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Ethnic and religious identities in Russian penal institutions: A case study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim prisoners

Urinboyev, Rustamjon LU and Pallot, Judith (2024) In Open Research Europe 3.
Abstract
Russia has become one of the main migration hubs worldwide following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The vast majority of migrant workers travel to Russia from three Central Asian countries. However, Russian immigration laws and policies are ambiguous and highly punitive. The result is that many migrants resort to undocumented status working in the shadow economy, which places them in a disadvantaged and precarious position. In this position they are vulnerable to becoming targets of the Russian criminal justice system as they take to crime to overcome economic uncertainty, become embroiled in interpersonal conflicts ending in violence, or fall victim to fabricated criminal charges initiated by Russian police officers under pressure to... (More)
Russia has become one of the main migration hubs worldwide following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The vast majority of migrant workers travel to Russia from three Central Asian countries. However, Russian immigration laws and policies are ambiguous and highly punitive. The result is that many migrants resort to undocumented status working in the shadow economy, which places them in a disadvantaged and precarious position. In this position they are vulnerable to becoming targets of the Russian criminal justice system as they take to crime to overcome economic uncertainty, become embroiled in interpersonal conflicts ending in violence, or fall victim to fabricated criminal charges initiated by Russian police officers under pressure to produce their monthly quota of arrests. The impact on Russian penal institutions is that they have become ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse sites as a consequence of the incarceration of growing numbers of transnational prisoners. Using person-to-person interviews conducted in Uzbekistan with men and women who served sentences in Russian penal institutions during the past two decades, we show in this article how the large-scale migratory processes have transformed Russian prisons into sites of ethnic and religious plurality, in which formal rules and informal sub-cultures - the colony regime, so-called thieves' law (vorovskoy zakon), ethnic solidarity norms, and Sharia law - coexist and clash in new ways compared with the status quo ante. Thus, we argue there is a need to revise the prevailing understanding about the power dynamics in Russian penal institutions. Our findings undermine the prison service's insistence of the ethnic and ethno-religious neutrality and cosmopolitanism of Russian penal space, which is presented as a latter-day manifestation of the Soviet-era 'friendship of nations' policy. Russian prisons today must be understood as sites of ethnic and religious pluralism. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Russia, prisons, penality, Muslim prisoners, Uzbeks, ethnicity, Islam, radicalisation
in
Open Research Europe
volume
3
article number
122
pages
19 pages
publisher
F1000 Research Ltd.
external identifiers
  • scopus:85183890331
  • pmid:38292532
ISSN
2732-5121
DOI
10.12688/openreseurope.16142.2
project
Migration and Legal Cultures in Post-Soviet Societies: Ethnographic Study of Uzbek Migrant Workers and Their Families
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
766375d6-9877-4682-89fd-2421a9476a46
date added to LUP
2023-08-14 12:27:02
date last changed
2024-05-14 03:00:05
@article{766375d6-9877-4682-89fd-2421a9476a46,
  abstract     = {{Russia has become one of the main migration hubs worldwide following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The vast majority of migrant workers travel to Russia from three Central Asian countries. However, Russian immigration laws and policies are ambiguous and highly punitive. The result is that many migrants resort to undocumented status working in the shadow economy, which places them in a disadvantaged and precarious position. In this position they are vulnerable to becoming targets of the Russian criminal justice system as they take to crime to overcome economic uncertainty, become embroiled in interpersonal conflicts ending in violence, or fall victim to fabricated criminal charges initiated by Russian police officers under pressure to produce their monthly quota of arrests.  The impact on Russian penal institutions is that they have become ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse sites as a consequence of the incarceration of growing numbers of transnational prisoners. Using person-to-person interviews conducted in Uzbekistan with men and women who served sentences in Russian penal institutions during the past two decades, we show in this article how the large-scale migratory processes have transformed Russian prisons into sites of ethnic and religious plurality, in which formal rules and informal sub-cultures - the colony regime, so-called thieves' law (vorovskoy zakon), ethnic solidarity norms, and Sharia law - coexist and clash in new ways compared with the status quo ante. Thus, we argue there is a need to revise the prevailing understanding about the power dynamics in Russian penal institutions. Our findings undermine the prison service's insistence of the ethnic and ethno-religious neutrality and cosmopolitanism of Russian penal space, which is presented as a latter-day manifestation of the Soviet-era 'friendship of nations' policy.  Russian prisons today must be understood as sites of ethnic and religious pluralism.}},
  author       = {{Urinboyev, Rustamjon and Pallot, Judith}},
  issn         = {{2732-5121}},
  keywords     = {{Russia; prisons; penality; Muslim prisoners; Uzbeks; ethnicity; Islam; radicalisation}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{F1000 Research Ltd.}},
  series       = {{Open Research Europe}},
  title        = {{Ethnic and religious identities in Russian penal institutions: A case study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim prisoners}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/154797474/bd1da63e_44ea_47a7_b3a2_7547d0e1211e_16142_judith_pallot_2_.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.12688/openreseurope.16142.2}},
  volume       = {{3}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}