Russia’s Passportization and Central Asian Labor Migrants

• In Event: The Strategic Logic of Migration

Abstract

This paper analyzes Russia’s aggressive use of naturalization policies, a process known as “passportization” (Jain 2023). Passportization is part of the Russkii Mir (Russian World) project, Russia’s effort to strengthen ties with its diaspora to enhance its global status. In particular, the country’s citizenship policies have been amended repeatedly since 1991, allowing many former Soviet citizens (including migrants working in Russia) to acquire Russian passports. Passportization has underscored how citizenship can be “weaponized” (see for example Kingston 2023) and, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has spurred renewed academic interest in “involuntary nationality attribution” (Džankić 2023).

Relatively little attention has been paid however to the hundreds of thousands of labor migrants in Russia who obtained a Russian passport in the last two decades. Until recently, naturalized migrants saw Russian citizenship as a temporary arrangement bringing short-term benefits such as protection from police harassment. The value of a Russian passport changed drastically after February 2022. Formerly exempted from conscription, dual citizens can now be drafted into the Russia army. Passports have also been directly instrumentalized: migrants have been promised expedited naturalization in exchange for military service or for working in the occupied territories of Ukraine—while those refusing to fight have often been threatened with losing their citizenship.

Using content analysis of selected migrants’ social media groups to be completed in spring and summer 2024, the paper explores how passportization has affected Central Asian labor migrants since 2022. It builds on a preliminary analysis presented at the 2023 Northeastern Political Science Association meeting and speaks to the literature on the growth of instrumental conceptions of citizenship (Bauböck, 2019, Harpaz 2019, Joppke 2019). Given their vulnerability in Russia, labor migrants face dilemmas that challenge the artificial dichotomy between voluntary and involuntary citizenship acquisition, and that exemplify the complex interplay between instrumental and identity-based conceptions of citizenship.

Author

• Vanessa Julie Ruget, Salem State University