrary, corruption and shadow economic transactions proliferate, civil society’s capacity is constrained by legal and administrative restrictions and respect for and observance of human rights is poor. As we noted in Chapter One, today international migration and mobility primarily involve non-Western and nondemocratic migration locales (e.g., Russia and Turkey, along with Brazil, China, the Gulf States and Kazakhstan), political contexts that significantly differ from the traditional immigration countries situated in North America and Western Europe (IOM, 2021). Many of these newly emerging non-Western migration hubs occupy low positions on global indicators pertaining to the rule of law and governance. This implies that the majority of international migrants work and reside in countries with a relatively weak rule of law, widespread corruption and large shadow economies.

These differences are also reflected in the academic literature focused on migration from less developed to developing countries, the so-called South–South migration (Bakewell et al., 2009; Botchwey et al., 2019; Hujo & Piper, 2010; Pholphirul, 2019). In this regard, several features distinguish South–South migration from the migratory processes that take place in the realm of South–North migration. First, South–South migration is characterized by weaker border control systems and law enforcement capacities, allowing those migrating greater agency in navigating immigration restrictions (De Lombaerde et al., 2014). Second and relatedly, less restrictive border and immigration control measures facilitate undocumented or irregular migration flows (Hujo & Piper, 2010). Third, South–South migration is primarily characterized by the prevalence of low-skilled, cheap and docile migrant labor, a distinctive element resulting from the aforementioned two features (Hujo & Piper, 2007; McKenzie, 2008). Fourth, South–South migrants often operate under the conditions of shadow economy employment and only remain temporarily in their host society, limiting their access to certain privileges and rights (Zabyelina, 2016).

An analysis of the above tendencies suggests that employment under the conditions of a weak rule of law and shadow economy is prevalent in non-Western migration locales. Various terms and definitions are used to refer to the shadow economy (Gerxhani, 2004). One typical definition views the shadow economy as a segment of the economy where transactions occur unofficially, thereby leaving no formal trace. Proposing a similar conceptualization, Schneider and Enste (2000) suggest that the shadow economy encompasses all economic activities contributing to the officially calculated GDP, but such activities remain unregistered in official records so as to avoid obligations and barriers stemming from overregulation, a high tax burden, a low level of trust in public institutions, corruption and arbitrary law enforcement. A widespread belief exists that the shadow economy—whether in the form of informal labor, tax evasion, bribes, nepotism, favors or other forms of informal exchanges—leads to direct monetary losses and erodes societal trust in public institutions, thereby reproducing unintended economic, political, legal and social consequences (Dreher & Schneider, 2010; Schneider, 2012; Schneider & Enste, 2000; Williams & Schneider, 2016). Resting on these assumptions, a great deal of effort has been and is spent on liquidating or formalizing shadow economic practices (Williams et al., 2013; Williams & Renooy, 2008, 2013). These efforts are particularly visible in the agendas of international organizations, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO), the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), all of which have been working on these issues for more than 40 years (Curristine et al., 2007).

While acknowledging the harmful nature of the shadow economy, a steady surge in scholarly literature has called for reconsidering such a “one-size fits all” approach, which insufficiently explains the diversity of informal and shadow economic practices. This point brings us to the “diverse economies” perspective, developed by Gibson-Graham and her collective (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008), who argue for the necessity of considering the multifarious nature of economic activities when studying the informal economic practices in different parts of the world. Studies have shown that informal and shadow practices also reflect cultural and moral values, enabling actors to enhance a sense of self-worth within relevant social circles, and providing sources of esteem for ordinary people in social settings such as Russia (Humphrey, 2012; Rivkin-Fish, 2005). Indeed, in addition to economic perspectives, informal or shadow transactions may also be driven by ‘alternative currencies’ such as trust, respect and reputation (Pardo, 1996; Urinboyev & Polese, 2016; White, 1994), whereby even the meaning of money differs depending on the social and economic norms of a society (Parry & Bloch, 1989; Thomas, 1991; Urinboyev & Svensson, 2013). Several studies have attempted to explore not only the social significance of shadow economic practices in a certain context, but also their persistence and relevance to governance mechanisms (Ledeneva, 2006, 2013; Morris & Polese, 2013, 2014; Polese et al., 2016). Some studies have even claimed that the shadow economy is closely related to governance and, in some cases, may actually serve as the cure for an ineffective system rather than the disease (Darden, 2008; Ledeneva, 2013).

The above discussions have informed our understanding of the shadow economy in this chapter. That said, our aim is not to explore this phenomenon as a friend or as a foe (Eilat & Zinnes, 2002). Rather, we take a pragmatic approach by viewing the shadow economy as the rule, simply a standard operating procedure that characterizes migrant labor markets in non-Western, nondemocratic migration regimes. The primary rationale for this approach is motivated by the fact that the shadow economy is so omnipresent in such migration regimes that it becomes all that exists. In other words, informality has simply become part and parcel of everyday life for many migrants operating in the Russian and Turkish labor markets. This implies that portraying the shadow economy and informal migrant labor within it as instances of illegality precludes “looking under the hood” of the Russian and Turkish migrant labor markets.

This chapter, then, aims to explore the interconnections between the shadow economy and the street world in the Russian and Turkish migrant labor markets. As we will empirically demonstrate, the term “street” (ko’cha) is frequently used by different migrant labor market actors in Russia and Turkey to refer to various informal, illegal and semi-legal practices that take place beyond state law. Given the weakness of formal legal mechanisms, street institutions serve as a parallel legal order regulating daily relations and activities. With these considerations in mind, in this chapter we focus on the shadow economy and the street world as a specific migration arena and provide “thick description” of Central Asian migrants’ experiences from the shadow economy and the street world in the Russian and Turkish labor markets.

We will explore the above processes through the life histories of three Uzbek migrants, allowing us to demonstrate the role of the street world and the shadow economy in the life trajectories of migrant workers in precarious migration contexts such as those in Russia and Turkey. We aim to show how three migrants—two female and one male—navigate the risks and uncertainties stemming from a weak rule of law environment. These three life histories resulted from our extensive transnational ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2014 and 2022 in Russia, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Throughout that period, we maintained regular contact with these three migrants and closely followed the developments in their lives through intensive fieldwork and smartphone-based communication. Observing their lives afforded us the opportunity to collect their narratives of their experiences from the street world and the shadow economy, a difficult endeavor which allowed us to explore—ethnographically and biographically—the struggles, alliances and power dynamics among various formal and informal actors involved in different migration arenas characteristic of Russia and Turkey.

Throughout the following, we use pseudonyms for all three migrants and all of the other individuals that appear in the life histories. The first case focuses on Leyla, a female migrant who was pushed into sex work and encountered violence in Moscow as a result of her vulnerability, but later devised various strategies to adapt to the risks and uncertainties accompanying street life. The second case revolves around the life trajectory of Zarina, a female migrant who was exposed to sex work and drug trafficking in Turkey, but was able to navigate various precarities and vulnerabilities thanks to her newly acquired street skills. The third case focuses on Shurik, a male migrant with street skills and carceral experience in Russia, whose case illustrates the role and impact of the street world in the lives of migrants in various migration contexts. The sections that follow provide “thick description” of the street world and the shadow economy in the Russian and Turkish migrant labor markets presented through these three life histories.

Leyla: The Street World and Sex Work in Moscow

Leyla (a pseudonym) is a 34-year-old female migrant from a village in the Tashkent region of Uzbekistan, who had been working in Russia for five years at the time of our interview in November 2019. Shortly, after finishing technical college in 2006, when Leyla was 21 years old, she married Akmal, her cousin (her aunt’s son). Their marriage was performed by an imam (religious cleric) in accordance with the principles of Sharia law, representing a religious marriage (nikah) in Central Asia, but not legally recognized by the state. Although Leyla and Akmal were happily married and got along quite well, their relationship was full of legal complexities given that their marriage was not legally registered. When Leyla gave birth to their first son, Akmal was away in Russia working as a labor migrant. As a result, their first son was registered in Leyla’s name, meaning that the child had no any legal attachment to Akmal. However, their second child was legally registered listing Akmal as the father since he was back in Uzbekistan.

Working as a labor migrant in Moscow enabled Akmal to buy a small apartment in Tashkent city, where his wife and children lived. When Leyla and Akmal began the process of formalizing their marriage through the state civil registry department, it turned out that Akmal had developed a severe form of tuberculosis while working and living in an unfinished construction building on the outskirts of Moscow. This unexpected turn of events forced them to postpone formalizing their marriage, shifting their entire focus on Akmal’s treatment. The treatment lasted for nine months, eating up all of their savings. Despite their efforts, Akmal died in early spring of 2014, leaving Leyla alone with two small children.

Akmal’s death left Leyla in a vulnerable situation since she had been a housewife with limited legal literacy and no work experience. Several months later, Akmal’s brothers kicked Leyla and her two children out of their apartment. Leyla’s marriage to Akmal was not legally registered, meaning Leyla had no formal right to claim ownership of the property according to Uzbek legislation. Since Leyla was legally illiterate, she did not know that she could claim ownership of their apartment through her second child, who was officially registered as her late husband’s child.

As a result, she had to return to her parents’ home with two children. But she knew that her parents’ home would only offer temporary accommodation since her brother would marry soon and there would be little space for all of them. This situation lead Leyla to look for income-earning opportunities in Russia, the only viable option for many single mothers in Uzbekistan, in order to avoid community gossip and to provide for their children. After several inquiries and checking with her networks, Leyla got in touch with her classmate Charos, who was working at a bakery in Moscow and promised to find a job at a chocolate factory should Leyla decide to travel to Russia. Charos even offered to help with the airline ticket, telling Leyla that she could repay the money later after receiving her first salary. In July 2014, leaving her two children with her parents, Leyla boarded a flight from Tashkent airport to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.

After arriving in Moscow, things did not go as planned. Charos picked Leyla up from the airport and brought her to an apartment in the north of Moscow. Telling Leyla that this would be her new accommodation in Moscow, Charos took Leyla’s passport, explaining that she needed it to sort out her residence registration and patent application. Later, Leyla learned that it was not an accommodation where she would live with other tenants, but rather it was a brothel, and housed three other sex workers from Uzbekistan. Leyla’s protests and refusal to work as a sex worker proved useless given that she had neither money nor documents to leave the brothel. In addition, Charos reminded Leyla that she had bought her an airline ticket, which she demanded repayment for by working at least one month. With no other options available and after being persuaded by the other women in the brothel, Leyla was forced to accept working as a sex worker.

This brothel exclusively serviced male migrants from Central Asian countries. Apart from Leyla, there were three women from Uzbekistan working at the brothel. One factor common to all four women was that they were all single mothers and victims of domestic violence and gender inequalities in Uzbekistan, a situation that pushed them to migrate to Russia in search of job opportunities and a better future for their children. But, upon arrival, they were all deceived by the madam, Charos, who forced them into the sex work industry.

On average, Leyla and the other three women earned between 45,000 and 60,000 rubles (US$750–1000) per month, depending on the number of clients they serviced each day. Charos, the madam, charged each client 1500 rubles (US$25) for one hour of sexual services, while services for the whole night cost 4000 rubles (US$65). Each woman served between eight and ten clients per day, while weekends were busier, reaching up to 15–20 clients per day. The madam had approximately eight mobile phones, through which she communicated with potential clients, predominantly male migrants from Central Asian republics. In terms of security, the madam paid a monthly dolya (share) to the local uchastkovoy (police) and street actors, such as smotriashiy (literally, a looker), a member of the Russian criminal subculture (thieves’ law) responsible for the street world in the area. Ensuring security through both state officials and the street world was of paramount importance since there was always a threat of either a police raid or burglars who would attempt to enter the brothel as potential clients.

After being forced to work for nearly five months, Leyla was able to pay back the cost of her airline ticket as well earn US$2000, which would allow her to return home. Leyla begged the madam to release her from the brothel and allow her to return to Uzbekistan for the sake of her two children. Given that Leyla was physically attractive and generated sufficient money by serving many clients, the madam returned Leyla’s passport to her and gave her an additional US$500, stating she would be welcome to again work with her should Leyla decide to return to Moscow. In late December 2014, on New Year’s Eve, Leyla returned to Uzbekistan with more than US$2000 in her pocket.

After returning to Uzbekistan, Leyla did not report the madam to the law enforcement bodies since it would bring her shame alongside the revelation that she had worked as a sex worker in Moscow. However, after spending four months in Uzbekistan without a decent job, Leyla realized that she would need more money to sustain her children and to buy an apartment of her own. Since she learned that salaries were much higher in Moscow, Leyla decided to return to Russia in the spring of 2015, but this time she was determined to find a decent job.

After returning to Moscow, Leyla got a job as a cleaner, which required many hours of hard work with little pay, sufficient only to cover her living expenses in Moscow. Her income did not allow her to send money home given that she had to pay for her accommodation, meals and a monthly patent fee. At the same time, she was under pressure to earn money for her children’s increasing expenses as well as to save money to buy an apartment as soon as possible. As a result, she decided to return to the brothel where she had previously worked. After negotiating, Leyla managed to strike a special deal with Charos, the madam, according to which they would split her earnings equally (fifty–fifty). For example, if Leyla received 4000 rubles from a client, 2000 would go to the madam and 2000 to Leyla.

Another factor that strengthened Leyla’s position vis-à-vis the madam Charos was that Leyla had developed a special relationship with one of her former clients, Tursun, an Uzbek migrant belonging to a network of Chechen and Dagestani protection racketeers. Under this semi-romantic relationship, Leyla offered free sex to Tursun in exchange for protection from burglars and abusive clients. If Leyla or other women in the brothel faced problems, they usually sought help from Tursun. Leyla’s capacity to provide street protection not only put her in a higher position within the brothel, but also granted her leverage to arrange a separate room for herself. Unlike the other three women who served clients in one big room partitioned by curtains (cubicle style), Leyla secured a room of her own in the brothel where she could receive clients privately. Owing to these circumstances, Leyla was able to send US$2000 home each month.

However, Leyla’s economic success did not last long. Tursun, who provided protection to Leyla, was arrested by the Russian police and received a seven-year prison sentence for racketeering and extortion-related crimes. These events left Leyla without any protection in the sex work industry, where she had to deal with exploitative pimps and madams, abusive clients and corrupt police on a daily basis. Normally, Leyla never accepted working viezd (serving clients outside the brothel, e.g., in a hotel or apartment), especially if the clients were migrants from Central Asia. Given that Leyla was no longer able to secure street protection for the brothel, she had little bargaining power vis-à-vis the madam, leaving her no option but to accept viezd work. In late autumn of 2015, Leyla was sent to one apartment in the north of Moscow to provide all-night sexual services to an Uzbek posrednik (middleman). But, the apartment where Leyla was supposed to “serve” the client turned out to be a dormitory located on a construction site, where twelve Uzbek migrant workers were waiting for her. This meant Leyla had to serve all of the migrant workers throughout that night. Her protests did not help since the migrants beat her and no one was around to offer assistance since the construction site was in a closed area. The migrants took turns raping her throughout that night. In addition to raping her, the migrants shaved Leyla’s head bald for “dishonoring Uzbeks’ dignity in Russia”.

It took more than two months for Leyla to recover from this incident. Due to her horrible experience, Leyla decided not to engage in sex work anymore and instead sought a normal job. In early February 2016, with the help of her friend, Leyla found a job as a kitchen porter at Chaykhona 1, a popular restaurant chain in Russia that specializes in Uzbek cuisine. She worked at the restaurant for about six months, but the long hours, poor working conditions and low pay led her to reconsider her plans. Leyla had a good relationship with Inna, a waitress at the restaurant. In addition to her part-time waitressing job, Inna also worked as a call girl and provided sexual services at a sauna near Moscow’s Bibirevo metro station. Learning about Leyla’s past experience and her constant complaints about the working conditions and low pay, Inna invited Leyla to be her co-worker at the sauna. Inna needed a partner given that in most cases clients in the sauna requested at least two girls. After some consideration, in August 2016, Leyla decided to accept Inna’s offer and joined her when they were called to the sauna.

Much to Leyla’s surprise, the terms and conditions at the sauna were clear cut. There were two options available for sex work at the sauna: the first option meant that the sauna would find a client for the women offering sexual services, while through the second option women brought their own client(s) to the sauna. Under the first option, Leyla received 2500 rubles (~US$40) from the client for her one-hour sexual service, of which 1000 rubles (~US$15) went to the sauna. The sauna usage fee was paid by the client. In the latter case when Leyla brought her own client, she charged 3750 rubles (~US$57), from which 1750 rubles (~US$30) was paid for a one-hour sauna usage fee and for protection in case of abusive clients or a police raid. The advantage of sauna-based sex work was that it offered safety to women, allowing them to avoid abusive clients and police raids, with no pimp or madam taking a percentage of their income and controlling their workload. But, since this was a cheap sauna mostly oriented toward migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus, Leyla did not feel comfortable working there for a long period due to her past exploitative experiences. She, thus, continued to look for better alternatives.

As Leyla was exploring different alternatives, in December 2016, Bernara, one of her acquaintances from the street world, helped her find sex work at Cosmos, the largest hotel in Russia built during the Soviet times in preparation for the XXII Summer Olympic Games in 1980. Like other sex work venues in Moscow, the work at this hotel also had its own informal rules and practices. First, the standard rate for one-hour sexual services was 6000 rubles (~US$100), an amount double that from the sauna. Each woman working at the hotel was required to pay 65,000 rubles (~US$1100) as a monthly dolya (share), which went toward informal structures within the hotel management offering facilities and protection (both from abusive clients and the police). On top of this, each woman had to work on a fifty–fifty rule, meaning that she had to give half of her earnings to one Russian madam from the street, who informally ran the hotel’s sex work business. For example, if the woman received 12,000 rubles (~US$200) from the client, 6000 rubles (~US$100) would go to the madam. This offer came in quite handy for Leyla since she was eager to avoid Central Asian migrants and, instead, wanted to target higher income clients, predominantly tourists and businessmen from foreign countries. Even though Leyla felt safe and did not have to deal with migrants, her initial euphoria quickly evaporated. This was due to the fact that she had to “hunt” for potential clients in the hotel’s lobby and cafes, competing with the other 25 women working there. She ended her first month of work netting an income of only about 15,000 rubles (~US$250), barely covering her living expenses, let alone allowing her to send money home. A similar situation persisted for the next four months, leading her to seek alternatives with better pay and safety.

Although she earned little at Cosmos, working there allowed her to broaden her networks, subsequently later paving the way for a new opportunity in the sex work business centered around a chain of different hotels in Moscow. This time the rules of the game were different given that Leyla was not bound to one specific hotel, but could operate as a call girl in select hotels. In this situation, business was organized by a dispatcher, typically a Russian woman with good connections to the hotel industry who took a dolya (share) from call girls like Leyla who needed clients and a safe place to provide sexual services. This arrangement was also handy for the informal management structures of different hotels, who often welcomed additional income. Under this arrangement, hotel guests approach the hotel security guard or receptionist, who in turn would call the dispatcher asking for call girls for their guests. The dispatcher, then, taking guests’ preferences into account, sent a call girl to the hotel. The money generated from Leyla’s work was equally divided into three parts: Leyla received one-third, another third went to the dispatcher for finding a client for her and the last third was given to the hotel for arranging a safe venue for sex work. Despite Leyla’s income being divided into three parts, she still earned good money from her work, ranging between 80,000 and 120,000 rubles (~US$1350–2000) per month.

Because Leyla had worked in this business for nearly one year and became more experienced, she later realized that she could earn even more by working as an individualka, a call girl working individually without a pimp/madam or hotel attachment. This represented high-risk/high-gain work, meaning that she would pay only 30% of her income to the dispatcher, leaving the remaining 70% for herself. But Leyla had to handle all of the other issues on her own, such as renting an apartment, meals, paying a daily fee of 3000 rubles (~US$50) to a taxi driver who would also act as a bodyguard and, most importantly, sorting out any problems with the police. In order to work as individualka, Leyla contacted dispatchers, working as administrators of specialized websites offering escort services in Moscow. To enter into this business, the dispatcher explained that (on top of the abovementioned 30% share) Leyla had to pay a website registration fee of 3000 rubles (~US$50) as well as monthly website maintenance fees of 1000 rubles (~US$16). On top of these fees, Leyla also paid 6000 rubles (~US$100) to the dispatcher as gratuity for allowing her into the business. The role of the dispatcher was crucial since he/she found clients for call girls via several websites that featured girls’ profiles with photographs and a list of sexual services offered by each call girl. Without dispatchers, it was quite a time-consuming and risky process to find real clients, especially in light of frequent police raids. Dispatchers, as experienced administrators of websites, constantly improve the search engine optimization of their websites and ensure that their websites pop up first on the Google and Yandex search engines. Dispatchers also maintain a database of blacklisted phone numbers and addresses in order to avoid police raids and abusive clients. If a phone number or apartment/hotel location is suspicious or call girls were previously caught in an area, the database automatically shows red text and the dispatcher ignores the call. One of the peculiarities of this kind of work was that Leyla never met the dispatcher in-person; instead, all of these contractual relations were based on trust and a verbal agreement and their interaction was conducted through phone calls and messengers.

Working as individualka, Leyla was now able to generate even more income, sending approximately US$1500 to US$2000 home monthly. To her parents’ surprise given this large amount of money, she explained that she was working two jobs simultaneously. However, this economic success also incurred significant costs. Leyla had to cope with numerous risks and uncertainties on a daily basis, since the dispatcher only helped with finding clients for her, but did not take responsibility for any police-related problems. While sex work is not criminalized in Russia, many call girls suffer from arbitrary police actions. When call girls are caught during a police raid, they usually have three options: (1) face the legal consequences and pay an administrative fine of 1500 rubles (~US$25) to the state; (2) offer a bribe of 10,000 to 15,000 rubles (~US$160–250) to the police officers or (3) instead of a bribe, offer free sex to the police. Many call girls often chose the third option and offer free sex, since they neither wanted to be registered in the police database nor pay a bribe. But, during raids, police mostly aimed to catch drivers whom the police could treat as pimps and, thereby, accuse them of organizing sex work, a criminal act according to Articles 240 and 241 of the Russian Criminal Code. The probability of a severe criminal punishment meant that the police could extort a huge bribe from drivers, the primary reason the police were so eager to catch them. Leyla recounted an incident when their driver was caught during a police raid. The police demanded the driver pay a bribe of 100,000 rubles (~US$1660) if he did not want to face criminal charges. Since Leyla and the other call girls had a good relationship with the driver, they lent the driver the required sum, thus saving him from a potential prison sentence.

In the spring of 2019, the police raided an apartment where Leyla and two other call girls were offering sexual services to a group of clients. This was a raid jointly organized by the police and immigration officials aimed at fulfilling a monthly quota to fight sex work and undocumented migration. This time the police accepted neither a bribe nor free sex offered by the girls. Given that Leyla did not have a valid patent or residence registration, it was obvious that she had an undocumented legal status. As a result, her case was further transferred to a court. According to the court decision, Leyla received an expulsion (deportation) order and a ban from entering Russia for the next five years. These developments put an end to Leyla’s almost five-year-long migrant life in Russia and resulted in her returning to her children in Uzbekistan.

In August of 2021, the last time we met Leyla in a small town outside Tashkent, she was no longer involved in sex work. Instead, she was running a small factory producing plus-size underwear for women. Having spent nearly five years in Moscow, Leyla was aware that there was a niche in the Uzbek market for plus-size underwear. Leyla’s business idea proved successful and generated a stable income for Leyla and her family. Leyla’s factory also provided employment to nearly 30 women in the town. During our last meeting, we also learned that Leyla was able to re-establish ownership of her late husband’s property after hiring a lawyer, an outcome which resulted from Leyla’s enhanced legal literacy and resilience.

Zarina: Navigating Precarities and Vulnerabilities in Fergana and Istanbul

Zarina (a pseudonym) is a 31-year-old female migrant from a village in the Ferghana valley in Uzbekistan. After having worked in Russia for three years, she had been working in Turkey for five years at the time of our interview in 2020. Zarina married at the early age of 15. While the legal age of marriage for girls in Uzbekistan is 17, it is not rare among many parents in rural areas of the Ferghana valley to marry their daughters earlier, at the age of 15 or 16, officially registering the marriage only after the bride reaches adulthood. Zarina was from one such family. However, soon after reaching 18, as a result of domestic violence from her husband and in-laws, she was divorced with a two-year-old daughter on her hands and pregnant with another child. Zarina returned to her parents’ house and later gave a birth to her second child, a son. However, in her parents’ house, she did not feel comfortable since her parents were ashamed of her divorce and had to accommodate her and her two children. Although Zarina worked as a cashier in a local grocery store, her earnings were insufficient to cover her costs. In addition, constant community gossip was directed at her as if she was involved in intimate relationships with several villagers. As a result, Zarina started wearing a hijab, a shield used by many divorced women in Uzbekistan against community gossips and rumors. After a couple of years of staying in her parents’ house and still unable to secure accommodation of her own, Zarina decided to find a job in Russia. She planned to work for several years to earn enough money to buy a small apartment of her own in Ferghana city, where she could avoid village gossip and neighbors’ judgmental looks. Leaving her children with her parents, Zarina went to Russia as a migrant worker in 2011, a typical coping strategy among young, divorced women in Uzbekistan.

With few acquaintances, it was not easy for Zarina to enter the Russian labor market. She faced deceit, fraud and discrimination, a reality experienced by many Central Asian migrants in Russia. She worked in several places in and around Moscow, jobs which included cleaning offices, looking after an older woman and working in chemical-laden printing houses and refrigerated poultry farms. The last stable job with a relatively decent salary she found was at a chocolate factory just outside Moscow. Like many other fellow migrants, Zarina did not always have a valid work permit. Initially, she tried to comply with the Russian immigration rules. She tried to regularly pay her patent fee and renew her residence registration, but a couple of times she missed the monthly deadline to pay the patent fee, because she did not receive her salary on time. Since she sent her earnings home right after receiving her salary, Zarina could not find enough money to pay the patent fee during the designated period. According to immigration rules, failing to pay a fee by the designated period automatically invalidates the patent, one of the typical factors leading to migrants in Russia to become undocumented. After a patent becomes invalidated, a migrant must exit Russia and enter again to restart the patent application process from the beginning. Otherwise, his/her stay in Russia is deemed illegal. The cheapest option for migrants to exit/enter Russia is crossing Russian–Kazakh or Russian–Ukrainian border with the help of migrant taxi drivers. Given these expenses, not all migrants try to maintain their legal status. After being unable to pay her patent fee on time, Zarina’s patent became invalid. Nevertheless, she continued to work in the chocolate factory since her documents were in place when she was hired. After having worked in the factory for more than nine months, she was stopped during a raid by immigration officials on the street for a random document check. As a result, the immigration officials transferred her case to the court for further processing. Since Zarina lacked the required documents, the court issued a deportation order from Russia with a five-year entry ban, meaning Zarina could not return to Russian for the next five years. So, Zarina’s migrant career in Russia ended in 2014 and she was deported to Uzbekistan.

Since she sent almost all of her earnings home on a monthly basis, Zarina was able to save some money. However, this was insufficient to buy even a small apartment in a small industrial town near her village. Moreover, Zarina knew that she had to find a job to feed herself and her children. Instead of buying an apartment, Zarina decided to buy a car so that she could earn money through informal taxi driving, one of the largest informal income-generating options not only in Uzbekistan, but across Central Asia. While taxi driving among women is not a widespread phenomenon in Uzbekistan, she was forced to take up this option given that she could not find any other formal job and the doors of Russia were closed to her. Taxi driving helped sustain a bearable life, but it was insufficient for achieving her dreams. As Zarina’s children grew, so did her expenses. Moreover, she and her children continued living in her parents’ house, which had become even more crowded following her brother’s marriage. This meant that Zarina had to earn more, a task that was becoming less viable in the country. As a result of the introduction of draconian entry ban laws in Russia from 2013 through 2015, the number of entry-banned Uzbek migrants increased drastically, leading them to look for alternative migration destinations. Simultaneously, the number of Uzbek people going to Turkey for work increased. Zarina also became interested in going to Turkey and began exploring her options.

It turned out that Gulya, a friend of Zarina’s mother, had been working in Istanbul since 2010. Gulya offered Zarina help in finding a job and temporary accommodation should Zarina decide to travel there. Zarina did not think for long and decided to go to Turkey in 2015, leaving her children with her parents once again. Gulya instructed Zarina to join four other women who were also flying to Istanbul on the same flight so that Gulya could pick them up from Istanbul Ataturk airport. But, when they arrived, Gulya was not there and Zarina and the other four women had to stay for two nights at the airport with no clue regarding what to do next. Surprisingly, on the third day, two men sent by Gulya picked them up from the airport.

As Zarina recounted, this was a deliberate move to ensure that no one from the same flight from Uzbekistan witnessed who picked up Zarina and the other women. At the same time, this strategy was used to make the women more docile and desperate to find a job. On the way from the airport, the men who picked up Zarina and her companions said that they would take them to Bursa, a city on the western coast of Turkey for house cleaning jobs. The men took everyone’s passports, explaining that they might easily lose them since their cleaning jobs required that they move from one house to another on a daily basis. They also made Zarina remove her hijab, justifying it as the employers’ wishes.

In Bursa, the women were separated and taken to home-based brothels. It turned out that Gulya had sold Zarina and the others to pimps for US$1500 each. Zarina’s initial resistance did not help, since she was severely beaten and threatened with her life. She was forced into sex work for about one year without any possibility of contacting her parents and children in Uzbekistan. As she described it, her workday started around midday when she would receive clients in the apartment where she and the other women were living. Depending on the turnout, she would serve 10–50 clients a day. Around or before midnight, she would be taken to a client’s place, an individual who had paid for an entire night. She would be brought back, usually by the pimps or their guards, early the next morning. Whenever she was outside the brothel, either on her way to a client’s place or for any other purpose, Zarina would not be left alone, and instead was accompanied by pimps or guards. Zarina and the other women in the same apartment would receive a certain percentage of the money they earned, but it never accumulated or amounted to much. As Zarina recounted:

When we sit and drink with clients in the apartment, we order drinks or soft drugs (e.g., marijuana) and they [pimps’ people] bring them to us and bill it to us. After working, we often don’t remember what and how much we ordered; they just tell us the cost and often it is equivalent to what we earned. Or it [the money] is often stolen. So, we are not paid a dime in the end. And they often encourage us to buy drugs, under the influence of which we usually do not comprehend much of what is going on around us. One of the girls who worked with us was so addicted to drugs that she never cared about when or how she could gain her freedom.

After about a year, as the queue of clients for Zarina’s services thinned and she became “worn out”, the pimps offered her the option to buy her freedom. Kicked out of the house with her passport returned to her after a year of sex work, Zarina did not know what to do next. She and another Uzbek woman who was also set free at the same time decided not to leave behind Shahlo, a third Uzbek woman still owned by the pimps and still in “service”. They asked a client to order Shahlo’s services and bring her to a designated location in his car. But, their escape plan failed quite quickly; all three girls were caught five minutes after picking Shahlo up at the designated location. The pimps and guards severely beat all three girls, incapacitating them from even walking for weeks. Moreover, the pimps told Zarina and her Uzbek friend that they now owed an additional US$1000 each for daring to challenge them in such a way. Her passport was taken away again and she was threatened with death for escaping. Now, Zarina had to resume sex work, this time on her own, to earn the money she owed. She was unable to report the incident to the police, since the pimps’ associates were everywhere issuing death threats, and she was sure that as a foreigner without any documents she had no chance of persuading the authorities. It took Zarina several more months to repay her new debt. Yet, her client “database” made it relatively easy for Zarina to find clients so that she could earn in order to pay off her debt.

After returning her debt and thereby “regaining” her freedom, Zarina assumed various temporary jobs, mostly daily, alternating those with occasional sex work. However, both sex work and day jobs were unstable, leaving Zarina needing more money. In the meantime, she was back in touch with her parents explaining her almost year-long absence as “slavery” on a remote farm. As Zarina developed her own network of connections, she became familiar with people involved in illegal activities. She was later offered a job delivering narcotics through a ferry route between Bursa and Istanbul. Zarina explained the job as follows:

They would wrap up small batches of cannabis totaling one to one-and-a-half kilos around my belly. I would wear a large robe on top [of my clothes] and cover my head with a hijab. This was done to minimize any suspicion, so that people would view me as a pious believer. Then, I would take the ferry and travel for about two hours. I would just find a spot on the ferry and sit quietly until we reached the ultimate destination. After disembarking, two men would be waiting for me in a car. Before allowing me to sit, they would ask “Mal sağ mı?” [“Is the shipment alright?”]. After my affirmative response, they would take me to some secluded area where two women who work for them would remove the shipment. After they counted the batches and checked the weight, they would give me money in [US] dollars. After receiving the money, I was supposed to bring the money back to the people who supplied the narcotics. I did not count that money — the people who received it counted it in front of me. Because I did not cheat, they started to trust me after several shipments. For one shipment, they usually paid me US$1000. The shipments did not take place every day, but it was once in a fortnight or so. In one of my last shipments, we went as a group of six women, some of whom I knew beforehand. But, this time, four women from our group were caught by the police and were taken immediately into custody. Because we were sitting in different places, thank God, I and one other woman were not caught. We delivered the goods and brought back the money. But since the drug dealers lost a lot of money because the other four women were caught by the police, they paid us very little. This upset me greatly, but I could not do anything at that moment. Instead, what I did was, when a convenient moment arrived, I just stole five kilos of their cannabis and escaped from Bursa where I worked for them. They looked for me in both Bursa and Istanbul for a long time, but never found me. I stayed at a friend’s place and hid there for a couple of months. Since I knew some people from the street world, I later sold the drugs in small batches and made a lot of money. In one month, I sent home US$7000. I just explained to my parents that I was able to recover my unpaid ten-month salary from my former employer. Those drug dealers could not find me, but I learned later that they changed locations and the ‘mules’ they worked with. Although they did not find me and three years have passed since then, I am still afraid and avoid going to places where their people may wander. For example, I go to Aksaray only if I really have to and, even if I go, I take someone with me.

Several months after she hid in Istanbul, Zarina tried to find a regular job and start a “normal” life. It took a while for Zarina to restart her life with regular jobs; she had to engage in occasional sex work depending on the situation. She also changed several jobs in different quarters of Istanbul until she found her current job in a semi-underground textile sweatshop in Istanbul’s Bayrampasha district, which produced different types of jumpers and sweaters. Thanks to her tough character and leadership skills, Turkish employers have promoted her to the level of usta (literally, master, or a first-line supervisor), where she was overseeing ten of her migrant co-workers. In terms of accommodation, she also had to change many shared apartments.

In January 2022, the last time we met Zarina in Istanbul, she was cohabitating with Jora, an unmarried Uzbek migrant eight years younger than Zarina. Interestingly, both knew that their romantic relationship would continue as long as they were migrants in Turkey. Zarina soberly understood that Jora’s parents would never allow him to marry her. Apart from romantic experiences, cohabiting with a partner was a deliberate strategy some female migrants used to minimize the hardships of migrant precarity and sexual harassment from employers (Parla, 2020), a reality many female migrants face in Turkey. For Zarina, living with Jora under a nikah (religious marriage without formal registration) not only minimized her own expenses (for room and board), but also provided security allowing her to avoid sexual advances from Turkish employers, colleagues and strangers on the street. If there was one thing that Uzbek female migrants disliked in Turkey, it was men’s importunity toward single women and girls. Being accompanied by a male partner allowed women to avoid male advances on the street. For Jora, his relationship with Zarina meant that he had access to regular sex and a person who would cook and look after him. At the end of the day, they could rely on each other to a certain point when one of them faced financial or other difficulties. Thus, this was a relationship of mutual calculation not entirely devoid of romantic affection.

Shurik: From Moscow’s Street to Istanbul’s Mosque

Shurik (32, male) is a migrant worker from the Fergana valley in Uzbekistan. He is a street-smart and physically fit individual with a rich experience in street life and brawls. This experience is also visible in his post-school career, during which he worked in the informal taxi sector, which required physical strength and organizational skills. In 2011, shortly after finishing secondary school in rural Fergana, Shurik began working as a posadchik, a regulator of the informal taxi sector. Due to the high unemployment rate in Uzbekistan, the informal taxi sector has become a major source of self-employment and an income-generating opportunity for many of the unemployed in Uzbekistan. However, given that the informal taxi sector was informally organized, there was a need to maintain order in terms of queues, preventing price dumping and gate-keeping. As a posadchik, Shurik maintained daily order in the informal taxi sector in his home district’s bazaar, which served as a primary local transport hub. His job included directing passengers to the taxis waiting in the queue, disciplining unruly drivers when they tried to jump the queue or offered a different fee than the established rate and gate-keeping and controlling the entry of new taxi drivers. Sometimes, when oral warnings did not work, Shurik resorted to physical violence to discipline drivers, a street job that required physical strength and experience in conflict resolution. As compensation for his “law and order” work, Shurik received a daily dolya (share) from each driver, allowing him to cover his living expenses. But, despite these informal income-earning opportunities, Shurik decided to change his livelihood strategy and move to Russia as a migrant worker. This decision was driven by Shurik’s desire to earn more and try his luck in a new country.

Shurik arrived in Moscow on May 15, 2014, together with four of his co-villagers who had previously worked in Moscow. But, unlike his fellow villagers, Shurik did not enter the construction sector; instead, he got a job as a seller at Food City (Fudsiti) on the outskirts of Moscow, the largest wholesale food distribution bazaar in Russia, which employs thousands of migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Approximately 5000 wholesale and retail vendors sell nearly 150,000 tons of products monthly, about 15% of all food sales in Moscow. His job as a seller was not similar to typical jobs in the sales sector, but rather working as a seller in Food City involved a myriad of informal practices such as (1) hosting and providing logistical support to entrepreneurs (rossiychilar) who brought agricultural products in large trucks from Uzbekistan, (2) negotiating the dolya (share) typically collected by Food City’s informal power hierarchies, (3) selling Uzbek entrepreneurs’ (rossiychilar) products on a wholesale basis to supermarkets, restaurants and cafes and hotels, small wholesale and retail markets, catering companies and retail customers and (4) providing protection (“roofing” [kryshevanie] in street jargon) from racketeers and bandits operating in bazaar areas. Owing to his previous street experience, Shurik gradually gained the trust of many Uzbek entrepreneurs who needed to quickly sell their products and safely return to Uzbekistan. In return for his services, Shurik received a payment from the rossiychilar, amounting to about 60,000 rubles (~US$1700) per month.

According to rumors circulating among migrants, Food City was informally controlled by a high-level official from the Russian law enforcement bodies. In the words of Shurik, Food City was a separate republic, or a small state within the state with its own legal order and informal governance system. Many Uzbek migrants we encountered there stated that they paid a dolya [share or protection fee] to kuratori [curators] who ensured that no raid by immigration officials would occur on the bazaar’s territory, a privilege allowing migrants to work and live without a work permit and residence registration. Furthermore, Chechen and Dagestani protection racketeers, key actors in the street world, could not operate freely in the Food City area given that the bazaar fell under the protection of a top law enforcement official.

Given the fact that selling had a seasonal nature and Uzbek entrepreneurs brought their products to Russia mostly during the harvest season (May–October), Shurik had to look for other income opportunities during the off-season periods. This situation enticed Shurik to explore other avenues where his street experience and skills would generate a high income.

Working as a seller at Food City bazaar enabled Shurik to integrate more closely into the street life of Moscow and establish connections with a small group of Uzbek migrants who were involved in various illegal activities (e.g., fake immigration document production and sales, illegal sales of train tickets and extortion) at Moscow’s Kazanskiy railway station (vokzal). Kazanskiy vokzal, situated at Komsomolskaya square, is one of nine railway stations in Moscow serving the Trans-Aral railway line (among others) departing to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Therefore, when visiting this railway station, one may spot many migrants arriving from and departing to Central Asia. Given the high concentration of migrant workers at Kazanskiy vokzal, many cafés serve Central Asian food and many underground printing houses produce fake immigration documents for migrants. Shurik worked there in different capacities such as selling resident registrations and other fake immigration documents to migrants, acting as an intermediary between migrants who needed cheap train ticket to Uzbekistan and train controllers (provodniks) who made extra income by illegally providing cheaper train tickets to migrants, as well as extorting money and telephones from non-Uzbek (mostly, Kyrgyz and Tajik) migrants who came to Kazanskiy vokzal. Despite his extortion work, Shurik remained loyal to his fellow villagers who primarily worked in Moscow’s construction sector by supporting them when they experienced problems.

Although different ethnic criminal groups operated within the territory of Kazanskiy vokzal, Uzbeks occupied a dominant position. According to Shurik, this was partly a result of the chief of the police at Kazanskiy vokzal, a Russian originally from Uzbekistan’s Andijan region. Owing to their common origin (zemliachestvo), the Russian police officer acted as a krysha (roof) to the Uzbek criminal group and secretly informed them about upcoming raids organized by law enforcement bodies so that they would stay away from the vokzal. In return, Shurik and his friends reciprocated by regularly paying dolya (10–15% of their profit) to the Russian police officer. For example, if Shurik earned 100,000 rubles per month, he gave 10,000–15,000 rubles to the police chief.

However, the rules of the game at Kazanskiy vokzal drastically changed in early 2015 following the retirement of the police chief. He was replaced by a new chief, who, unlike his predecessor, had no sympathy for Uzbeks, but instead had an agenda of fighting against street actors and criminal groups. As a result, Shurik and his friends failed to find common ground with the new police chief, who was, in their words, a “communist”, a metaphor used to refer to law-abiding state officials in the Uzbek cultural context. These changes were particularly felt by Shurik and his friends in early 2015 when a street brawl (ulichnaya draka) between Uzbek and Tajik criminal groups erupted within the territory of Kazanskiy vokzal. Even though Shurik and his friends regularly extorted money from migrants, their victims were primarily Kyrgyz and Tajik migrants, while many Uzbek migrants could remain “under the radar” due to their shared ethnic identity. The main trigger of the interethnic brawl was an extortion incident in which the Tajik criminal group demanded a monthly dolya (share) from the owner of an Uzbek café located on the premises of the railway station. This act was perceived as an insult by Shurik and his friends, who regularly provided protection to the café owner. Paying a dolya to Tajiks also carried a moral dimension, since paying Tajiks was considered a sign of weakness and an attack on the honor and dignity of Uzbeks in Moscow. More than half of the participants in the brawl, including Shurik, were immediately arrested by the Russian paramilitary police (OMON). After spending a few days at a nearby police department, Shurik was sent to one of the pretrial detention facility (SIZO) in Moscow city, where he spent the next six months awaiting his trial and the court’s verdict.

After arriving at the pretrial detention facility, Shurik was placed in an “osobo opasnaya hata” (very dangerous cell), a cell (hata) he shared with seven “polosatie” (literally, “striped”) inmates who were all recidivists accused of committing serious crimes and all with rich knowledge (ponyatka) of informal norms and hierarchies within prisons (so-called, thieves’ law). In other words, prison was a kind of home to many of these polosatie inmates in Shurik’s cell, a lifestyle visible in many tattoos on their bodies, such as KOT, or “korennoy obitatel tyurmi”, which translates as an indigenous inhabitant of the prison. Given that Shurik was already well-versed in street law and regularly gave grev (a donation) to an obshak (mutual assistance fund among prisoners), it was not that difficult for him to integrate into pretrial detention life. Owing to his rich street experience, he knew how to behave and find common ground when interacting with the polosatie. Shurik managed to build a good relationship with Ruslan, a polosatiy inmate from Tatarstan, who served as a hatnik, an informal leader of the cell (hata). Because each inmate’s stay in the pretrial detention facility is temporary, Ruslan was soon transferred to one of the correctional colonies (zona) outside Moscow to serve his prison sentence. This meant that there was a need for a new hatnik who would oversee the hata and educate newly arrived inmates about prison subcultures based on the principles of the “thieves’ law”. Seeing that Shurik held a solid ponyatka, Ruslan nominated Shurik as the new hatnik to replace him after his transfer to the prison colony. The vory (thieves and criminal authorities), after checking Shurik’s background and reputation on the street, accepted his candidacy.

As a hatnik, Shurik’s duties included receiving newly arrived inmates, giving them ponyatka about the thieves’ law, completing a background check of newly arrived inmates (whether they collaborated with police, whether they were homosexual), solving disputes (rams) among inmates, managing and collecting contributions to the hata’s mini-obshak and providing supplies to inmates (e.g., tea, cigarettes and soap) when they departed to another destination (pretrial detention facility or a correctional colony) after receiving the court’s decision. Working as a hatnik, Shurik was able to expand his networks in the street world, which later served as a vantage point in reaching a higher position within informal prison hierarchies. After being held in pretrial detention for six months, Shurik was transferred to colony X in the Moscow province in mid-2015, where he served his sentence until early 2020.

In the post-Soviet space, both prisoners and ordinary people use the word “zona” to refer to prisons. Colony X was a strict-regime correctional facility, or zona, for men serving prison sentences for the first time (known in Russian as a colony for pervokhody). In the words of Shurik, colony X was a black zona (chernaya zona), where blatnye—informal power hierarchies represented by members of the Russian criminal world (thieves’ law)—colloquially known as polozhenets or smotriashiy (representatives of the thief) and barashnik (head of the barrack) played decisive roles in determining “the rules of the game”. The formal prison management structures, such as the nachalnik (head of the prison) and menty (a Russian colloquial nickname for police officers), had a limited impact on regulating prisoners’ everyday lives and routines. Cigarettes and tea served as the main currencies in prisoners’ daily transactions and relations. Each night, prisoners played cards (qimor) and generated income for the obshak, a mutual assistance fund among prisoners. But, prison management and power relations are different in so-called red zonas (krasnaya zona). In red zonas, formal prison management structures (i.e., reds) exercise full control, while prisoners must comply with the colony regime rules and work on a daily basis.

Because colony X was a black zona, prisoners enjoyed mobility inside the prison walls, including access to mobile phones and the Internet. Although mobile phone use was illegal in the zona, prisoners could use it at almost any time of day. However, due to the higher probability of shmon (police checks) during the day, many prisoners preferred to use their mobile phones at night, between the hours of 20.00 and 05.00. Furthermore, because mobile phone use was illegal, prisoners typically kept their mobile phones and other forbidden items in a gashnik (a secret hole or hidden place), which exists inside each barrack. Mobile phones entered the zona via two primary channels: (1) menty secretly carried mobile phones into the prison, hiding them in their jacket or anus, and then sold them to prisoners through a baryga (reseller); or (2) mobile phones arrived through perekid or bros (throwing), whereby someone standing outside the prison walls threw the phone onto the prison territory. Given these tricky routes, smartphones remained prohibitively expensive inside the prison. For example, if a basic Nokia mobile phone cost 5000 rubles (US$125) in a store, a baryga sold it to prisoners for 15,000 rubles (US$375). Smartphones were even more expensive. If the cheapest Chinese Huawei smartphone sold for 13,000 rubles (US$200) outside prison, it cost 30,000 rubles (US$450) inside. The price of an iPhone could reach as high as 150,000 rubles (US$2500).

Despite Shurik being locked up in a Russian prison, he continued to be a part of his fellow villagers’ networks and daily life in Moscow through mobile phone contact. Shurik had three SIM cards and used each for a specific purpose. One SIM card was used to make phone calls to his co-villagers and friends in Moscow. The second SIM card was designated for international phone calls, which Shurik used to make phone calls to his family members in Uzbekistan. The third SIM card had a specific function, linked to Shurik’s mobile wallet (mobilniy koshelyok), an electronic payment system in Russia allowing people to make payments and money transfers using mobile devices. Thanks to the existence of his mobile phone, Shurik maintained regular contact with both his co-villagers in Moscow and left-behind family members and community in Uzbekistan. Shurik also had access to the internet and enjoyed online life by updating his social media accounts (i.e., Facebook, Odnoklassniki and VKontakte) and by watching porn when bored.

In black zonas, when a new prisoner arrives, he can choose between three main pathways in terms of determining his daily routines, barracks (living or dormitory blocks) and status in the prison. First, he can choose to work during his sentence and live in a “working barrack” (rabochiy barack) together with other working prisoners (muzhiki rabotyagi). Second, he can choose not to work and, thus, live in a nonworking barrack (nerabochiy barak), in which prisoners with an interest in the ‘thieves’ world’ (zainteresovannye muzhiki) are held. Third, he can choose to cooperate with the prison’s formal management and, thus, live in a “red’s barrack” (krasniy barak) together with other prisoners who occupy the lowest position in the informal prison hierarchies given their cooperation with prison management. Prisoners who opt for the first two categories (working prisoners and prisoners with an interest in the thieves’ world) were considered decent men (poryadochnie muzhiki) according to informal prison norms (thieves’ law).

After arriving in the zona, Shurik spent two weeks in a quarantine cell in the zona, a typical adaptation pathway for all newly arrived inmates before being transferred to barracks. Given Shurik’s rich ponyatka and resilience to pressure and torture, the menty did not send him to the working barrack, fearing he would “poison” other inmates with the thieves’ law ideology. As a result, he was sent to a nonworking barrack, in which blatnye—that is, criminal authorities—lived. In that barrack, given that Shurik previously served as a hatnik in the pretrial detention facility and his rich ponyatka, he was able to quickly establish solid relationships with Aslan, the zona’s polozhenets (the main power broker in the zona), a Muslim from Dagestan.

However, being a part of the blatnye circle also meant that Shurik must follow the basic principles of the thieves’ world. According to the thieves’ law, prisoners with some status as decent men were expected to make a monthly contribution to the obshak. Many prisoners worked in the promzona (a prison’s industrial zone) and received a salary each month, allowing them to make a monthly contribution to the obshak. This rule also applied to prisoners who lived in a nonworking barrack even if they had no stable source of income. Alternatively, they were expected to engage in some useful activities (dvizheniya) that would bring monetary and/or nonmonetary benefits to the obshak.

Even though Shurik lived in a nonworking barrack, he was still expected to engage in some useful activity and bring some kind of benefit to the obshak. Shurik came up with an innovative idea: salary recovery, an activity that benefited both the obshak and himself. Being in the blatnye circle, Shurik learned that Aslan, the Dagestani polozhenets, was influential not only inside (in the prison), but also outside (on the street), often acting as a qozi (street judge) and enforcing unfulfilled promises or contracts when someone cheats others and acts unfairly. Shurik knew that many of his co-villagers working in Moscow often experienced problems receiving payment for their work. Since many of his fellow villagers worked in the shadow economy, they could not seek redress from formal legal institutions in cases of salary nonpayment. Therefore, alternative means of recovering their salary through street-level institutions and prison-based criminal authorities were the most viable options under the conditions of shadow economic employment.

The need for salary recovery was particularly high in the construction sector, an industry with a high concentration of undocumented migrants and where many Uzbek migrants worked. Equipped with a mobile phone and three SIM cards, Shurik remained in regular contact with his co-villagers who worked on various construction sites in Moscow. Shurik’s first case involved a group of six migrants who worked on a construction site in a small town outside Moscow. Their boss was a posrednik (middleman) from Armenia, who, in turn, worked for a Russian construction firm. The employment relationship between all parties—the migrants, the posrednik and the Russian construction firm—was based on a handshake agreement, implying that these transactions were informal and took place beyond labor and tax regulations. The migrants worked for the posrednik for five months, but they were not paid for their last two months of work, an amount totaling 360,000 rubles (about US$5500) collectively. When the migrants asked the Armenian posrednik whether he was willing to pay their two-month back salary, the posrednik stated that the Russian construction firm was delaying payment, not him. They waited for two more months, hoping that the posrednik would pay their salary. But, he continued telling the same story. Thus, it became apparent that the posrednik was unwilling to pay the remaining salary, leading the migrants to call their co-villager Shurik with a salary recovery request.

After receiving his co-villagers’ request, Shurik explained the situation to Aslan, recounting all of the problems his co-villagers had experienced and politely asked the polozhenets whether he could help them recover their salary from the posrednik. In turn, Aslan, before taking on this challenge, asked Shurik whether his co-villagers would be able to stand by their story during the razborka (dispute settlement process) and whether they were ready to pay 20% of the disputed money recovered. After Shurik confirmed both points, the polozhenets asked him to provide the posrednik’s full name and phone number, the name of the construction firm, the exact amount of the salary in question and the phone number of his co-villager who could speak on behalf of all of the affected migrants.

The next day, Aslan organized a conference call during which all of the parties, the polozhenets, the migrants and the posrednik were all on the line simultaneously. Before starting the investigation, Aslan warned both the migrants and the posrednik to be honest and that they would be severely punished if they attempted to bend the truth. First, the polozhenets asked the migrants to describe what had happened and what claim they had in relation to the posrednik. Then, the posrednik was given the chance to respond to the migrants’ complaint. The posrednik blamed the construction firm, stating that he also did not receive his own salary from the Russians. The polozhenets immediately interrupted the posrednik, stating that the migrants made an agreement with him, not with the Russians, whereby he was responsible for securing the migrants’ salary regardless of other circumstances. Aslan did not continue the conversation any further and quickly moved to the final settlement and ended the razborka.

As a result of the razborka, the posrednik was given a maximum of three days to pay the migrants’ salary. In addition, the posrednik was also ordered to deposit 36,000 rubles (US$550) to the polozhenets’ phone number. Aslan made clear to the posrednik that his life would be in danger if these two payments were not made by the deadline. The migrants were also reminded that once they received their salary from the posrednik they must also transfer 20% of the salary recovered—that is, 72,000 rubles (US$1100)—to Aslan’s phone number so that he could pass it on to the obshak. Not wanting to risk his life, the posrednik quickly paid the migrants’ salaries and deposited the stated amount onto Aslan’s phone number. The migrants also deposited money to the polozhenets’ number that same day.

This was a win–win situation for all of the parties. It was quite obvious that the Uzbek migrants would not have been able to recover their salaries through formal legal means since they worked without any formal employment contracts. Therefore, for migrants, it was much better to give 20% percent of their recovered salaries to the polozhenets than to lose all of their money. For the polozhenets, it was also a favorable outcome given that solving vulnerable people’s problems through street mechanisms enhanced their reputation and the legitimacy of the vory (thieves) in the eyes of ordinary people. Financially, it also brought money to the obshak, which can be used to improve the living conditions in the zona.

Since salary nonpayment was common among many Uzbek migrants (as well as among other migrant communities in Russia), the demand for Shurik’s assistance was quite high. Given his solid relationship with the polozhenets, Shurik not only helped his fellow villagers, but also provided salary recovery services to a wider group of Uzbek migrants in Moscow. In return, migrants regularly deposited money into Shurik’s mobile wallet, thereby allowing Shurik to enjoy a relatively decent life in the zona. Apart from financial benefits, the salary recovery schemes enabled Shurik to contribute to zona’s obshak and thereby retain his reputation within the circle of blatnye. Alongside the financial benefits, Shurik’s capacity to help his fellow countrymen even under the harsh conditions of confinement gave him a sense of pride and moral satisfaction.

Five years later in early January 2020, Shurik was released from the zona. However, as soon as he exited the gates of the zona, Shurik was greeted by the officers of the Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS), who, in turn, forcibly took him to a temporary detention center (Spetsial’noe uchrezhdenie vremennego soderzhaniya inostrannikh grazhdan) in Moscow, where he was held for two weeks until his deportation to Uzbekistan in late January 2020, with a five-year ban to enter Russia.

After returning to Uzbekistan, Shurik found it quite hard to reintegrate into his family and mahalla life. The taxi sector had already been digitalized meaning that there was little need for posadchik services. He also failed to find a formal job given his criminal record. Nevertheless, under his parents’ and community’s pressure, Shurik married a girl from his village. As the days passed, it became apparent that he would not be able to sustain his family let alone cover his own expenses if he continued to stay in the village. But, the doors to Russia were closed given his five-year entry ban. Kazakhstan, another alternative (to Russia) migration destination, was also closed due to travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The only available option at that time, in August 2020, was Turkey, which had become a growing destination for many Central Asian migrants in recent years.

In early August 2020, with the help of his acquaintances, he managed to find a ticket for a chartered flight to Istanbul. Upon arrival, Shurik was picked up by his acquaintance, who then took him to his temporary accommodation in Kumkapi, a standard adaptation route for many newly arrived Uzbek migrants in Istanbul. Like many other Uzbek migrants, he had neither a residence permit nor a work permit. As described in previous chapters, Shurik also found the Turkish migrant labor market different from that in Russia in terms of fewer police and less immigration control, but overly exploitative working conditions and low salaries. For Shurik, who previously exerted significant influence on abusive middlemen and dishonest employers in Russia, it was odd that there was no viable street channel that would make the labor market actors accountable to migrants. Since he had no other options than Istanbul, he had to endure the hardships and tried to adapt to the new realities. Before being able to find his relatively stable job in a small factory that produced zippers for clothes, Shurik held several jobs, such as a loader in a cargo company, a security guard at a restaurant, food deliveryman and as a tailor in a textile sweatshop that produced face masks. Most of his jobs were unstable and low paying. To make matters worse, the volatility of the Turkish lira and its constant devaluation affected the amount of remittance he could send home. One consolation was that he was able to send home all of his earnings given that he was not forced to pay bribes to the Turkish police nor did he need to spend money on legalization expenses.

Another thing that he could not accept in Turkey was the dominant role played by women in the migrant labor market. In Shurik’s view, many Uzbek women became spoiled while working and living in Turkey. Since a considerable share of Uzbek female migrants in Turkey were single mothers, some chose to enter into romantic relationships with Turkish men. In the words of Shurik, many Uzbek female migrants preferred Turkish men over Uzbek male migrants because the former were in a better financial situation and could support women, for instance, by paying their monthly rent, giving them pocket money for miscellaneous expenses, buying clothes for them and treating them to dinners in restaurants. Uzbek male migrants, however, earned a lot less than female migrants and could not afford to spend their money on women since they also had to send their earnings home to support their left-behind families. Back in Moscow, male migrants constituted an absolute majority of the Uzbek migrant population and occupied higher positions given that they earned more by working on construction sites and fulfilling many haltura (part-time) jobs, leverage allowing them to afford romantic relationships with Uzbek female migrants.

Shurik found the opposite situation in Istanbul, where women had more agency in organizing their private lives. Such a situation led to jealousy and frustration among Uzbek male migrants like Shurik, who blamed Uzbek women for becoming spoiled (ayollar buzilib ketdi), but about which they could do nothing.

Thus, Istanbul was a totally different experience for Shurik. On the one hand, Turkey was a Muslim-majority country with innumerable mosques, a new context that awakened Shurik’s dormant religious instincts he had acquired during his childhood. On the other hand, Shurik soon realized that his street skills were less valuable in Istanbul, where Uzbek migrants were weakly organized and did not have connections with the street world in Turkey. The last time we visited Istanbul in January 2022, we found that Shurik was still working at the zipper-producing factory. But, much to our surprise, Shurik had become religious and began praying five times a day, a significant change that occurred given his exposure to a new social context in Turkey.

The Shadow Economy, the Street World and Migrants’ Life Trajectories

In this chapter, we aimed to understand the interconnections between the shadow economy and the street world in the Russian and Turkish labor markets. Our central argument was that, in non-Western, nondemocratic migration contexts such as Russia and Turkey, the majority of migrant workers are undocumented and often operate under the conditions of a shadow economy and a weak rule of law. Instead of dismissing the shadow economy as an instance of illegality, we argue for a more pragmatic approach in studying migrants’ incorporation into the labor market, viewing informal employment and other shadow economic practices as the rule, simply a standard operating procedure. Accordingly, viewing the shadow economy and the informal migrant labor centered within it as instances of illegality prevents us from exploring the inner workings of the Russian and Turkish migrant labor markets. Such a perspective implies that the lack of formal rules does not necessarily mean there are no rules; rather, informality grows and establishes itself as a regulatory tool in areas where the state cannot or does not want to rule, leaving room for informal and spontaneous initiatives (Davies & Polese, 2015; Polese et al., 2014).

In this chapter, we presented the life histories of three Uzbek migrants, illustrating how migrants experience the shadow economy and the street world in Russian and Turkish migration regimes. Leyla’s life history centered around sex work and the street world highlighting three main tendencies. First, Leyla’s life history shows that informality never exists in a vacuum, but engages in a constant iterative process with formal structures (Williams & Round, 2011). This was especially visible in the involvement of Russian law enforcement actors in the operation of brothels and other sex work schemes through closing their eyes or, sometimes, providing protection or roofing in exchange for a regular dolya (share). Second, Leyla’s history highlights the existence of multiple orders and actors in the street world of sex work. Through Leyla’s life trajectory, we could glean the patterns of at least five main forms of the sex work industry in Moscow: (1) brothels oriented toward migrant workers, (2) sauna-based sex work organized through agreements between sauna owners and sex workers, (3) hotel-run sex work where sex workers provide services under the roofing or protection of hotel management and a pimp, (4) sex work centered around collaboration between pimps and hotel management, through which sex workers provide services in select hotels and (5) individual call girls (individualkas) who operate independently (without subordination to pimps). Each of these forms of sex work feature their own gatekeepers and internal power dynamics that maintain the rules of the game. Third, Leyla’s life history illustrates the role of individual agency even under the conditions of exploitation and precarity. Undoubtedly, Leyla was a victim of domestic violence, abuse and sex trafficking. But, confining our analytical lens to the victimology perspective does not allow us to explore the street world of sex work as a separate migration arena, which can be found in many migration regimes. This case also shows that some resilient and resourceful female migrants like Leyla are able to make the best of a bad situation and organize their daily life notwithstanding numerous challenges and uncertainties. Overall, Leyla’s life history calls for a more context-sensitive approach when attempting to understand the inner world of the sex work industry.

The life history revolving around the experiences of Zarina takes us from Moscow to Istanbul’s street world. Here, in Zarina’s life history, we can summarize at least two main points. First, Zarina’s life history shows that a prior migration experience does not necessarily translate into better migrant adaptation outcomes. Zarina, despite her previous migration experience in Moscow, fell victim to sex traffickers when she traveled to Turkey. This calls for the need to compare different migration regimes through the experiences and agency of migrant workers, rather than merely focusing on immigration laws and policies as the primary comparison lens. Second, Zarina’s case, like Leyla’s, also calls for moving beyond the victimology perspective. Despite being a victim of pimps and experiencing various forms of abuse and violence, Zarina was nevertheless able to fight back and regain her agency, an outcome which was visible in her post-sex work career success, via which she achieved a leadership position in her new workplace. Another instance of her resilience emerged in her drug trafficking experience, during which she was not merely a mule, but was able to recover her losses through hijacking drugs. These points do not imply that we endorse her involvement in illegal activities. Instead, we aim to demonstrate that the street world is an inalienable part of the migrant labor markets, particularly in migration contexts such as Russia and Turkey where migrants operate under the conditions of a shadow economy and a weak rule of law.

The life history focusing on Shurik’s adventures allows us to explore the street world and the shadow economy from a male migrants’ perspective. First, Shurik’s life history shows the role of premigratory experiences and behavioral patterns and how they shape migrants’ life trajectories and labor market choices in the host country. Since Shurik had already been involved in Uzbekistan’s street life as a posadchik, his labor market choices in Russia were a logical continuity of his premigration experiences. Unlike his fellow villagers who worked in construction, he consciously chose to work at Food City and later at Kazanskiy vokzal, key hotspots of the street world in Moscow. This example adds a new perspective to sociolegal debates on migrants’ legal culture and legal consciousness (Ballard, 2006; Kubal, 2013, 2015; Shah, 2011) by contributing new empirical insights into “migrants” street world’ and how it shapes migrants’ legal baggage and adaptation outcomes. Second, Shurik’s case shows that in situations and contexts where state law is inefficient or when the state is reluctant to regulate certain arenas, informal channels and practices may serve as an alternative regulatory mechanism. This argument connects us to studies that claim that the shadow economy is closely related to governance and, in some cases, may actually serve as a cure for an ineffective system rather than representing the disease (Darden, 2008; Ledeneva, 2013). These processes were evident in the example of how Shurik, being under conditions of confinement, coordinated the salary recovery process in Moscow’s shadow economy through the help of the vory, the Russian prison subculture. His case also shows the interconnections between the shadow economy and street world in Russia, particularly how street-based legal orders regulate employment and contractual relations in the informal migrant labor market. Third, and connected to the second point, Shurik’s experiences in Istanbul show how the absence or presence of informal regulatory mechanisms shape migrants’ labor market experiences and adaptation outcomes. While Shurik and other migrants in Moscow had certain agency vis-à-vis dishonest middlemen and abusive employers owing to the existence of street channels, this was not the case in Istanbul where Uzbek male migrants could not exert influence on abusive shirkats and exploitative employers. This comparative element allows us to argue that the informality may serve as an alternative enforcement mechanism (to the state law).

To conclude, this chapter shows that labeling the shadow economy and street world merely as instances of illegality and crime may preclude us from looking at migrants’ actual coping strategies and navigational skills in migration contexts permeated by the shadow economy and a weak rule of law. That said, it is not our intention to romanticize the street world and shadow economic practices and schemes, but rather to describe them as they manifest themselves in migrants’ life trajectories and choices. Fundamentally, a comparison of different migration regimes should not focus only on immigration policies and law, but should also encompass an analysis of migrants’ experiences of the street world and the shadow economy as one of the key migration arenas.