A Comparative Sociological Study of Discontent among Labor Migrants from Central Asia in St. Petersburg, Russia

• In Event: 479 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Migration

Abstract

The paper is based on the materials and provides preliminary outcomes of the Project on Comparative Sociological Study of Labor Migrants from Central Asia conducted by International Center for Comparative and Institutional Research at St. Petersburg State University, Russia in 2010-2014.

The Project seeks to promote theoretically grounded empirical sociological research of discontent as a social phenomenon and everyday life of transnational labor migrants.

Comparative strategies in social analytics and mixed research methods are the basic methods of the Project.

The paper will be structured as follows. The first part is oriented toward a discussion of the theoretical and methodological frames of studying everyday life practices in current sociological production. Sociology of emotions developed by J. Barblet, R. Collins, J. Alexander, J.Turner will serve as a basis for sociological analysis of discontent. Then, the concepts (and related problems) of transnational migration will be discussed. The general picture of everyday life practices of labor migrants from Central Asian countries in St. Petersburg will be presented.

What follows will be an attempt to answer the research questions: how structural transformations produce discontent among the labor migrants and how to measure it?

The second part provides the commentary and discussion of the specific results of the field research.

Author

• Andrey V. Rezaev, St. Petersburg State University and International Center for Comparative and Institutional Research