Migration, Race, and the Postcolonial Shadow with Nodira Kholmatova

[Music] Welcome to YouTube Podcast. My name is Diana Kudib again. I'm the host and today I'm joined by my friend fellow sociologist who works in migration, fellow Central Asian from the Jikistan, Dr. Nadira Haulmatava, Hi Nadira. Hi Diana. So, Nadira, tell us our audience is a little bit about yourself. What do you do? What do you research? Hello everyone who's listening to us today. I come from Tajikistan, Hujan specifically and throughout all my academic career and my studies have been doing sociology. And I wrote my bachelor thesis, master thesis, doctoral thesis, all migration topic. And migration is a fascinating thing for me because it keeps evolving, it involves people, it involves multiple disciplines and you always find something interesting curious to ask about. And because it's related to people and you see a lot of vulnerability and precariety and violence that people have to endure unfortunately due to structures and governance and politics and racial racism. Then, you know, it becomes even more about social justice. It's become more about bringing their voices out, elevating their voices that they have and the agency that they have to make them visible because everything around us tries to make them invisible. So, that's what kept me interested in going throughout all these years and also changing different institutions. Right? You get to see what it means to be migrant also myself, researcher. Right? And I know that you also decolonial researcher and you use decoloniality in your work. We're collaborating on a very interesting special forum that changes the way we write about decoloniality as well as a forum. So tell us how do you understand decoloniality and centralization, how do you use it in your work? Yeah, like many of us who haven't had a class or course on post-colonial decolonial or even like colonialism, let's say in our disciplines or our universities, we never really have a professor teach such course. I also didn't have an opportunity like that and I was always in the room like with classical sociologist, contemporary sociologist, then none of them actually focus on colonialism or imperialism at all. And then it is common down that people in central Asia also don't think we're ever colonized, right? The Soviet Union was a heavy place and all of that. So I also share that background like family wise and country wise. The first encounters came of course during the coronavirus, right? When I was spreading and you can see how unfair and unequal the treatment, especially towards the migrants, who is citizen who is not who deserves to be safe, who doesn't want deserve to be safe. And I think the first kind of seed starts being planted during that time and this is how we also got connected, right? Was our initiatives. And later on when the war started and for me it was mind-blowing, it was at the end of era like how one's over in country, you know, taking another so we're in country and I remember literally in my room, you know, so down in February, realizing this isn't saying like you cannot do that in our days, but that happened. And this had been happening in other parts of the world, of course, but this one was close to me, that's why I was so shocked. And then I started asking questions, trying to make sense of the experiences of the people, specifically central Asia migrants in Russia, because I've been observing their lives, talking to them, following their trajectories for so long, and I started thinking why these endurance, why does this continuity, it's not a new thing, right? Like people being called the turka or tourney, whatever in Russia, like this is not a new thing, right? And as sociologists, I look at the practices that people are experiencing, experiencing now, but then to make sense of them, I had to go back, right? And then this is where I started exploring social history, trying to find literature to that explains how was alive when it comes to racializations, specifically during the Soviet time, pre-Soviet time, right? And then the available literature like the Sahadeos, for example, and other things that could find actually points at it that the policies were deliberately made to clean the streets of Moscow or letting right people would not allow to leave in certain spaces, this is a racial discrimination, this is a segregation by race. And the word race and racialization is not used that much in the literature, migration role, especially in central Asia, and also other disciplines. And that was shocking for me, like why we don't name what is there. And then when it comes to the concept of phrase, of course, it's not the same in every context, and yes, we can learn from other experiences from the US, from South America, from Australia, right? It's very insightful. But at the same time we have to understand what that concept entails for us, how do we operationalize it? And this is how I start in a way digging. But it's also come with a lot of challenges because methodologically it's really hard to show how you analyze what's happening now, but also drawing and contextualizing from the past. And I've been to the archives before, right? Like if I do a car release search and that understand what social historians do, right? I still have to make connections. I still have to show in a way, scientifically, the connections, right? And that's a lot of challenges. And these challenges are welcome innovation and new approaches. And that's what I've been doing in a past with my colleague Lucie Dere-Miser, who's an amazing French sociologist as well. But also nowadays, with the workshop and the special forum that is coming soon with Diana and other amazing scholars, and with my organizers, Gournault-Sybgaturin and Olga Proulog from University of Amsterdam, that was the idea as well. I thought, because you know, Diana as well, when the world started and then all amazing, the colonial scholars in Central Asia started writing with the Cosca-Symbic, where I come around you yourself, obviously. There was so much backlash and resistance to that. And I was shocked. And it was for me, understanding it's a fight for the state relevant, because suddenly the access to the field was closed. And only the researchers who come from those countries could freely go in and out in a way, and still connect, they're all connected, obviously, from birthday to their lands of origin, right? But then for our colleagues in Western and Canadian, it became more challenging, right? So I felt like there's this resistance to say, to say a very long back-canceling discolors out. And then it was a fragmented in a way approach. Everyone was writing, but everyone kind of experienced backlash. And the idea of the workshop in my head was like, let's bring all these amazing people together and talk them on ourselves. But let's not just talk about Central Asia or Eurasia, whatever. But let's specifically bring from different regions. And that's Eastern Europe and Northern Eurasia. Let's call it. And then while bringing these amazing people together, let's discuss ourselves first. What do we mean by this and that? And then from our shared experiences. And I loved it so much and I enjoyed very much everything. And I feel like the future of the colonial work is in that. And the colonial for me then comes into practice. It's when you manage to theorize through the practice, make sense of it, and you elevate it. That's amazing. But for myself, it starts from the everyday things in the way we approach things and how we embrace things, right? And it's a painful process. I have many friends and colleagues who really challenge and they think we have to go back to the origin. It's not the case. It's embracing the origin or how you end up the way you ended up. Like why do you speak Russian? You don't speak Tajik at all. Why your kids only speak Russian? And or in the no-word in Tajik. It is totally fine. You are the outcome of the whole process. And in my understanding, you have to embrace the process and say like, yes, we were calmness. Yes, we were abuse our ancestors. This happened and ask for the retribution, right? Ask for reparations, right? The monetary, you know, psychological apologies. Everything that needs to be done for people like us who come from the lens and were abused for so long to feel okay, right? And not to feel that we have to justify the colonizer, right? Just because you speak Russian, it doesn't mean you stand by the values of Putin, for instance, right? Like I feel like these are simple conversations when you spell them out loud, but we don't always have an opportunity to talk to someone like that. And I've been literally asked by my colleagues where I live, what do you mean they come on you lower coffee? And they think it's also what we heard often, like we want to go to presoviet times. It's not going back to presoviet times. It's embracing that your ancestors were born in Buchora. You came to the Shambay for example because of the war, but the war happened in this context, right? You learned the Russian because of this context and the moment you start making sense of your own legacy of your own ancestors and trying to understand how we end up you are you now. People really open up, people really become less resistant to the idea of like, oh, it makes no sense, right? Because now they're missing so much violence that is happening in Russia and then our long run as we are associated to thinking, oh, like if I speak the language also, I'll buy you by these regulations, right? So I hope I answered your question more or less because it's all sticks to me from the practice is all sticks to me for from seeing the inequalities and social injustices around us and trying to kind of make sense out of it as a researcher and while trying to make sense out of it, but also seeking social justice for the subjects, right? As researchers trying to understand experiences and not not kind of imposing. anything right because we can also impose the colonial theory from other contacts or anything this is what I was supposed to be like but it's not the case unfortunately so this is what it is about for me the colonialists like it's a practice basically. That's fantastic there's so many questions in my head because you know because you talk about it but one thing and I wanted to talk about methodology because the forum that will come out probably just at the same time as this podcast will be available so hopefully we'll highlight it and in the cards and everything is about the conversation and I remember like you know I think I think a lot of the Tika-Lonus scholars and centuries share the same sentiment is that for a very long time you just confuse not confused but you're sitting with this puzzles and thinking I go okay my experience on my parents was colonial how do I connect with one of the definitions and so and we are trying to sociologist and what's an institution so looking to which is a good or bad but we're looking for the type of you know conceptualization we're looking for the argument building and so on and I spent a very long time just sitting and thinking what are the definitions until it's had me hit me that you know the definitions can vary just the same thing as you said races of concept that has a very strong definition that it's a social construct but at the same time the life of race in different connotations even in different slavery conditions and different colonizations and empires can be you know has to be contextualized and has to be seen from the experience but at the same time I feel like in Soviet Union we denied that conceptualization we denied to say that from our experience that's what we're feeling and part of the confusion and puzzle that a lot of us have gone through is connected to this colonialization that continue coloniality that continues and then positions of your pure innocence but at the same time from this inability from wider field to accept that we work on as into accept our experiences for what they are so what do we do with this conceptualization how do we break through and especially you're bringing race which is such a crucial concept in all of these practices and experiences so how do you do it in your own writing you mean breaking coloniality in the minds of the people yeah but also because one of the critics for for post-COVID-19 colonialists that we do not have substantial conceptual based oh I see I see I see I mean from from what I read and from what I see and so a lot of amazing works happening and I feel like we don't own everyone to have a final finalize the concept I think the concepts are vibrant because they're trying to capture trying to make sense of the reality but the reality of everyday life is also changing so I feel like it's an enormous job and I applaud everyone artists activists researchers scholars right like all the young priesties who want to explain something because they're over whatever PhD question and pursue it has has something to do with us our identities our paths right so I really applaud everyone trying to make sense of the reality is while navigating so much knowledge produced already trying to confuse them right I myself to be my bunch of like now I think mistakes like using to the nation for example in my PhD the show because there was the only literature that's available right but now I'm working on my book and I'm like yes I can still mention it but I can frame it more critically right this is not okay kind of way and in my understanding to break that co-inality and then in our minds and also to move forward with our our studies I think we just continue working on it in a sense of like yes there will be always resistance and people trying to cancel you out but you stay true to your own practices right and luckily we are having this this this this community is growing right and I feel like as long as we also invest into the community it's a social setup as a as a temporal as a special setup and we continue talking to each other and in that conversation trying to crystallize what you want to say I think that that's very important I think this is this is the way to go and then in terms of like creating concepts I for me directly comes from the practices as a sociologist like practices around you trying to make sense of it trying to understand them trying to see how to do just by by the subject of your analysis right by the people you want to make sense if we eat yourself as well being gentle to yourself trying to make sense of your experiences but you don't do it in a vacuum right you do it in conversation like you and I are doing right now with others and I really invite everyone who feels isolated who feels they're challenging but they have ideas that they want to write about and do something about to reach out to reach out and see and I'm sure there will be some other people who are happy to listen to them and it doesn't have to be a conference paper talk because it's usually almost useless you don't get much comments right that you like doesn't have to be a supervisor or your head of the program whatever you need to really seek out people who work you admire and talk to them and more than ever you'll be surprised how open they are because they're doing the same literally thing right and I feel like we need more conversations and then crystallizing those concepts together any concept right like I think I think that that's the thing like if we all do in our own situation countries let's say certain concepts that have certain words and meaning that's amazing but then you know to crystallize it to make it stronger to make it stick it has to resonate with others right it makes sense to others and then not just yourself right and for that means audience you need people to engage to engage with and I feel like that's the way to go at least for me and that's what I've been doing I will reach out to my you know colleagues and friends in different parts of academia to you and then yeah so and that's how I evolve and that's how it allows me to move forward and also not just taking my impulses in driven away right as every woman does it that would be my answer but it also like I would like also to point that in this process of excruciating I think and it takes so much time to produce something right and I feel like where we need a lot of pitching up to do because the world around us is changing so fast and and their new empire making concepts are emerging from different parts of the world and one way or another will soon impact us and I feel like we need to kind of get to get the things faster we need to move faster and start being less stuck in a way in trying to perfectionize something and then in order to crystallize something I think the only way to go is to share to hear and to exchange otherwise it will take so much more time right and yeah that was my thing it's time to go beyond Central Asia go beyond Russia go beyond Eastern Europe go beyond Europe for that sake and then just like go across Trans-Ragent way right we have to teach our rights we the participation visiting talking to each other I think we have to go so much beyond it already like we're late at the train is leaving we have to go really beyond it and I know this from my own personal experience because when I talk to my colleagues from Philippines and Indonesia in my current project they're like wow what you're saying is like so much similar to what we're experiencing right now in Philippines and Indonesia right like but if you name it so with Union or like or if you name it to jigsaw I have no idea about the country or context but the practices that you describe of people go through is identical and they've been colonized for God knows like Spanish Americans right like and they sure they have so much worse like longer I mean the worst exactly histories of being colonized right and then and then just by looking at the experiences it isn't as so me with me so much and we don't even share the language we don't even share the culture much but just the experiences of the people the violence the the famine the genocide is and everything right it's all there it's all packed and and they've been writing about it from more than 100 years right and all we need to do is just to talk to them right and then we immediately go to the station now that book we did in the official for him so that was a little bit faster it's still long so I mean there's so much to unpack there perfectionism is a killer so please if some young academic especially female voices are listening to us please you know publish and and I think that's something very very important because unless you publish if people don't hear it don't see it don't engage with it and say a very important and the second one is this idea of how yeah how to and I don't want to sound colonial because that's something that is also very important that comes with conceptualization and the hierarchy of the contemporary or the way I could you meet general period but I agree with you that there needs to be something that is just beyond one region right and and we struggling in Central Asia to kind of like to define our coloniality and Soviet Union but at the same time we have to be part of the bigger debates with South Asian I completely agree with that and I think that shift satna but what's the state of the Central Asian studies do you think that we united and we can hear and then we can learn from each other because sometimes I see a paper on Kazakhstan and people don't quote scholars who are constantly context into the traditional Kyrgyzstan and so you know it's such a we so close but people don't don't see it or you know I feel like Tajikistan feel just thriving but at the same time they don't quote somebody working one Kyrgyzstan or Kyrgyzstan and so on so we're getting into some sort of compartmentalization in our region what's happening what do you think perhaps perhaps indeed there's a lot of books that come about Kazakhstan right but then you think like all the same things happening the Jyrgyzstan or it's very good time right why did not even do like a bit of a burial or didn't mention it that's beyond it goes beyond one country for instance right and that's absolutely I believe nature all like scholars or researchers they try to make sense out of the or try to answer their questions in the way they can for me Central Asian studies actually at first I come across the concept was at the SES conference by the end of 2017 and I think this is the first I saw him in person actually and he was in Seattle in 2017. Oh, okay. And then there was the first time I came across the World Central Asian studies kind of and I was like, okay, what's that? I was like, we meet and we talk about Central Asian. Let me try. I was like a second year PhD researcher and I was like, I think my second conference or so. And I went there and then I saw like so much diversity in it. Like there are American scholars, European scholars, interlational researchers, scholars out there like myself. And it's such a mix. And it felt like almost like we are looking at the same context. But we are speaking different language sometimes. Like we're taking so much different approaches, which is fine. But then there was so much lack of synchronization. And it wasn't even like something. At least in my opinion, I didn't feel like a dialogue. It more like I comment present and I get your comments and I move forward to my back to my room and then try to perfection that is what I had. But from the early years of my PhD project, I was really seeking a room where we can discuss stuff. And I think that's what I've been doing since then is not about becoming with my ideas and presenting, getting a feedback from you. It's about hearing others as well and we're trying to find a common ground of how to make sense of it. And I think if we pursue it that way, then we can find a common ground across all regions. We don't have to say, oh, this is happening in this country. Because the moment you start homogenizing in a way, not homogenizing it, when you start just to encase studies, like in this case, the discat is there, it becomes like, oh, this is a unique case, right? And it makes sense. But also the other side of it, if we try to generalize and homogenize, then we use the identity of each context, right? So I feel like balancing these two out is very important and to do the check-ups, to become comprehensive about it. It's a very important task and skill, I feel like nowadays. And quite often I hear people presenting saying, like, here in Tajikistan, we do this and that. And then I'm like, what this is the same, in Uzbekistan, this is the same in the other parts of the world. And the only way to do it is to cross things out, right? So I try to look in other contexts and stuff and like, do you not do any misogynist information with something, right? But for the Centro-Asian studies, for me, I cannot even define it per se. I cannot even, I don't know, how do we personalize it? What does it actually represent Centro-Asian studies, right? Because it could be any topic, it could be any discipline, anything you say, as long as it's related to Centro-Asian studies in a way, right? So for me, it kind of essentially is not really functional, right? And I don't want to, of course, from the outer world, people expect, if you say Centro-Asian studies, it has to be only about Centro-Asian, right? And that's for me, it's a limitation. And I feel like we should cross those limitations and go beyond, like I said, right? And it doesn't have to be Southeast Asian studies, which is very easy to categorize and then it makes sense, right? I think like we are so beyond those categories in the era where everything is AI sitting over and like, you know, knowledge production becoming a five-second thing in JGPD and stuff. I think like we're so beyond that. And I don't know, but it's still relevant. That's my question. Because I move beyond it, for sure. I've been doing migration in Centro-Asia, going to Russian, back on force until my PhD started and then I finished my PhD on this and the Bull-Confinement experiences. But I've been always researching all the context, that's the thing. I always love it. I see Centro-Asia, I always think of the context and where we draw from, right? But then in my postdoctoral research, I went to Western Balkans, I went to Southeast Asia, right? And then it just brings so much perspective. And I love building the bridges. I love building the differences and similarities and this trans-regional dialogue. So I no longer fit to Centro-Asian per se if I'm going to present this work, right? Like it goes way beyond that. And if I go to the Southeast Asian and I do comparison of the Tajikistan Philippines together, which you might think is so uncommon. But my own migration study is actually the. Yeah, but then also like I learned so much, like there was a Philippine delegation coming to the Tajikistan to teach them how to create a migration system that would import, as well export human resources like migrants to all the world. So countries, modern research, industrialized, they copy each other, they learn from each other. And the world is much more connected than we think, because we first, literally, that's available and then try to expand it and try to build on it or try to add something new to it, right? But I feel like we're way beyond this area studies, knowledge production wise, we are so much more already global. And I feel like this is the way to go. I no longer even attend conferences, this is Centro-Asian Studies, because like. First of all, I don't often hear a lot of new stuff that I don't know already. And second of all, it's already too boring for me. I want to go beyond that, right? I went to someone else. I feel sorry for my colleagues who went there anyway, but it's a beautiful city, so it was in the summer, it was definitely worth it. But like, it's also such a waste of money, I think, and time, just to like still saying, "Oh, let's do Centro-Asian Studies conference, right? Like 15 minutes to present your argument." And you don't get to have a discussion properly, it's more like 1 to 1, 1 to 1, with the presenter and the audience, right? I think it's time, it's probably to late, we're still getting up the train to go beyond this framework of old school, like, "Oh, I present." And I think like we need to change the formats as well, to make it more collective, perhaps, starting from where I said earlier, like, discussion should be more collective. And this is where we can exclude being like isolating one century from the context, right? And it's often, it also doesn't do justice to those who don't read this, right? I know our readers are usually other researchers and students, but if the common readers, like, your parents from mine, reading it, they would learn so much. Like, because my parents, you know what? I mean, they see it on the news, but they don't know what's going on in Kazakhstan, for example. When I go to conference in Kazakhstan, in Astam, I remember in 2018, one of the fellow researchers came to me and say, "Why all these Roma people come from Tajikistan to Kazakhstan?" And I'm like, "Huh?" But I was like, "What are you talking about?" But then she had an idea that all this Roma or they call it denigratingly Luli in Central Asia, they all came from Tajikistan because they speak Tajik. And I had no idea what she was talking about. That was like literally out of space. - It's like, so racist or so? - Yeah, absolutely. But then she came to me, the first thing she could ask was this, and if I'm supposed to make sense out of whatever she has observing, and I don't know what she's exactly talking about what plays, what context, etc. And so it's just a very random example, but then we don't even know much about each other's countries, like what's going on, etc. And I feel like if we start producing knowledge that we try to extend beyond one country context, or try to say, "Oh, this is also happening there, but it's a topic for another research. I'm not researching that, but there are similarities." But I just talk into another, or maybe collaborating and co-writing, right? And then I think this is the way to go to produce knowledge is still relevant, but also gives you a better perspective of the whole region. But often you see the opposite. They say it's in Croatia, and the Kazakhstan is a case that we're curious about. And then extrapolating the whole context, right? Which does not always work, it's not really accurate sometimes. It could work, I'm not saying it would not, but often it's less accurate or less detailed than it should be, or it could be. I hope I answered your question. Yeah, absolutely, but I also do that idea. I think a lot of Central Asian scholars who don't do research on their own country, like Otakoskasin, Diego, and her ex-an-born, Contagio, Kishtrian, Stalinism, or Stavrjan, or a boy who might always go to, you know, like he's my go-to, Moscow migration, kind of, ex-co-art from Central Asian, also Firgana, and experts, and so on. It's also funny I go to, I said to the moon to talk about Karima, because I still have some questions, and she's the type of scholar who actually can compare Karima with another guy for a very long time. And I know of that research because we're going to graduate. So it's very, very interesting that those scholars who are local, but right outside their context, and I do as well, but, you know, it's not published yet. That's what they're going to be writing about, because it's in the center. I'm debating quite a lot, but, you know, my field, or you can know, is Pakistan, which was very much prolonged, but I also feel like we need to know the context, and we need to know the history so well, so that we can have, you know, almost like an internal ethical approval to write about these things, because I don't want to put some labels on some context, and especially when I did my work at Tajikistan, I didn't speak Tajik, but, you know, I'm going to jump in. But, there's very much in a whole big scope, talking dialects, and I was like, yeah, I've had an instant of it, you know. But at the same time, I feel like we have this obligation, this local scholars to understand the context so well, always you say to collaborate with somebody, you know, and to you, I often tell you, like, you know, it's because Tajik context and gender-faculty, because you work so much on women as well. I think that is something that is kind of like an internal decolonial, whatever ethical approach that we, the region, for some reason though, but a lot of scholars who do bad research and compare and extrapolate it so we don't. Also the worst that you mentioned, they're amazing. I mean, doing it in depth work, in one time, you know, in the middle of Tajikistan, because of Pakistan, it's amazing. I think that's why you get so much colors and so much understanding in the feeling, right? So it's a very, it's a good writing skill, right? But often, maybe in my area, because I'm in currently political science department, and I see less, less of that. I see a lot of generalization and stuff. That's what I was drawing from. But the books by Boda Korsba, Rostan, John Debranxon, Marjday, that they can talk about one person, and it's already in my head, it's already. show me so many examples I can think about. And I don't care that this context is strategic is done with Pakistan or not all of them together. I don't care about that because it's already bringing me so much perspective. And the same as any reader would see themselves in those pages. But that skill, that type of writing, that type of framing, is not that common anymore. I feel like we're trying to feed the audience, we're trying to feed the grandiverse about explaining what's going on on the ground macro scale. And I feel like if you do that, do justice by the context you refer to, don't just say, like, oh, I started one country, I understand all the stands, right? It should not work like that. It hurts my hearing. I know. But I heard it. I heard it a couple of times in the first few days. That's why I was reminded that there's still a world out there that the pro-communications like that. That's what I refer to. I think simplifying generalizing is no longer doing justice or it never did actually to anyone, to any person living in any of these countries. And going beyond those regions, I think, is one way to go. Being able to commit time and money funding and doing a deep study, that's amazing. But I feel like it's less, less than happening in my field of my spaces where I work right now. So that's why I was thinking about it. But also in your own research, which we have a force coming book on that, you work on that micro-advolunt woman who goes to Russia, and then come back. And so you look into return migration. But when they go to Russia, any places, they face to face with Kulaniyat, they face to face with the liberal racism and the slurs that you described earlier. How do you incorporate it into the writing? How do you conceptually-- what do you do with it? Because these are very traumatic emotional aspects of migration. Well, with my PhD project, my research, I was a bit of a head of time. Because the way I structured it, I actually wanted to go against all those limitations. I actually got extra funding at the time to travel the whole country. Because I've never been to primary mountains, for example. I never been to Chorok, for example. And I travel 30 hours just to go and see and talk to people and then do focus groups and stuff. I went to Garmin, for example. I went to Kolobe and further than Kolobe, actually. In the first time of my life, I saw the border between Afghanistan and the Gigi's. And I was so fascinated. I feel like I was watching a movie by some Iranian-- the girl coming out from the car and dancing. I really felt like that in that moment. And so the idea of the project was to show that-- and I was fighting against the literature on migration, right? And exactly what I was referring to. People study one tiny town in the country and say, like, return migration to Gigi's town is like this. And I wanted to show it's not. People who arrive in the cities like Dushanbe, they still have to commute for four or five hours to get to the rural areas. And there's a huge contrast between urban and rural areas. And the return is so different from-- not just from men and women, but also from where you're coming from, right? Because your return continues. You are not in your hometown, right? No, you haven't reached your family. That's one of the things I wanted to kind of show. Another thing-- so the rural urban divide is such a colonial-- it's such a Soviet empire thing, right? Like, we have 73% of the population of the Gigi's and even rural area. And only there is of it in the urban areas. Now, it's changing slowly. Organizations happen in full mode, but it's still a lot of that. So in reality, leaving a rural area is such a different reality than living in towns, right? But infrastructure is there and all of that. So I want to show that return migrants can be very different than what we have already described. What we have already explained. When it comes to conceptualizing it, so the rural urban divide was something I wanted to show. Another thing-- in migration literature across the world, there's this homogenizing force saying migrants. And they don't divide them-- no, just beyond age and gender. But like, life's lifecycle stage, right? Are they retiring class? Obviously, yeah, absolutely. Are they young? Are they middle age, right? It seems just like at what stage of work-- did they just marry? And they're going there for support their family? They said they're out there retiring, so being an aging migrant or a swim to a time is such a different practice than being a young migrant, right? And I divided my empirical chapters by that. I had a family migration, which is like the core one. I was really surprised. As most of them was like family migrants, people going together, which is in the literature on the Jigsaw specifically, is not that obvious. So, I think that's a very important thing. I think that's a very important thing. And in the book, I did not really coin specific concepts to take away from the book itself. But I look at the family. I think it's like families on the move. I think they're going to name of the book that's coming in the post-colonial shadow of a fresher. And I wanted to also show these connectivities that impact people when they go back and forth, right? And in a pursuit to try to fit in, sometimes they fail to fight the to fit in. And then they leave again, right? But the common line is to show the process how it is going and why it's happening the way it's happening. And then because the book is coming out, the data collection was down to 2019, sorry, it was 2017, 2019. But then the book is coming out now, right? So it's been so many years and so much has changed. And I've been, of course, in contact with my respondents, my internal putters. And then I want to give a look also on the update in a way of how we got here, basically, how we ended up being-- the way I've been treated as migrants, I mean as tragic citizens in Russia, right? And what does it mean for the future, anyway? So it's like the essence of the book. But it goes into more details of the processes. People have to go through other daily practices and stuff and how they make sense of themselves. And what these were also understand about this process is important. So we stop producing articles and books. They try to say like 70% of migrants went and we just like faceless, invisible group. Because for me they're not faceless. Every morning, I am so as cross-guided to bunch of news media that show me how they treated and what's happening. And I know it's just a glimpse of reality because there's another part of reality. We all have weddings. People have celebrations. People have their families there. They pursue this life deliberately, right? And so I'm not victimizing them. But I'm also trying to show that's how hard it is. And because everyone is distressed. Everyone is experiencing trauma. And there was never ever a person I interviewed who said like they love being in Russia. They're happy about being Russia. They say if I had an opportunity, I would never go. And I want to show that side of the story as well, I guess. Which brings us also something like this, a lot of it of centralization and categorization. But Kroku's attack and recent healing of the little touching boy in the Adin Soma Force Grader. Yeah. What's his name? Good man. John, I think. I don't know how I call it. I don't know. Because there are so many of them. But that became kind of like a very water shedding and a very traumatic experience as well, seeing it at the use. And the whole of centralization, but then I felt like you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, people writing from different spaces saying how incredibly horrible and barbaric and racist that was, he was targeted, just because he's that. But what do we do with these instances? And do you think these tell you our events or big water shedding transformations that are essentially in our field? We completely understand that this racism is very integral to the Russian community. It's not all Russian culture and Russian context, it's a colonial context. It doesn't happen out of the blue right? No, it doesn't erupt now. We're not in so. It actually has been ongoing. And the slur of the tajiks become a slur, right? All these tajiks, they're tajiks. And so it actually is very much embedded in the Soviet experience. So how do you deal with that? How do you pass through, you know, via an expert to people that focus matters, a lot of these attacks matter. But at the same time, they don't happen out of sudden. They are part of the bigger history. Yeah. When I heard the news and when people started reacting, and at the time I was in touch, actually. And then the people I was talking to, they were also upset. Everyone was reporting it on social media, trying to understand who is the boy, who was the, you know, like reading all the manifestos that the Nazi racist boy who killed the destruction boy, who killed this school, the people, right? And I already started thinking of the whole context. The absolute right, he's not the only one. Like there are like bunch of kids who have been raped and killed adults as well. And this racialization is brutal. It's not just like calling slurs on the streets. It's-- way beyond so much abuse and harassment going on. And when people look at me, I was like thinking, of not just boy, because I feel like it's resonated so much, even among my family and social media, people where all these bloggers and influencers, I saw her crying and saying, we'll let you down and stuff, right? Like I'm thinking like, you know the context well. You are yourself that boy who was lucky not to be killed, who was lucky not to be abuse perhaps and traumatized like that, right? Like, but he was not and there are like millions of them. And every day Russia is changing its policy prohibiting people, a children to go to school, right? Because they're not integrated or we don't want them, right? And stuff like that. And it's deeply rooted in the social, in the fabric of the society, right? It's not something new, first of all. And that's what I was a bit angry about. The people that were reacting is if something like, ooh, it happened out of blue, right? Like, and it's great that people united, but this is unification only lasts like three months. And then we go back to the normal and the normal is that. It's very much socialized, traumatizing experience, people being, you know, profiled, being abused and at workplaces, at home, even in the gym, even in the mosque, right? It is okay to treat Central Asian migrants that don't even care if you're a Tajik musbeik or you know, like a different shade at all. But then because of the different political and policy unions, the passport holds different value, for instance, but then beyond that, everyone in Russia is treated very badly, right? There's no differentiation whatsoever. At least that's what my respondents tell me, like they don't care where Tajik musbeik, they just treat us badly, right? They don't even know they don't differentiate, right? And then so I feel like the whole reaction in my understanding in social media was to humanize Tajiks, they say like, oh, there are people too, we should not be doing this, right? Some, some, there were some waves and like, oh, we're condemning Russia, but not so much, right? Like, but everyone knows basically whoever been to Russia at least once in their lives, this is how the way it is for everyone. This is not some like, even, but we didn't have a like life's matter of movement, right? We didn't have any reaction, people going on the street and crushing Russians to Moscow street and saying what are you doing, right? Like, maybe it's coming, God knows, because every day there's one kid suffering the day or there's one, you know, migrant in Russia, for example, being abused, right? I expected some kind of movement of the corona, you know, when people, when we couldn't find a job and mistreated it, but because there's a lack of structure as well, there are no NGOs left, there are no migrant human rights workers left, everything have been kicked out, right? Like, there's no civil society, it's dead. And the one that is, even the lawyers and stuff, right? They are no longer interested in the rights of the migrants, so migrants are their own, right? And their families and their children are on their own. There is no system to protect them, there's no system they can be virtue. And it's a very scary world, right? And I don't have a clear answer, but I feel like it's going to continue happening. When I just died in my PhD in 2015, there was another little boy who was separated from his mom because his mom didn't have documents and she was jailed and he was taken to hospital and he died in hospital. I remember his name and everything, but like, I don't recall it right now. But I remember in my room, I was crying. I was literally crying, saying like, how come these things happen? And the reason and the process, the way it happened, is so inhuman and so unlawful. It took years to persecute those police officers who did it. And I don't think even they did the sentence, you know? Like, they were, at the time, back in 2015, they were a civil society human rights lawyers who were trying to put them into jail for what they did. But I don't think they did a long sentence even. So that's what I'm saying. This may happening for a long time, right? And yeah, I don't know what else to say. I mean, my projection is going to continue happening unless, unless, well, now many people that I follow, they're leaving, they're going to other destinations because they need to go broke to Erdogan, let's say, or they want to relocate their families and stuff that the Russians become less, less popular. Like, when I went off live from touch to Munich, my fool is full of Phillips, back in touch. People, men and women, and then I can see students among the Messian families, among them, I think older men who are going forward, right? So it is changing. The speed is very slow, but it is changing. But the most important thing I guess here is as a call, an urgent call for my fellow migration researchers, that we need to start writing more often about it. We need to start raising awareness about it, even more like stronger. It's the time to be diplomatic, I think, is so way over. And we are living in the era of war. And people are dying without even being in the war context, like they pray, right? Like in Russia, you're working, having a family, but you are always traumatized, you're always worried that you'll be harassed, you'll be socially profiled and mobilized. Or mobilized, which is, yeah, constricted forcibly, right? Like, we need to say what it was exactly going on. The era of diplomacy is so, so much over. And we need to just name what it is. You don't have to try hard, even. Revisional discrimination, racialization, just say what it is, right? If it's a harm, it's a death, it's a trauma, right? So that's why we need more research into that. We need to speak out and describe it. We really do observing. Instead of going back and saying, the jigsdown is an emergency developed country that needs migration, blah, blah, blah. Like, it's a fact. It's a history already. But what is happening right now? We are really linking behind. We really like five years behind the reality that we're observing. So any five years, we'll get bunch of papers that describe what happened to this void. But right now, it's like empty. The emptiness is there, right? So that's very sad for me. Would you think papers will change something? Well, it will change like a diving perception, right? But-- Yeah, but what you said about the Russian normal and how racism is normalized. Again, it's something that is happening. It used to happen in Soviet Union as well. And back then, it was also Tajik's hatch. I don't pronounce these slurs, but basically Caucasian and some Asians, right? And they still use this colonial St. Niaziat as a slur as the central Asian, but in the very Russian colonial-- even Russian imperial-- what's called Russian Empire is like the trade. St. Niaziat used to feel Russian empire. Like, which-- there's these continuities. And then it jigsdown poses paradoxically to the way that you describe how people are very nostalgic for the Soviet Union. So they think there's so much imperial innocence that clashes with normality or racism and what people experience. But at the same time, they don't want to call it out. So I think there is something that's really, really problematic. Absolutely. I think when you do socializing, you're on a one-detail. It takes one generation or 100 years to change a social norm. In this case, there's all disruptive wars and processes. They push people to rethink. But then the habits, they change very slowly, right? And it's already great that the people are changing to some different destinations. But it's also hard to change something when you've been settled for 30 years. In a country, it doesn't want you. It doesn't see you as a citizen. It doesn't want to protect your rights as a citizen. Just because you have a doctor's cream and you come from the jigsdown, although if you have Russian prosperity, it doesn't matter at all. Because you're non-Russian. Exactly. You're not slavic, you don't have-- even if you do, I mean, there's a lot of stories of people who were born in Central Asia, who are ethnic Russian and went back to Russian. But they never succeeded to integrate. I think whoever-- this is a thing that's us and them is so strong. And it's going to continue existing. And the funny thing is, like, there's so many Russians who hate Russia right now, because their status quo was disrupted in life, who was disrupted in the leaf in Central Asia. Right now, that's also another topic to look into. They're having a very frivolous, amazing life quality in Uzbekistan or Karazakh-Sanur-Przykistan or Tajikistan, that they never had back in Russia. And their perspectives are changing. Because all they saw were all these migrants like the seclinging the streets and thinking, oh, they come here because their country sucks. No, their countries are fine. They just belong to a different class. They don't part of the league. They don't earn as much. They come from rural areas that they haven't seen in different lives. They couldn't make it in their own country. They're here. Doesn't make them less human, but it's a social class. And you have the same thing in Russia. You have all so many regions who are poor. And people don't understand that. People don't think like, oh, Russia is doing so great if it's fighting in other country. No, the population is suffering so much, especially poor population. And there's so much propaganda. Oh, my God. The justification for all this racial discrimination and the treatment and the beating in the narrative of Russia is for security. It's rightfully you start about the proper city hall attack. It's all for security. They justify this propaganda to their own population that we are always trying to secure. They should be no harm for you. That's why we're beating up the world's the most kill is a result. So if there's just strong justification and people buy it as well, obviously, you see on the news, you say, oh, yeah, OK. This bunch of people were mistreated and humiliated. But this is a doing for the sake of keeping us safe. So it's a both micro and micro level of the propaganda that's going on. All these rates, it takes so much money and human resources to do these rates. So migration is a belief is from number one now priorities in the country as well. So it's definitely a worse attention to do more research and to talk more about it. Right? Yeah. Thank you. And on that note, we would very strongly suggest our listeners to look out for your book when it's going to come up and look out for the special forum that we collected and produced. But it was under your avant-garde. and a connection to bring results together in a workshop and actually change the way we produce knowledge, not in the single author papers, but actually in the discussion, the discursive genre that is very, very much important. And dialogical, that's the word I was in dialogue. So we'll put those details when next to the podcast information where it comes out and I hope more people will discover that. But thank you so much for today's conversation. Thank you for being such a nice fellow colleague and fellow Central Asia and the scholar. It's very, very important. So thank you so much. Thank you, Diana, for having me. Thank you all a lot, please. [MUSIC PLAYING]