Returning Home and Circular Mobility: How Crises Change the Anthropological View of Migration

Abstract

What new anthropological perspectives on migration are being opened as a result of the current economic crisis in Russia and the recent changes in migration policies that have forced migrants to return en masse to the countries of their origin? Today, the intent to return is built into the strategies of Central Asian migrants and most of them think of eventually coming back and use occasional opportunities for traveling to their home countries every once in a while. I discuss various models of circular cross-border mobility (long-term, seasonal, rotational) as well as practices ensuing from the migrants’ state of deportability, factors affecting their preparedness for return, and their sense of nostalgia for the transnational migrant life. I argue that the post-Soviet space is in dynamic sync with recurrent economic rises and falls, contributing to a sense of uncertainty that may mean that migrations will keep unfolding in changing patterns following abrupt turns in the social life of the past and current decades.