Migration, whether in TOL’s “home region” or elsewhere, is often treated by the media as mainly a question of numbers. So many people out, so many rubles/dollars/soms/pesos in … Often left hanging is the other side of this equation, the fact that most migrants leave families behind, and that those families may use that remittance money for many things besides basic necessities. The collective actions of migrants and their families, and the stories of individuals and their changing ways of life, are helping mold and push societies in unexpected ways, and nowhere more so than in countries on the fringes of the old Soviet Union. This was brought home to me in a scholarly article published last year in the journal Central Asian Survey by social anthropologist Eliza Isabaeva of the University of Bern, “Leaving to enable others to remain: remittances and new moral economies of migration in southern Kyrgyzstan.” (The article was briefly made available last year in a special offer to non-subscribers. Since it’s no longer free, I hope the publishers won’t object to me quoting extensively from it.)
Isabaeva did fieldwork in a remote Kyrgyz mountain village in 2008, Sopu Korgon, a place where thin, rocky soil makes agriculture unprofitable and other jobs are scarce, thus forcing many residents to seek work elsewhere once the subsidies from the center stopped coming. In the first years of independence the primary destinations were Osh and Bishkek; as Kyrgyzstan’s weak economy fell further and further behind those of Kazakhstan and Russia, those countries become the main lure for migrants, whether seasonally or for longer periods. TOL readers probably know that the economies of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, along with Moldova, are kept afloat largely thanks to the constant flow of rubles migrants send back home. The Russian central bank estimates that Kyrgyz workers in Russia sent home nearly $900 million last year – and that doesn’t include money sent by other than bank transfer, or carried home in person.
Isabaeva “sought to explore [her] respondents’ perception of migration and remittances, particularly their use by, and effects upon, those who stayed behind. Preliminary reading on Mexican, Moroccan and African migrations and remittance investments in home-town communities suggested that remittances can come to act as a powerful, if contested, vehicle of community development.”
One of her first tasks was to find common terms with which to talk about the phenomenon Westerners call “migration.” In a fascinating passage, she explains that the usual local terms refer to trading abroad (kommertsia) and traders or merchants (kommersanttar) in words derived from Russian, or extend the Kyrgyz word talaa, “field,” to many kinds of work abroad, especially in construction or agriculture rather than market trading. “In the field” was the most common answer to the question, “Where are your children?”
You can make money in “the field,” and you can pick up foreign ways there; you may decide to stay, leaving your family behind. “Being ‘in the field’, my informants seemed to suggest, always carries the risk of losing one’s way, spatially, socially and morally,” Isabaeva notes.
Yet this author’s perhaps surprising conclusion is that the complex, shifting flows of people, money, ideas into and out of isolated communities like Sopu Korgon can help prop up crumbling institutions, at least in the short to medium term. To celebrate 20 years since they graduated from the village high school, one group of migrants donated money to build a new fence for the school (one of the best in the area, villagers boast). The village kindergarten “largely functions through fees paid by absent migrant parents.”
Indeed, Isabaeva argues, remittances have not only contributed to diversifying the local economy and improving people’s material well-being. Villagers often used the words “development” and “progress” when talking about recent times as compared to the hard times of the first post-independence years:
“If we follow an approach to development that includes elements of social wellbeing, poverty alleviation, income equality, gender equality and universal access to primary education, health care and meaningful employment … we can see migrant remittances in Sopu Korgon as performing an important development function. Far from leading to a retreat from collective commitments, remittances can play an important role in keeping other family members together and in reproducing the village as a social and moral unit.”
As a non-specialist whose understanding of Kyrgyz society has been largely shaped by reports on TOL and other media, I picked up a couple of things in Isabaeva’s article that could be seen in a different light. One way that remittances help sustain the social and moral needs of the village is by enabling migrants’ families to keep up the important rituals that accompany major life events, she writes: “money transfers play an important role in lifecycle
rituals in order to maintain a meaningful connection with the place of origin in the face
of protracted absence,” citing a study by another researcher in a different part of Kyrgyzstan.
However, these rituals, especially weddings and funerals, are now performed in a society with much wider extremes of wealth and poverty than existed in Soviet times or, I would guess, during the first decade after independence. As Hamid Toursunov and Bakyt Ibraimov wrote in TOL two years ago, reporting from the same province where Sopu Korgon is located, rising wealth in some sections of the population is pushing up the costs of these ceremonies, often to several thousand dollars – an enormous financial load for many Kyrgyz. Our story didn’t say so, but could it be that remittances are one of the reasons driving some families into a competition to stage the most elaborate funeral or grandest wedding?
One paragraph in Isabaeva’s article can be read as outlining another way in which the outflow of migrants could undermine village society to the point that it ceases to function. She writes, “It is difficult to predict for how long migrant transactions will keep
families together; but for any given family it is likely to persist until such time as young children grow up, teenage children finish school, or until a migrant family member settles down in their place of destination, finds a job and is ready to welcome a sibling, relative or a friend. Being ‘ready’ normally means finding a job for a potential migrant. When the job is found, a newly arrived migrant will be able to earn money, lead his or her life and send money back home.”
Assuming that Russia, especially, continues to attract Kyrgyz migrants, and assuming further that many of those migrants will permanently settle in their new homes – and neither of these is a given by any means – the cycle Isabaeva describes could in the coming years lead to the deaths of villages from wastage, if not the one Isabaeva visited. The slow death of a village has been a recurrent, sad theme in TOL over the years. We’ve seen this happen in Armenia, Albania, Macedonia, and Azerbaijan.
I hope the people of Sopu Korgon will be able to keep on holding weddings, and funerals too, for many years to come.
November 22nd, 2012
5 Comments at "For Kyrgyz Villagers, Journeys of Love and Necessity"
unfortunately, lots and lots of rural areas in Kyrgyzstan are getting depopulated (where one can hardly find people between 20 and 50), and Russia is like a vacuum cleaner is absorbing lots of Kyrgyz migrants
Migration is a way of survival, the illusion of “temporary exit”, response to lack of economic sources and employment at home. Migration from Sopu Korgon, my hometown, depicted by Isabaeva, fits to the real picture and captures all the aspects that were affected by out-migration. Yes, the remittances maybe a temporary relief, but provide no sustainability. Yes, the schools and kindergartens – local institutions – are being supported and maintained for the money from outside. Yes, the migrants ultimately do not return – they resort to cities of Osh, Bishkek, Almaty of Kazakhstan and cities of Russia. Yes the rate of wedding and funerals inflates and creates competitoin and puts tension on already poor population. I agree with the editor of TOL, that villages seem to be dying out. I feel such a human and contepplating thoughts of both ISabaeva and commentor Krauthammer. The is the real truth. They have exhausted almost all that has to be said about migration in Kyrgyz countryside. Sopu-Korgon is just an example, it is an image for ANY rural part of Central Asian states, where sources of economic substenance is being exhausted. I agree with the sad tone of Isabaeva that village is dying, and also appreciate some hopeful voice for the rescue from Krauthammer.
I left SOpu Korgon for Bishkek at the age of 14, in 1992. SO about 20 years I am in Bishkek. I spent some of these years abroad on study, but I never returned to Sopu Korgon for permanent life. I have relatives, aunts and uncles who do cattle and crops. They are indeed isolated and search urban life for their children.
Now at the age of 35 my soul wants to return to a countryside. If it weren’t for money, I would live in Sopu Korgon.
But on a broader and philosophical stand, t speak globally and conceptually, I think that the very economic system in the world is leading us to self-destruction untless we take timely measures. The depletion of natural resources, and crowding up in cities, and producing little but working in service sector and re-selling. Thius bubble of value added tax, and the entire system of distribution of Earth’s wealth – will be revisited by Nature. Nature can not be currupt, it just reacts. I think one day Nature will revolt and the countryside will eb the real rescue and place of happiness. We are soon coming to it. Nature can not tolerate more urbanization, greedy materialistic structure, nature and Earth is ill with these ‘tumour” and some years apart, the real ahppy person will be the one living in pure air, land, and crops and cattle. She will be happy with the little she has, and not be driven by this greed stimulated by the capitalism. These strcutures will come to an end. Then village will once again flourish and host lively communities.
A fascinating article Eliza; but I was also surprized by the conclusions. You discuss in length and with plenty of details both positive and negative effects of migration on the life of villagers, but then make rather one-sided conclusion. Of course, we all have our own perspectives on the subject; I have always (like Ky?) seen migration effects rather negatively. But that missing link between analysis and conclusions is I guess somewhat puzzling. Other than that I trully enjoyed reading it and look forward to reading more.
Thanks to all of you for your comments. I’m particularly pleased to hear from a native of Sopu Korgon, and from Hamid, whose article gave me food for thought in connection with Isabaeva’s ideas. Burul, Eliza Isabaeva didn’t stick the “dying” tag on this village, far from it; that was me, and perhaps it was too strong a word. Let me quote another passage from the conclusion of Isabaeva’s article:
“This research therefore supports the findings of those scholars of development … who have pointed to the need to treat remittances – even when they are invested in ‘domestic’, non-productive ends – as making a significant contribution toward human development in poor areas by countering deprivation and enabling investment in the future through access to education. …
“These findings suggest that we should be wary of alarmist reports that characterize migration as leading, inevitably, to the ‘breakdown’ of the family or the destruction of village life in Kyrgyzstan. The portrait that emerges from Sopu Korgon is more complex. It points to the importance, in a context of radical economic shifts and a decline in the rural economy, of remittances as a tool of rural development.”
“Dying village” is I suppose a kind of journalistic slang for a phenomenon that can hardly be captured in the space of a newspaper article. Scholars tend to be more circumspect in their use of language than do we journalists.
Perhaps this village and some of the other declining rural communities I referred to will find a way to restore, if not the “old ways,” at least a new way of life that can be transmitted to future generations. Emil, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I have a generally negative view of migration. This is such a small word for a process that plays out in many different ways in different countries. So different that sometimes I think we need new words for it in our times. After all, the United States, the country I come from, is almost totally a place of migrants and their descendants, as indeed are most countries of the Western Hemisphere. “Migrant” may be another newspaper term used to cover complex situations that can’t be easily condensed into a few words.
Dear all, many thanks for your valid comments and interesting ideas. Indeed, migration is a complex phenomenon. Some places “pull” migrants whereas some others “push”. In Sopu Korgon, most migrants moved out of their place of origin for economic reasons. When I was in Sopu Korgon, the villagers readily discussed migration with me and debated its positive and negative sides. The fact that the conclusion came out “positive” is based on my informants’ talks. True, I talked mostly to the villagers, who didn’t have to leave the village. For instance, they don’t know under what conditions their migrant family members earn money in big and expensive cities like Moscow, Almaty, etc. The families “enjoy” remittances in the village. Perhaps that’s why it was easy for them to portray migration in a positive light?…But still, as I have written in the article, it is difficult to predict in the long run until when migration will be viable for small communities like Sopu Korgon in particular and for Kyrgyzstan in general. Taking into account Kyrgyzstan’s current struggling economy, like Ky Krauthamer, I hope that Sopu Korgon and many other “dying villages” in Kyrgyzstan can keep investing migrant remittances to family wellbeing, to maintain social relationships and to the development of migrant communities.
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