Post - Soviet Uncertainties: Micro - Orders of Central Asian Migrants in Russia

05 Turaeva_Inner Asia 15/2 28/11/2013 11:32 Page 273
Post-Soviet Uncertainties: Micro-orders of Central

Asian Migrants in Russia
RANo TURAeVA
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle Saale, Germany

r.turaeva@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
In this paper I show how people ‘muddle through’ the present post-Soviet uncer-
tainties and chaos in Central Asia, creating orders amidst disorder. This
muddling-through, locally known as tirikchilik, creates what I call micro-orders
structured through trust networks. Present disorder is contrasted to what was
known as poryadok i zakon [order and law] in Soviet times. I show these
processes in the example of mobile entrepreneurs who make their earnings
through their mobile lives between Russia and Central Asia. Power, various
dependencies, obligations and duties, shared belief and morals, status and
authority play important parts in living and muddling-through within the domain
of tirikchilik and also in regulating micro-orders by mobile entrepreneurs.
Keywords: uncertainty, order and disorder, informal economy, Central Asia,

legal pluralism, transnational governance
INTRodUCTIoN
This paper aims to investigate the principles of reconstruction of certainty by

mobile entrepreneurs within their micro-orders of tirikchilik (‘muddling-
through’). These micro-orders are regulated by informal norms and rules. The
collapse of the Soviet empire brought much uncertainty resulting from the
break-up of the Soviet welfare system, economy and employment market. The
independence of the Central Asian states in 1991 was almost immediately fol-
lowed by internal economic crises which left many people without hope for
survival inside their own countries. The Soviet welfare system ceased to exist
and the employment market became less attractive, since the average state
salaries dropped below the minimum for subsistence. People in Uzbekistan par-
ticularly suffered from economic collapse and the political situation in the
country. Uzbekistan failed to introduce economic reforms and the future prog-
nosis remains unpromising (Apostolou 1998; Melvin 2000). Now the Uzbek
Inner Asia 15 (2013): 273–92

© 2013 Brill NV
274 RANo TURAeVA
economy is one of the most remittance-dependent in the world (IoM 2005:

397).
Suddenly, after the collapse of the Soviet state, people felt they were left on
their own to survive. Uncertainties about the future have occupied the minds of
ordinary citizens who used to rely on the Soviet system of provision of health-
care, employment and social security. economic collapse in post-Soviet space
has been viewed as a growing disorder in the eyes of former Soviet citizens who
saw order in terms of Soviet zakon i poryadok, meaning a stable and peaceful
existence with guaranteed life-time employment, healthcare and retirement
secured by the state.
These uncertainties led people to rethink their survival strategies and security
has become the number one concern in the everyday life of ordinary people. State
provision for citizens was replaced by kinship and friendship networks of sup-
port. Consequently, citizens have put more effort into reciprocation within those
networks of support, and have avoided the state and its system as much as pos-
sible, since it came to be seen as a source of trouble. Survival has become a
driving force and the main occupation of ordinary people, which they described
in terms of tirikchilik (an Uzbek term for ‘muddling through’, ‘survival’). The
term tirikchilik encompasses the economic activities of any person who is not on
davlat ishinda [state employment], which includes private businesses of any
kind, formal and informal. Tirikchilik, I argue, is a new phenomenon charac-
terised by new patterns of economic strategies, namely by the shift from
willingness to find employment and social security within the state legal system
(Soviet period) to relying on personal and family networks for the provision of
economic and social security (post-Soviet reality).
Almost the entire workforce of Central Asia seems to be set in motion in
search of better payment away from home. Workplace destinations were offered
by labour markets of various kinds in Russia, among others, since the CIS
(Commonwealth of Independent States–former Soviet Republics) is a visa-free
zone. Mobility within the boundaries of the former Soviet Union, as well as
within the national boundaries of the most post-Soviet republics, is complicated
by the propiska (residency permit) regime – a heritage of the Soviet state
(Lyubarskiy 1994). Registration entitles a holder of a valid propiska to social
welfare and other benefits and its absence throws a person out of the realm of
state provision and welfare support; in other words this person becomes ‘illegal’
(Turaeva 2010).1
These circumstances, coupled with new economic challenges, contributed to
the establishment of alternative social orders on the ground, which I call micro-
orders of mobile entrepreneurs,2 structured by informal economic networks of
trust. I argue that these novel strategies of mobile entrepreneurs are part of their
efforts to construct their own security system to avoid the uncertainties they face
within the societies where they operate and live.
The paper aims to shed light on the reconstruction of order amidst disorder by
normative regulation of this space through networks of trust. A central concept
PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 275
FIgURe 1. Men at the labour market, Tashkent 2007. (Photo: R. Turaeva)
for understanding these processes is tirikchilik.3 By putting the concept of

tirikchilik at the centre of this analysis, I consciously transcend the boundaries
between formal and informal rules/institutions; the ‘first’ and ‘second’ or
‘formal’ and ‘informal’ economies (Cassel & Cichy 1986; Tanzi 1980; Tokman
1992). Rasanayagam (2002) rightly argued that, in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, eco-
nomic activities of any kind that generate income cannot be categorised using
simple dichotomies such as ‘formal’ and ‘informal.’ Rasanayagam (2011: 681)
states that the post-Soviet period was characterised by a ‘general informalisation
of state, society and lifeworlds following the collapse of the Soviet Union’ and
‘informal economic activity is just one expression’ of this. Informal economic
activities cannot be understood in relation to a formal economy, as they do ‘…
not emerge from and exist in relation to formal political and economic structures’
(Rasanayagam 2011: 682).
In order to avoid the trap of finding boundaries between formal and informal
economies, rules/institutions or definition of what is legal and what is illegal, I
focus on trust networks (Tilly 2004) within which mobile entrepreneurs establish
and regulate micro-orders. Mobile entrepreneurs negotiate between the limits of
the legal and the illegal, and operate within and across formal and informal fields
of local and transnational economies. The argument of this paper is that mobile
entrepreneurs establish their own norms and social order in the space defined by
tirikchilik, which goes beyond the national boundaries of a single country. These
norms and forms of order are influenced by kinship, friendship and other rela-
tions of power and dependence. The authority to regulate this space derives from
276 RANo TURAeVA
the status held within these trust networks and the rules are enforced by means of
obligations, duties, dependencies and other shared beliefs.
Theoretically, this paper contributes to the debate on transnational space, par-
ticularly focusing on the regulation of these spaces, which is a new field of
enquiry. Scholarly work in this field has mainly focused on community forma-
tion, nationalism and ethnicity, transnational networks and other activities which
connect a new place of residence with home (glick Schiller et al. 1992; ong
1999; Levitt & glick Schiller 2004; Nieswand 2011; Østergaard-Nielsen 2003;
Vertovec 2009; Lindley 2010). There is relatively little discussion about the prin-
ciples and mechanisms for ordering these transnational spaces. Comparative
analysis between alternative legal orders and the state legal system in different
places would shed considerable light on the similarities and important differ-
ences in the ways norms and rules are established and also followed.
The data used for this paper were mainly collected from all Central Asian
states (except Tajikistan) while I was based in Uzbekistan during 2005–06.
Informal conversations during my short stay in Moscow, as well as interviews in
Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) with
mobile entrepreneurs, complemented the material used for this article. Most of
the interview partners were ethnic Uzbeks who travelled within Uzbekistan, to
Russia, Kazakhstan and Kirgizstan, and Uzbeks living in Turkmenistan who also
travelled to Russia.
The paper is structured in the following manner. I begin with a theoretical
introduction to micro-orders, namely their structures and structuring principles. I
then describe local understandings of order and disorder which originate from
notions of Soviet-style law and order (zakon i poryadok). Next I present my
ethnographic material: two case studies of two men – mobile entrepreneurs –
after a brief description of the micro-orders of tirikchilik. I then discuss the prin-
ciples of regulation of these orders, namely institutions and rules, and conclude
by summarising the main points of my argument.
STRUCTUReS oF MICRo-oRdeRS: TRUST NeTWoRKS
In the light of the absence of legal mechanisms such as contract and other sys-
tems for sanctioning violators, there are other means of regulating and
administrating the economic activities of mobile entrepreneurs. There are obliga-
tions and expectation of moral conduct shared within the trust networks. These
include, but are not limited to, trust, loyalty, religious belief, collective identifica-
tion, kinship obligations and other duties and responsibilities perceived and
followed by mobile entrepreneurs. All of these play their part in the establishment
of what Tilly called ‘trust networks’ (2004: 3).4 Tilly defines trust networks as
those consisting of ‘ramified interpersonal connections within which people set
valued, consequential, long-term resources and enterprises at risk to the malfea-
sance of others’. Within these trust networks ‘[t]rust relationships include those
in which people regularly take such risks’ (Tilly 2004: 5). According to Tilly,
‘trust consists of placing valued outcomes at risk to others’ malfeasance’ (2004:
4). Another property of trust, established by Muldrew (1998), is that it is an insep-
arable part of social relations in general. Muldrew emphasised the importance of
such ties as kinship, neighbourhood, and religious affiliation particularly in
informal economic activities involving risky transactions. He also emphasised
the value of gaining trust and status within trust networks of economic activities
in order to make profits and survive.
The relationships within such trust networks are not always newly estab-
lished and often had been formed over a longer period of time (granovetter
1973). Seligman (1997) stated that familiarity is a precondition for trust. Trust for
a future member of the network is often defined in terms of personal knowledge
of the parents of a trusted member of these networks or personal knowledge
(familiarity) of the future candidate. There is even a popular expression about
trust which says: ‘Otasi ma’lum bolasi ma’lum’ [lit. from Uzbek ‘if the father is
known then you know also his son’] or ‘Anasini bilib qizini al’ [‘Marry a girl after
you know her mother’]. often I heard my informants/entrepreneurs saying ‘If
you know a father and a mother, his family, of course you can trust him’. When a
future member of a trust network is recommended by another trusted member of
this network, the referee is responsible for taking the risk of malfeasance of the
candidate and of losing his own status as a future referee.
Trust networks are hierarchically structured. The higher the status, the more
possibilities and chances there are for the status-holder in terms of economic gain
and the use of this network. Therefore, maintenance of trust and having the capa-
bility to know and understand people is the most important skill for mobile
entrepreneurs. They spend considerable time socialising and getting to know
important people. Consequently, they master skills of judging people’s behaviour
and assessing their values.
one of the other criteria for affiliation to the above described trust networks is
ethnicity. Looking at African examples drawn from the study of urban ethnicity, I
find a number of similarities in the social organisation of various groups in newly
formed cities. Authors in the volume edited by Cohen (1974) have shown that eth-
nicity takes a different form in an urban context. Cohen (1974) even equates an
ethnic formation to an interest group which emphasises the use of ethnicity for spe-
cific interests in the context of urban opportunities (Hannerz 1974; Mitchell 1974).
Mobile entrepreneurs have managed to make use of ethnic networks and pro-
mote ethnic cohesion for economic interests and status advantage. As a result,
certain kinds of multifunctional institutions have been created in order to accom-
modate those interests. Much work has been done on similar issues in urban
African studies which consider the role of the elite and their interest in promoting
ethnicity and the formation of ethnic groups (Schildkrout 1974; Lloyd 1974;
Charsley 1974).
A closer look at the functions of these institutions will reveal that they also fill
the gaps in state welfare systems and other structures of state services. This very
278 RANo TURAeVA
much supports the statement of Simons (2000: 7, cited in Schlee 2008: 16): ‘The
less the state manages to protect and/or provide for all of its citizens, the more
people must turn to those they know they can trust’. Von Benda-Beckmann and
Pirie (2007: 2) note that ‘[t]he role of the state […] is shown to be a source of dis-
order as much as a guarantor of order, especially where it is weak and retreating’.
BARDAK/BESPREDEL ANd BESPORYADOK
The Russian word ‘bardak’ is used with the meaning of chaos and disorder by all
of the Central Asian migrants in Russia, as well as in Central Asia in general. The
terms bardak/bespredel [the first literally from the Russian for ‘chaos’; the
second can be translated as ‘a state of being without limits’ used as a noun] are
often used to describe the current situation and the environment in which people
live after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is then nostalgically contrasted to
the safe life in the past guaranteed by the Soviet state and remembered as the
times of zakon i poryadok [law and order]; although even at that time there were
also informal practices and institutions described by Ledeneva (1998) as an
‘economy of favours’ and ‘blat’.5
Today the use of the adjective zakonniy (from the Russian ‘legal’) is used by
Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Uzbek speakers to mean ‘best/cool’. The inter-
esting aspect of the use of this adjective is not that it means something is legally
correct, but that this term is used to describe something in the best condition, for
example in a sentence like ‘it would have been zakonniy [really nice] if I could
reach my aims’. good quality assigned to the adjective ‘legal’ is currently used as
a borrowing in local languages of Central Asia. This gives the impression that the
Soviet state, which provided full social security and the rule of law, influenced
local spoken languages positively with its jargon of state presence, Soviet laws as
positive experience and Russian culture.
Soviet state models of security, law and order have remained, or at least con-
tinue to shape the basic understanding of order and security in the minds of
post-Soviet Central Asian migrants in Russia (Nazpary 2002). The Russian term
for order ‘poryadok’ (germ. ‘Ordnung’ best captures the term) conceptualises
local understanding of order and security in all of the Central Asian countries,
which is used as a borrowing in all of the Central Asian languages.
The Soviet ideals of order and law, then, serve as a reference system from
which to assess present disorder and chaos, or besporyadok/bespredel/bardak in
local understanding of these terms. disorder and chaos, as seen by people them-
selves, are followed by feelings of uncertainty about the future caused presently
by retreated states, economic collapse and corrupt legal systems. Nazpary
(2002), in his accounts of current Kazakh society, argues that dispossession
became a unifying force stronger than ethnicity or religion. He also uses a similar
local term, describing the present situation as bardak, a Russian term used by
Kazakhs which means ‘chaos’ (Nazpary 2002: 33).
This creates enormous pressures in the present, which shape the actions and
thinking of reflective actors on the ground. How can an observer decode the sig-
nals of these uncertainties and worries about the future in present actions and
discourses about the future? In the following section I will discuss some lin-
guistic examples from the analysis of expressions about the current activities of
mobile entrepreneurs in Russia.
CoNSTRUCTINg CeRTAINTIeS AMIdST UNCeRTAINTY
Uncertainty can be analytically derived from the linguistic forms used in verbal
expressions about migrants’ everyday life strategies: for example, the frequent
use of modal verbs in such phrases as Verb+‘kalish garak’ with the meaning of
‘one must use the chance of+working/earning etc …’. The perception of the cur-
rent opportunities as something not lasting long and fears about the future creates
a constant feeling of necessity to make the best out of the opportunities one has at
present.
Uncertainties about the future are created from the frequent change of polit-
ical, economic and social environment of the societies where migrants come
from or currently reside. This includes annually rising inflation, economic degra-
dation and political situation in the Central Asian states where the migrants come
from. The country of destination, Russia, is an economically growing country
which offers opportunities for migrants. However, changing policies towards
migrants adds to their anxieties about their future.
This state of being of the mobile entrepreneurs from Central Asia in Russia
can well be compared to what de genova called ‘the state of deportability.’ de
genova distinguished between the legal process of deportation and the state of
being deportable, not so much as a legal status of a person but as something more
experienced and perceived, full of uncertainties and living with the risk of being
deported every day. He describes this state of being of migrants as an ‘enforced
orientation to the present’ (de genova 2005: 427). Central Asian mobile entre-
preneurs also live with a constant worry that their businesses or economic
activities will be stopped any day, which fills them with the drive to make the best
of the present.
Reeves (2007), when talking about uncertainties of Central Asian migrants in
Russia, describes these as follows:
Uncertainty about the future also characterised the world of work. Non-
contractual labour on building sites was particularly vulnerable to sudden
terminations and underpayment. In Russian, the term used to convey the
(unplanned) dismissal of an employee is kidat’ – a verb that speaks at once of
throwing or hurling, and of throwing away.6
Mobile entrepreneurs imagine their work as a chance for making something out
of their lives and establishing their economic security, not only for the present,
280 RANo TURAeVA
but also securing their future. There are two kinds of aims or plans according to
traditionally established beliefs about what one should reach in one’s lifetime. A
family head who was in his mid 40s stated regarding his elaborate future financial
planning:
one of the main duties of a man in any family is first to build a house, then if you
still have money buy a car and of course one must organise the children’s mar-
riages. If you have five sons you need to build each a house; only the youngest
stays in your house so as to take care of the parents. In case one has more money
after accomplishment of the main tasks he buys or builds a holiday house (dacha)
in the mountains or near water in the countryside (priroda ‘nature’) for taking hol-
idays together with the family and kin. It is good to have a place where you can go
with your family and friends to rest and relax.
The immediate plans are, of course, to secure enough money for himself and his
family, or families, if he has two. Additionally, he makes sure that from time to
time (when there is a chance to help) kin are supported financially or by other
means. Investments into social capital are always important, such as investing
time and money to maintain trust networks.
The duration of this business is imagined as being for as long as the business
is successful; when a man feels too old for this, he plans beforehand to integrate
his sons and kin into the operation in order to secure a continuously running busi-
ness, so that the profit stays within the family and his kin group. This is the most
desired scenario, because if achieved the successful entrepreneur will continue
enjoying the fruits of his efforts after he leaves this business. This can be com-
pared to securing one’s pension.
Within such disorders (besporyadok/bespredel) full of uncertainties, I argue
that alternative orders or micro-orders are established by mobile entrepreneurs
and migrants which go beyond one state legal system and territory. Von Benda-
Beckmann and Pirie 2007: 4) indicated that ‘[…] it is the disorderly conjunctions
between state and society that create the framework, or the arena, in which
processes of order can and must be creatively established by its citizens’.
MICRo-oRdeRS oF TIRIKCHILIK
I have described how micro-orders are structured and how people understand
order and disorder in general. In this section, I will describe what Central Asians
define as tirikchilik and the reasons that it became an option and the prospects of
other alternatives. At first glance tirikchilik appears to be a way of living that is
full of uncertainties and instability. I will show how people became involved in
the practices of tirikchilik which shape micro-orders of the mobile entrepreneurs
described in this paper.
Tirikchilik is economic activity conducted mainly outside the state legal
system. Second economies, or economies besides the state, had already existed
during Soviet times in Central Asia and other socialist and/or Soviet republics
(Ledeneva 1998). These were informal economic activities outside the central
government planning (Portes & Böröcz 1988). The intensity of informal eco-
nomic activities increased dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet Union
(Ledeneva 1998, 2006, 2013).
employment patterns drastically changed after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Survival strategies became more imperative than the search for employ-
ment itself. Markus Kaiser (1997: 16) quotes one Uzbek informant:
I hate this bazaar. I only do it to survive, for the money. It is after all impossible to
live if you do not have any datcha or do not run a business. Look, 60% of the
people at the market belong to the intelligentsia. With the wages they earn, one
just cannot live. (Fatkhulla, 35, Uzbek)
In Uzbekistan today, there are different categories of employment, according to

my interview partners. Davlat ishi literally means ‘state work’, and can be
defined as any employment within a state agency. This category of jobs is often
understood as financially unreliable. In this category of jobs one is employed
solely for the purpose of trudovoy yurishi uchun [so that the work-book runs]7 in
order to ensure one’s entitlement for retirement, although pensions are not higher
than average salaries. This category of employment anticipates a low income for
an employee. Another category, biznes, refers to an occupation which has a better
income in cash. This occupation includes, but is not limited to, trade, middleman
services and the like. Usually biznesmen [businessmen] are believed always to
have money (pri dengah). The third category is the name of a particular profes-
sion, implying that this profession differs from any other state employment
(davlat ishi) insofar as it pays a better salary, and also differs from being a busi-
nessman in the sense that the former pays a fixed salary and some of those
professions in this category provide higher income from bribes in addition to
formal salaries. Such professions include all craftwork, milisa [policeman] or
state employment, often in higher echelons of government, and also jobs within
international Ngos where the latter pay comparatively high salaries. So this cat-
egory of employment often has a higher fixed income.
The second category of employment (biznes) could fall under the economic
activities performed within the domain of tirickhilik. These take place within the
realm of both formal and informal spheres. Tirikchilik has similar properties to
the term ‘incivisme fiscal’ used by Roitman (2005: 5), who described it as
‘“uncivil” fiscal practice’ comprising ‘civil disobedience […] the refusal to pay
taxes’. These practices of ‘uncivil fiscal’ behaviour ‘undermine[s] the fiscal base
of the regime’ (Roitman 2005: 5), which is also the case when practising
tirikchilik.
Tirikchilik comprises various economic activities including, but not limited
to, trade, service delivery, middleman services, management, that generate some
cash. Actors involved in tirikchilik usually straddle various boundaries between
the formal and informal economies, legal and illegal spheres, as well as national
282 RANo TURAeVA
and international markets. They establish local and transnational networks.

Macgaffey and Bazenguissa-ganga (2000: 3), who worked on transnational
traders between Africa and europe, found that those making money at the mar-
gins of the law contest boundaries of various kinds: spatial, legal and
institutional. This kind of boundary contestation is also important in the case of
Central Asians in Russia involved in tirikchilik.
Successful entrepreneurs also invest at home. These investments play a major
role in the maintenance of the transnational economic trust networks. Less suc-
cessful entrepreneurs, of course, continue to ‘muddle through’ in the hope of
being able some day to accumulate enough resources to live a relatively decent or
even ‘luxurious’ transnational life. Not many succeed.
MoBILe eNTeRPReNeURS: MAdRAHIM ANd HUSAN
Here I include some episodes from interviews where various stories from
Tashkent (capital city of Uzbekistan), Moscow (Russia) and Chimkent
(Kazakhstan) are told. These entrepreneurs generate their income as a result of
their mobility; as one of my informants phrased it, ‘one should move to get the
apple from the tree, the apple does not fall into the mouth of the sitter under the
tree’. Another informant said that ‘motion brings money; without moving one
cannot earn today’.
Madrahim is 26 years old and already has created a wide network both in
Moscow and at home in Urgench, Uzbekistan. He assembles construction teams
from home and brings them to the countryside near Moscow, where he has several
connections to friends who migrated to Russia earlier. They provide information
and connections for new construction projects for him. Madrahim’s services for
construction workers include, but are not limited to, organisation of cheap accom-
modation, local propiska in the flats owned by his Central Asian comrades and
local friends whom he has established during seven years of engagement in dif-
ferent occupations (labourer, construction worker, middle-man, team leader)
between Russia and Uzbekistan. He came as a construction worker himself to
Russia with his brother, who by then had already worked there for three years. Now
his brother is himself part of the group that organises the construction teams. He is
responsible mainly for propiskas and local arrangements such as food and local
transportation to a construction site. Madrahim hires the team at home and travels
with them to Russia by bus. He brings them to the accommodation that has been
arranged for them, usually crowded with up to ten people to a very small room.
Team members are advised not to be unnecessarily visible to the police. Propiskas
are usually not ‘clean’ (i.e. they are fake);8 therefore one of the safety rules is to
avoid any extra police checks. There are commonly accepted rules of staying safe
while travelling, living and working in Russia. The rules are established as a result
of prior experiences by others, who then share and update this valuable knowledge,
which is then passed over to those newly arrived.
There are no official or formal contracts signed within the whole operation of
hiring and organising construction teams, neither in Uzbekistan nor in Russia. All
the contacts used within the whole operation are verbal and established over a
long time and are based on trust. As Madrahim stated,
In our work nothing can be achieved without trust. In our work in general, be it
money, documents or the work itself, without trustworthy persons nothing can be
accomplished.9
Migrants and mobile entrepreneurs, both in Central Asia and in Russia, organise
their social lives alongside their economic activities within their established net-
works, where various relations crosscut and overlap. Another example of
assembling a construction team in Uzbekistan and working in Kazakhstan
(Chimkent) shows these patterns.
Husan is involved in organising construction teams wherever the work comes
up, be it in Uzbekistan, Russia or Kazakhstan. He said sometimes there was so
much going on that he could not manage alone and had to arrange for more help
in leading the teams. He mentioned that sometimes his ‘friends’ (jorala, dan-
ishla)10 from Chimkent, or St Petersburg or even Moscow, would call and ask
him to assemble a team for renovating or building houses. He gets a rough list of
master craftsmen and the number of ‘black workers’ (chyornorabochiy) [manual
labourers] required for the project. often in his construction teams kinship and
friendship ties crosscut and overlap. The agreements and transactions made by
Husan are mainly based on trust, obligations stemming from various dependen-
cies and, partly, religious belief. Previously established trust networks and
kinship ties play a crucial role in Husan’s work; sometimes he has to hire a young
inexperienced kin member whose parents have a special agreement with Husan’s
parents. At the destination location he has his friends and their local connections,
and he uses this network to minimise expenses for the team’s accommodation
and propiskas.
Both Husan and Madrahim make good profits from maintaining close con-
tact with relatives and friends at ‘home’ and new acquaintances at a new
location of residence. He easily finds and creates employment opportunities for
those ‘at home’ during his frequent visits there. He comes up with projects to
create new jobs which widen his network of clients, who are always ready to
reimburse him in various ways, for example with part of the client’s salary at
the new workplace and with different services and favours. His status back at
home is very important as a safeguard for the future and secure place in case he
has to return.
There is an obvious pattern observed in all of these various transactions and
interactions. Social as well as business contacts are established in connection to
both ‘home’ and a new place of temporary or long-term residence. Trust is usu-
ally established through tested and long-term business relationships and of
course one can always trust kin, since one can not just cut off kinship relations in
case of betrayal. As I was told, one would first trust kin, second a zemlyak [fellow
284 RANo TURAeVA
countryman], then a person with the same ethnicity, and finally another Central
Asian or a Muslim.
Mobile entrepreneurs can be compared to African traders who are involved in
transnational economic activities between Africa and europe. Macgaffey and
Bazenguissa-ganga (2000: 12–13), referring to Powell (1990: 301–4), defined
the networks of African traders between Africa and europe as being constituted
by exchange transactions which are not easily measured and which occur
‘through actions of individuals engaged in “reciprocal, preferential, initially sup-
portive actions”’. Such ‘forms of exchange involve indefinite, sequential
transactions within a general pattern of interaction, sanctioned by normative
rather than legal means’ (Macgaffey & Bazenguissa-ganga 2000: 13; emphasis
added). Jarillo (1988: 34–9) emphasises that within the informal trade networks
personal relationships ‘have all the characteristics of “investments” since there is
always a certain “asset specificity” to the know-how of, say, dealing with a given
supplier instead of a new one’. These investments are made to build long-term
relationships based on mutual trust which is established over time. Trust is also
constitutive for societies. It is the basis for any kind of solidarity and cooperation
(Lewis and Weigert 1985: 968; gambetta 1988: 215, 219). The behavioural
aspect of trust is that it underlies social action. It also constitutes the basis of eco-
nomic agreements and contracts (Lewis & Weigert 1985: 971; Pettit 1995:
208–15).
‘No RULeS’ ARe ‘good’ RULeS: RegULATINg MICRo-oRdeRS
In this section I discuss institutions of regulations and the rules applied for the
establishment of these institutions. Mobile entrepreneurs establish trust net-
works: a number of people are involved in the business of a single entrepreneur
and a considerable amount of cash, mainly in US dollars, is circulated within
these activities which include, among others, accommodation and transportation,
for example. This raises the question of the role of state structures, taxes, banks,
legal administration and registration in these networks. It is amazing how many
economic activities are conducted outside the state legal system. All of these
somehow should have at least some basic infrastructure and system of regulation
in order for them to work. This raises further questions such as why the state has
no interest in making use of this lively economy, since registration policies such
as the propiska regime push all of this economy into the shadows.
Paradoxically, the propiska (residency permit) can serve both as a breach
between newcomers and the state and at the same time a connecting link
between transnational entrepreneurs and the local state. The tax system is
mostly irrelevant for the economic activities of the entrepreneurs I describe in
this paper, since the organisation of the whole business is based on cash pay-
ments; this is self-organisation without formal contracts. Sometimes even
propiskas can be organised outside the state system of regulation, generally
when they are ‘not clean’ (i.e. fake documents). Regarding the business of fake
propiskas, I believe business-minded persons from Russia and/or state
employees make real money selling these documents without necessarily
declaring this business, since such an operation is illegal. The banking system is
generally not trusted by people, either in Central Asia or by Central Asians in
Russia. The reasons for this, I was told, are as follows: ‘giving your real money
to the banks is like giving it voluntarily to a thief, once you had money and
tomorrow it is gone and you never know what happens to your money’ (Adolat,
35, 2006).
The economic activities described above fall under the movements described
by Roitman (2005: 5) as ‘incivisme fiscal’ (fiscal incivility) and under these con-
ditions micro-orders are established by mobile economic entrepreneurs.
Micro-orders structure and order the space which functions in a similar way to
what glick Schiller (1999) refers to as the ‘social field’ and are formed with sim-
ilar principles to those described by Lefebvre (2004) referring to the formation of
‘social spaces’. glick Schiller (1999: 97) defines ‘social field’ as ‘sociocentric’
relationships built around ‘social actions, ideas and values of people’ ‘by means
of multiple interlocking networks’. In discussing space and the principles of its
production, I draw on Lefebvre (2004), who advocates bringing together objec-
tive and subjective realities, cognitive processes and everyday life in order to
bridge the gap between purely subjective or metaphysical definitions of space, on
the one hand, as well as lived experience and practice, on the other. For Lefebvre
(2004: 46), objective reality is ‘lived’ experiences of everyday life; subjective
reality comprises ‘perceived’ and ‘conceived’ experiences of human ecology.
Conceived experiences of subjective reality include external influences of power,
ideology and knowledge. Perceived experiences of human subjective realities
include the influence of images, memories and symbolic forms of representa-
tions. Lefebvre defines spaces as produced and reproduced and as the result of
interrelationships among various fields within different spaces. In the moments
of change new spaces are produced (Lefebvre 2004: 46–7).
The existence of multiple legal orders alongside the state legal system has
been studied by scholars of legal pluralism, who analysed non-state legal systems
which existed as alternative legal orders and functioned alongside the state legal
system. Alternative legal orders varied from legal systems established by
International Ngos who followed internal laws, to more local traditional legal
orders practised by traditional authorities (von Benda-Beckmann 1981; von
Beckmann et al. 2009; eckert 2004). The focus of research within the field of
legal pluralism is mainly on the existing choices of legal systems available for
various people and groups, and the motivations behind their choices or references
to the legal orders. The formation of micro-orders, on the other hand, can be
analysed both as an a priori process leading to the situation of legal pluralism and
as an intentional behaviour and action described in terms of ‘forum shopping’,11
to borrow from von Benda-Beckmann (1981), since there are always alternative
legal orders out there which people might appeal to.
286 RANo TURAeVA
What rules apply within these micro-orders? From an official point of view,
the economic activities of mobile entrepreneurs are not regulated. Although the
boundaries of tirikchilik stretch beyond the borders of one state, mobile entrepre-
neurs do not make use of a transnational system of legal agreements. They have
their own systems of governing economic and social lives as well as regulating
them. As already described above, even local registration (propiska) is often
organised outside the state registration system. The real propiska would cost
more money and more trouble (kalla agriq [headache]), as my informants
explained to me. It is easier for them to use the services of fake propiska
providers. ‘one saves time and money; of course, one should be careful with the
police checks’.12
As it concerns other activities and agreements, the hiring of required workers
is done within the home village and among kinship and friendship networks
where potential workers are recommended, personally met, and where terms of
work are discussed as well as payment and other conditions related to travelling
and other arrangements in Russia. The ways of assembling a construction team in
Uzbekistan to go to Kazakhstan were similar to the ones in Russia. The condi-
tions and some administration details differ, but the principles remain the same.
The maintenance of social and economic contacts at home and at a new place
of residence also has similar patterns. These include the importance of one’s
status at home and the social capital which generates not only income but also
requires some investment.
Trust and religion play crucial roles in verbal agreements which replace
formal contracts. Informal agreements are theoretically enforced by means of
obligations sourced from kinship relations and friendship based on trust or
mutual dependencies of various kinds.13 Some of the formulations of the rules
are based on religious belief. For example, fear of dying with debts is often
trusted as a safeguard against violators of agreements. There are also regulatory
principles stemming from the belief in men’s pride. In the agreements one can
often hear promises such as ‘I give my word as a man’, or ‘If I do this then I am
not a man’, which often carry important gender differentiations among Muslim
men. There are also women who can play similar kinds of roles among women,
but it is rare, and there are no female construction-working teams assembled by
women. There are smaller circles of women-traders organised by women them-
selves which also follow similar patterns, but I have not enough material to
discuss this here.
The economic and social rules of mobile entrepreneurs are flexible and sub-
ject to ad hoc change. They can be negotiated on the spot and depend on
changing circumstances. These and other strategies are, of course, not as simple
as I describe. There are various variables in play in all of the processes of negoti-
ation, institutionalisation of new rules and relations, status maintenance and
formation of trust networks. These are: historical institutional development and
state formation history in the region; current economic and political develop-
ment, as well as other contextual issues which are directly related to the everyday
life arrangements of mobile entrepreneurs both in Russia and Central Asia. This,
coupled with the currents of globalisation processes shared via communication
technologies, as well as other traditional means of channelling information and
knowledge, establishes frames for the ordering and re-ordering of micro-orders
in which transnational economic entrepreneurs operate and live. The establish-
ment of new institutions and new rules in the context of tirikchilik has
implications for novel economic developments of the post-Soviet period.
The rules, order and social norms established by mobile entrepreneurs in
transnational space often do not fit into the state legal systems at the places of
their operation. However, their relation to these legal systems shapes the rules
and norms they follow. djelic and Sahlin-Andersson (2006), writing about the
regulation and re-ordering of transnational space, suggested looking at regulating
processes and governance with a new lens which goes beyond state-centric
understanding of rule-making, governance without government, regulation of
transnational activities. Therefore, I would suggest looking at the state legal sys-
tems from the opposite side, namely with the eyes of those who have to follow or
not follow state laws. This implies that it is not taken for granted that the state
simply introduces its registration policies and from then on all urban residents are
either in the system or outside it. Rather, the perspective of the migrants them-
selves provides a better basis for thinking about how these policies shape the
actions of those towards whom these policies are directed. Mobile entrepreneurs
will negotiate the state legal system in their own terms with their own tools,
which in turn will play a part in the process of formation of social norms and
rules. These new institutions serve as frames of reference and sources of basic
order for transnational entrepreneurs from Central Asia. In this way, relation to
the state or several states by mobile entrepreneurs redefines the state as one of the
other actors in the process of their transnational economic activities (djelic &
Sahlin-Andersson 2006). Within the debate on transnational governance and
rule-making, regulation is conceptualised more broadly than the classical defini-
tion which suggests the centrality of the state (Baldwin et al. 1998). Schmidt
(2004) also notes ‘[w]e witness both the decline of state-centred control and the
rise of an “age of legalism” (Schmidt 2004)’. Comaroff and Comaroff (2006: 33)
mention this age as ‘an Iron Cage of Legality’ where law fetishisim is overdeter-
mined and where
[t]he distillation of postcolonial citizens into legal subjects, and postcolonial poli-
tics into lawfare, charts the road from the past to the future, albeit less sharply in
some places that in others. Not only are government and public affairs becoming
more legalistic, but so are ‘communities’ within nation-states.
djelic and Sahlin-Andersson (2006: 6) define ‘transnational regulation’ as ‘a

mode of governance in the sense that it structures, guides and controls human and
social interactions beyond, across and within national territories.’ This principle
of regulation best describes how mobile entrepreneurs regulate their spaces of
tirikchilik and in this way establish micro-orders.
288 RANo TURAeVA
CoNCLUSIoN
In this paper I have highlighted the principles of reconstruction of certainty

amidst uncertainty, in other words, establishing order amidst disorder where law
and order are thought of in terms of Soviet-style order and law (poryadok i
zakon). This has been done through the establishment of what I called micro-
orders of tirikchilik. These spaces are structured by trust-networks where various
attachments crosscut and overlap. In unpacking the principles of regulation of
micro-orders within the domain of tirikchilik, I argue that economic entrepre-
neurs establish their own norms and social order which is influenced by kinship,
friendship and relations of trust. Power, various dependencies, obligations and
duties, shared belief and morals, status and authority play an important part in
living and ‘muddling-through’ within the domain of tirikchilik and also in regu-
lating these micro-orders.
Mobile entrepreneurs cross several national boundaries with minimum refer-
ence to the relevant state legal systems, making economic gains from their
mobile lives. even local registration is avoided for the sake of saving extra
expenditure. This is achieved with the help of trust networks which make up the
micro-orders. Modes of regulation within the realm of tirikchilik are mainly
based on duties and responsibilities recognised within these networks.
NoTeS
1
See Hill (2004); Mansoor & Quillin (2006); Kursad (2008); Isabaeva (2011) for studies
on Central Asian migration in Russia. Russia is now number two among all migrant
receiving countries in the world, and Central Asia is one of the regions whose economy
depends increasingly on remittances sent from abroad (IoM 2005: 397).
2
entrepreneurs are those who manage, organise and assume the risks of their business of
making money from their mobile lives.
3
different terms, which vary from nation to nation, are however used by non-Uzbeks with
the similar meaning. For example, the most frequent term used by Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and
Uzbeks from Turkmenistan with the similar meaning was biznes (which I have at least
encountered during my informal enquiries about occupation and sources of income from
those who were relatively mobile and did not have a permanent working place ‘at home’).
4
Also see Tilly (2005), where he develops this term further in connection to democratisa-
tion processes of modern societies.
5
Blat is a specific Russian term the meaning of which is close to the english word
‘favour’ but is difficult to translate properly. It is well explained by Ledeneva (1998), who
argued that these informal practices transformed and adapted to new conditions, namely
the post-Soviet era. She details the nuances and principles on which these informal
economies and practices were based. The practices she describes during the Soviet Union
are on a different scale, that is, these were not mass phenomena and were limited to those
who were in power and played major roles in the economy of the relevant states. These
processes, of course, escalated in the late Soviet period and started to raise questions
regarding the true extent of ‘law and order.’ It is not the aim of this paper to compare those
practices with the present disorder. Ledeneva did it well in her latest publications by
tracing informal practices from the Soviet period to the post-Soviet present, mainly
focusing on Russia (1998, 2006, 2013).
6
Kidat’ is a Russian word with the cited meaning, but in everyday speech it is metaphori-
cally used to denote ‘swindle someone’ or to trick someone with lies.
7
Trudovoy is an adapted local Uzbek version of Trudovaya knijka, from the Russian [a
work book]. The ‘work book’ is a small brochure-like document with many pages where
citizens’ work places are registered; on each page of employment record, there are two
stamps: the first for the record of acceptance at the job and the second for the record of
release from the job with a clear indication of the reasons. This official document is neces-
sary for claiming the state pension later. It is recommended that there are no breaks in the
employment records.
8
For more insightful studies on the production of illegality and ethnographic details on the
ways false and real documents are issued in Russia, see Reeves (2007).
9
Interviews, Tashkent, November 2005.
10
See Turaeva (2010) for more detailed discussion of types of friendship relations.
11
‘Forum shopping’ is borrowed from von Benda-Beckmann (1981): it means basically
making use of multiple legal orders in legally plural societies.
12
Informal conversation, Tashkent, 2006.
13
See Turaeva (2010) for more details of the kinds of dependencies among migrants in
Tashkent.
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05 Turaeva_Inner Asia 15/2 28/11/2013 11:32 Page 273

Post-Soviet Uncertainties: Micro-orders of Central

Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle Saale, Germany

Keywords: uncertainty, order and disorder, informal economy, Central Asia,

This paper aims to investigate the principles of reconstruction of certainty by

Inner Asia 15 (2013): 273–92

274 RANo TURAeVA

economy is one of the most remittance-dependent in the world (IoM 2005:

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 275

FIgURe 1. Men at the labour market, Tashkent 2007. (Photo: R. Turaeva)

for understanding these processes is tirikchilik.3 By putting the concept of

276 RANo TURAeVA

STRUCTUReS oF MICRo-oRdeRS: TRUST NeTWoRKS

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 277

278 RANo TURAeVA

BARDAK/BESPREDEL ANd BESPORYADOK

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 279

CoNSTRUCTINg CeRTAINTIeS AMIdST UNCeRTAINTY

280 RANo TURAeVA

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 281

In Uzbekistan today, there are different categories of employment, according to

282 RANo TURAeVA

and international markets. They establish local and transnational networks.

MoBILe eNTeRPReNeURS: MAdRAHIM ANd HUSAN

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 283

284 RANo TURAeVA

‘No RULeS’ ARe ‘good’ RULeS: RegULATINg MICRo-oRdeRS

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 285

286 RANo TURAeVA

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 287

djelic and Sahlin-Andersson (2006: 6) define ‘transnational regulation’ as ‘a

288 RANo TURAeVA

In this paper I have highlighted the principles of reconstruction of certainty

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 289

290 RANo TURAeVA

PoST-SoVIeT UNCeRTAINTIeS 291

Muldrew, C. 1998. The Economy of Obligation. London: Macmillan.

292 RANo TURAeVA

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