Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at Moscow’s wholesale markets from 2013 to 2016, Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty provides original insights into how uncertainty shapes social practice, identity and belonging in the context of irregular migration from Vietnam to Russia. The study speaks to various debates in migration and mobility studies -- particularly those focused on brokerage networks, the political economy of sexuality, and social belonging -- deepening our knowledge of how the core social values and cultural logics that underpin Vietnamese personhood are challenged and reconstituted by the ethos of the market economy. This book sheds important light on processes of mobility and social change in post-socialist societies that continue to grapple with yawning chasms between old and new ways of life, the local and the global, policy and practice, and obsolete governance techniques and rapidly changing socio-economic realities.

Lan Anh Hoang is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is a co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series ’Anthropology, Change, and Development’. Her research interests are migration and transnationalism, sexualities and gender, social networks and social capital, and identity and belonging.