Black Work, Green Money

Remittances, Ritual, and Domestic Economies in Southern Kyrgyzstan

Bibliographic Data

ID5014802
AuthorsM Reeves (0000-0002-2241-5720, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume71
Issue1
Pages108-134
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSlavic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5612/slavicreview.71.1.0108
OpenAlexW2290414478
LanguageEN
Citations received66
References cited19

Drawing on ethnographic and survey data, Madeleine Reeves explores the meanings and impact of large-scale seasonal labor migration to Russia on a group of four kin-related villages in southern Kyrgyzstan. Although remittances have come to figure centrally in domestic budgets of migrant families, it is to questions of political economy that we must turn to understand the shift away from small-scale farming toward migrant work. Reeves examines a range of factors mediating decisions to migrate, including the role of social networks and sibling hierarchies; the emergence of growing economic differentials between migrant and nonmigrant households, and the growing importance for young men of a period of work "in town" (shaarda) in proving their eligibility for marriage. Although patterns of economic activity in southern Kyrgyzstan have changed dramatically in recent years, Reeves argues that new forms of engagement in distant labor markets are also being used to sustain patterns of ritual gifting and expressions of ethnic and religious identity that are imagined and articulated precisely as expressions of social continuity

Development economics · Economics · Economy · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Geography · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Scale (ratio · Sociology · Work (physics · Anthropology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy