Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

The agency and dignity of individuals are hard to maintain when they are buffeted by tsunamis of economic and political upheavals, barely constrained by traditional social structures that poorly hold homeland communities together. Such widespread, out-of-control dilemmas, stimulated by war or other societal collapse, are particularly stark when we analyze the politics of migration and the formation of diasporas. How is a researcher to address continually shifting imbalances among individual purpose, global trends, and community disintegration without drowning in data about human strife? This issue explores these hot topics that have rocked Europe and the United States by examining migration, urbanization, and diasporas within diverse regions of Russia. The theme of migration in and out of Russia as covered here spills over with multidirectional ripple effects spreading to and from the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Central Asia, as well as China and Syria. As a recent author on labor migration into Russia explains, “the main suppliers of foreign migrants to Russia have long been the former Soviet republics: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The natives of these countries make up at least 3⁄4 of the total number of labor migrants. This is due to the high birth rates of their population due to religious beliefs and national traditions and to the underdevelopment of their economies.” Remittances from Russia to Central Asian states have become a crucial proportion of their economies, and a key to the survival of many families of migrants remaining in their homelands. Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia, vol. 56, nos. 3–4, 2017, pp. 187–193. © 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1061-1959 (print)/ISSN 1558-092X (online) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10611959.2017.1465311