(Il)legality and Psychosocial Well-Being: Central Asian Migrant Women in Russia

• In Event: 1146 - South-South Migration

Abstract

Immigrants’ legal status has shown numerous tangible consequences for their incorporation trajectories in Western contexts. However, little is known about the effects of (il)legality in non-Western immigrant-receiving settings. Moreover, most research has focused on economic and other objective effects of (il)legality. In dialogue with the extant research, we examine the association of legal status with several psychosocial outcomes among migrant women from Central Asia to the Russian Federation, the world’s second largest recipient of international migrants. Using unique survey data collected through respondent driven sampling in two Russian cities, the multivariate analyses show that legality is positively associated with immigrants’ perception of their rights and with their assessment of their relations with natives. Yet, legality is also negatively related to immigrants’ satisfaction with their income. Finally, legality positively correlates with self-efficacy and negatively with depression. Together, the findings deepen the theoretical foundations of the scholarship on the effects of immigrant (il)legality, while also broadening its thematic and geographic foci.

Authors

• Victor Agadjanian, University of California, Los Angeles

• ByeongDon Oh, University of Kansas

• Cecilia Menjivar, University of California-Los Angeles