Social Reproduction of Post-Soviet Migrant Labour: Braiding the International Political Economy

In this article, we analyse the social reproduction of post-Soviet migrant labour. Our inquiry builds on artwork by Anna Tereshkina, Olga Jitlina and Mahpora Kiromova dealing with the effects of migration on family relations in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus. We have braided the artwork with strands of social reproduction theory to examine the transnational household as a set of relationships that enables post-Soviet and global capitalism to draw value out of unwaged work and to reproduce the differentiated (i.e., gendered and racialized) labour force. Our focus is on the tropes of family, weddings, love and violence. The analysis of these tropes draws attention to the intersecting effects of globalized capitalism, local structures of value, the state, and patriarchy in post-Soviet political economy. Through them we detailed the fundamental co-constitution of production and social reproduction but also show that practices of social reproduction can be reservoirs of resistance and potential change.Peer reviewe