University of Helsinki
On 26-27 of March, a new network of Migration and Informality in Central and Eastern Europe was launched in a workshop organized by Rustam Urinboyev, Rano Turaeva-Hoehne and Abel Polese.
The venue was in the beautiful city of Lund, at the Department of Legal Sociology of the Lund University. Altogether 29 scholars and experts gave presentations and participated in lively discussions on our topics. We covered governance of migration and politics, informality and legal system, economy, health and religion related to migration and informality, migration and displacement, and comparative aspects of informality in the post-socialist world.
Our team members gave presentations on the effects of the shadow economy on Russian security policy, smartphone transnationalism in the lives of Uzbek migrant workers and religious informal networks and solidarity among Moscow´s Central Asian migrants.
The two-day intensive event proved that there is a need for the continuation of this cooperation among people who are studying various sides of informality and migration in the globalized conditions of the post-Soviet space. We also need to include experts who work with migrants and tackle challenges of informal administrative cultures in professional capacity. Comprehensive outlook on these topics is necessary and timely.
The questions raised are not easy, and we don´t have simple solutions. What is the root cause of everyday corruption in the law enforcement, for instance? How to facilitate integration of migrants into the receiving societies? What type of criminal activities both the official and unofficial structures create around migration and displacement? How should we understand informality? Should we have new theoretical and empirical approaches in its examination?
We came back from the workshop with new inspiration, which will hopefully help us in our own project. The main bulk of our new empirical material, which we collected in Moscow last year has now been transcribed. It is time to look at what empirical and theoretical dimensions it contains.