Pre-emptive mobilities: Russian real estate abroad (the case of owners from Murmansk Region)

ABSTRACT The article discusses mobilities connected with Russian real estate acquisition abroad during the post-Soviet decades. We take the specific case of Murmansk Region as a source location. Our main argument is that such mobilities are motivated to a significant extent by a search of risk-free destinations and thus reflect perception of insecurity at home. The empirical data reveal the predominantly post-Soviet middle class nature of this movement, as well as its trans-generational agenda. We claim that the movement is pre-emptive in the sense of establishing a foothold abroad in view of possible negative economic and political developments at home. Theorizing this phenomenon requires placing it in a politically informed and temporally extended perspective. We conclude that Russian real estate acquisition abroad reveals divergences between current ideological rhetoric of the political leadership, on the one hand, and preferred courses of action by the post-Soviet middle class, on the other hand.