Trust and Exchange: Navigating Housing at the Boundaries of Russian Citizenship

• In Event: Bishkek beyond the Posts: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Contemporary City

Abstract

Property owners in Russia act as civic gatekeepers: without their formal assent to provide a document popularly known as household “registration,” migrants face fines, police harassment, and deportation. Based on 93 interviews with individuals who lived in Russia conducted over eight months of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, this paper examines how migrants navigate landlord authority over their legal status. I identify market exchange and interpersonal trust as two strategies that migrants pursue to obtain or bypass landlord assent for civic inclusion.

Author

• Jeffrey Bilik, U of Michigan