Educational infrastructure created in conditions of social exclusion: ‘Kyrgyz clubs’ for migrant children in Moscow

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates how social exclusion affects the strategies that migrants and their children experience vis-à-vis the preschool education system of the host society. We use the example of two private institutions established in Moscow by Kyrgyz migrants to explore their role in helping integrate migrant children into the host society. I examine the role the Kyrgyz community plays in the life of labour migrants in Moscow, and why private migrant infrastructure is created today by people from this particular country, though eventually migrants from other countries use it as well. I find that in recent years migrants have been creating private infrastructure in Russia as an alternative to the public one. It replaces state institutions for migrants that are not accessible to them. Migrants also view it as one of the channels for entering the Russian society and state institutions. These centres do not so much help migrants’ children escape social isolation as compensate for the lack of adjustment programmes in Russian schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Children of migrants
• Kyrgyz migrants
• educational infrastructure
• school for migrant children
• social exclusion
• Moscow

Social exclusion is an important factor hindering successful integration of migrant children into a host society (Raaum et al. 2009; Fangen 2010; Fangen, Fossan, and Mohn 2010). Limited familiarity with the local language and discrepancies between school curricula in their home country and the country of their current residence can prevent children of migrants from graduating from school and undermine their prospects for subsequent education and employment (Fangen 2010). Also, in some countries migrant children may have limited access to public education, preventing their inclusion in the host society and leading to their enclosure within their ethnic community (Zhou and Cheung 2017).

Scholars point out that we cannot consider the social exclusion of children and adolescents only in terms of their access, or lack thereof, to education and social services provided by the state (Fangen 2010). Successful integration of migrant children into a host society can also be facilitated by their families’ social capital and social ties (Massey and Bitterman 1985; Coleman 1988; Portes 1998; Alba and Nee 2003). In some cases, migrants and their children belong to ethnic communities that facilitate their adaptation to the host society by creating their own informal educational infrastructure as an alternative to the one provided by the state (Reeves 2015; Urinboyev and Polese 2016). Yet, while this infrastructure can facilitate the integration of migrant children into the host society and their exit from social exclusion, it can also hinder it (Fangen 2010; Fangen, Fossan, and Mohn 2010).

In Russia, most labour migrants find themselves in a state of social exclusion. Lack of social programmes for migrants (Malakhov et al., 2015) and social housing opportunities (Demintseva 2017), limited medical care (Demintseva and Kashnitsky 2016; Kashnitsky and Demintseva 2018), and discrimination in the labour market (Florinskaya et al. 2015) and in society in general (Reeves 2013; Malakhov 2014) make them one of the most vulnerable groups in Russia. The situation of migrants from Central Asia is harder still as, due to their ‘visibility’, they are especially vulnerable to discrimination by various state institutions and members of the host society (Malakhov 2007; Abashin 2014; Zaionchkovskaya et al. 2014).

In recent years, migrants from Kyrgyzstan began to adapt to the conditions of migration and create their own infrastructure in Moscow. In Moscow, there appeared ‘Kyrgyz clinics’, which are also used by migrants from other Central Asian countries (Kashnitsky and Demintseva 2018). As a rule, this infrastructure emerges as a response to the lack of access to public infrastructure provided by the host state, or even private services, as migrants can also be discriminated against by personnel there (Kashnitsky and Demintseva 2018). So, this is one of the first attempts made by the migrant community to use its own resources and social capital to solve the problem of access to health services.

One of the main difficulties faced by all families of migrants in Russia is enrolling a child in preschool educational institutions and in school. Compulsory school education in Russia begins at the age of 6–7. Younger children can be enrolled in public kindergartens, but only if there are places available, and if the family has a residence registration (propiska) in a given area of the city. The problem of children’s enrolment in kindergartens is particularly acute in big cities and metropolitan areas, such as Moscow. Here, it is often not enough to have citizenship or a local residence permit in the area next to the kindergarten. If a migrant is not a local homeowner, it is almost impossible to enrol a child in a state kindergarten, as they are overcrowded. Foreign citizens have last priority. So, most of the children of migrants do not attend any educational institutions in Moscow until the age of 6 or 7.

There is an alternative private preschool infrastructure, but, as a rule, in Moscow a child’s daily stay there corresponds to what a migrant earns in one or two months (USD 500–1000).

Recently, kindergartens and children’s clubs catering to the children of labour migrants have appeared in Moscow. Migrants from Kyrgyzstan have created them. On the one hand, the emergence of ‘Kyrgyz kindergartens’ and ‘clubs’ is a part of a broader story of natives of Kyrgyzstan creating an alternative social infrastructure to compensate for the lack or inaccessibility of the Russian state-provided social services. On the other hand, these are the first examples of educational infrastructure created specifically to facilitate the integration of migrant children into the host society. Put differently, this is a case where the migrants’ social ties and their social capital are involved in the process of integrating their children into the host society (Portes 1998; Alba and Nee 2003).

Two examples, a ‘Kyrgyz kindergarten’ and a ‘Kyrgyz [children’s] club’, are used in this article to explore why it is immigrants from Kyrgyzstan who continue to be active in creating migrant infrastructure in Moscow; what social functions these institutions perform; and to what extent these institutions facilitate the entrance of the children of migrants into the host society. Put differently, our question is whether this infrastructure facilitates the inclusion of migrants in the host society, or, on the contrary, serves to enclose them within their own communities.

Theoretical frameworks

First, I refer to the concept of social exclusion in my work as a multidimensional and cumulative process that ‘involves the lack, or denial of resources, rights, goods, and services, and the inability to participate in the normal relationships and activities, available to the majority of people in a society, whether in economic, social, cultural or political arenas’ (Levitas et al. 2007, 25). Geddes and Bennington (2001) add that social exclusion involves limiting the access of an individual to social institutions such as health care and education. Individuals can also be subjected to racial, ethnic and gender discrimination. This is a multidimensional process in the sense that different forms of exclusion mutually reinforce each other. Removing one element of social exclusion does not lead to the disappearance of the others. An individual or a group that manages to gain access to one social institution cannot automatically count on access to another.

Scholars distinguish between the concept of social exclusion, which is a process, and the poverty that results from it (Levitas et al. 2007, 25). Therefore, the notion of social exclusion can also apply to people who are not ‘poor’ in the strict sense. These people can be excluded from society because of their sexual orientation, or disability, or belonging to a group that is distinguished from the rest of society on an ethnic or racial basis, or because of religious affiliation (Kabeer 2006). Such groups include illegal migrants and those who belong to ‘visible’ ethnic groups (Sen 2000). For such visible groups, social exclusion may intensify, as their members can face discrimination and racism (Vestel 2004).

The study of social exclusion as a process involves the analysis of the social structures in which it unfolds (Good Gingrich and Lightman 2015). It is necessary to understand not only the relationship of a group or an individual with the state and its social institutions, but also the role of social networks that include migrants and their social capital (Massey and Bitterman 1985; Coleman 1988; Portes 1998; Alba and Nee 2003), especially in cases where the state’s role in their lives is minimal (Kabeer 2006).

Second, considering the strategies of migrants for integration into the host society, I will employ the concept of informality. This concept is used by many researchers of post-Soviet societies, who consider it not only from an economic and political perspective (Hann and Hart 2009; Ledeneva 2013) but also as a social phenomenon (Morris and Polese 2014). Scholars argue that informal economic practices are integral to the post-Soviet social fabric itself. They do not stem from rational economic decisions but are built around social capital, including friendships and family ties (Round et al. 2008; Morris and Polese 2014). Informality in the post-Soviet space takes various forms, as it is produced in the course of interaction between the state and its own citizens or resident migrants (Barsukova and Radaev 2012; Polese 2015). Scholars who employ the concept of informality in their work focus on the inclusion of migrants in the informal economy as a type of survival strategy in the context of ‘unrule of law’ (Reeves 2015).

Today there are more and more studies that talk about the expansion of social ties among labour migrants and the emergence of new forms of economic activity and migrant infrastructure (Demintseva and Peshkova 2014; Varshaver et al. 2014; Florinskaya et al. 2015). This infrastructure often becomes the only alternative to social institutions for socially excluded groups (Nasritdinov 2016; Urinboyev 2017).

Respondents: a profile

The objects of our study are two private children’s centres created by migrants from Kyrgyzstan to provide educational and recreational services to labour migrants in Moscow. The choice of these centres was not accidental. Since 2013, we have been conducting a study aimed at understanding how migrants from Central Asia live in Moscow, use the public urban infrastructure and create their own (Demintseva and Peshkova 2014; Demintseva 2017). As the study has demonstrated, in recent years infrastructural facilities created by migrants from these countries for their compatriots have begun to appear in Moscow, such as medical centres (Kashnitsky and Demintseva 2018). Every year the number of places (clinics, cafés, restaurants, clubs) created by migrants grows, as more and more migrants settle down in Russia.

The focus on the infrastructure created specifically by people from Kyrgyzstan, with or without Russian citizenship, is not accidental either. Studies of Central Asian labour migration indicate that among the migrant communities in Moscow, the Kyrgyz community is one of the most cohesive, and its representatives create an infrastructure aimed at migrants from Central Asia in general (Demintseva and Peshkova 2014; Varshaver et al. 2014; Demintseva 2017). This is because many Kyrgyz already have Russian citizenship, as the two countries have had special ties for many years, facilitating the entry of the Kyrgyz into the Russian labour market. Furthermore, today both countries are members of the Eurasian Economic Union.

We first learned about ‘kindergartens for migrant children’ in 2016, when the first advertisements (in Kyrgyz and in Russian) began to appear on social networks and Kyrgyz community websites. A year before, Club B started advertising its newly opened ‘courses of Russian language and preparation for school’. Many of the migrants from Kyrgyzstan we interviewed in the course of our previous study knew about them. Some of our former respondents have enrolled their children there; others have heard about such kindergartens and ‘preparatory courses for school’ from their compatriots.

For this study, we have chosen two cases: Kindergarten A, which offers migrants help with organizing leisure and activities for their children for the duration of the working day, and Club B, which describes itself in advertisements as a venue for preparing migrant children for school and teaching them Russian. Migrants from Kyrgyzstan founded both institutions (one of the founders had Russian citizenship, the other did not). The advertisements indicated that these institutions invite children who ‘do not speak Russian’.

At the core of our research is the method of included observation. This approach involves systematic visits to the research site and contacts with subjects over a period of time. We preserve our positions as researchers, but we participate in the life of these places. Interviews with informants take place without recording, often in the form of ordinary conversations. After each visit, we record our observations in fieldnotes. This method allows us to observe different actors. In our case, this included administrators, teachers, children and their parents.

Kyrgyz community in Moscow

Most labour migrants come to Russia from Central Asia (Mkrtchyan and Florinskaya 2018). Entry into Russia for the citizens of all these countries is visa-free. However, since Kyrgyzstan is a member state of the Eurasian Economic Union, citizens from Kyrgyzstan enjoy a number of advantages as compared to citizens from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In particular, the Kyrgyz do not need to apply for work patents¹ and pass examinations in the Russian language. Once they have a contract with an employer, they can apply for a residence permit in Russia.

Tajiks and Uzbeks must first obtain a patent, and only after that they are allowed to sign a contract with an employer. Since the patent is expensive (a monthly payment may be a quarter of their average earnings), many resort to working illegally in Russia. Therefore, migrants from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are more likely to find themselves legally disadvantaged, and it is harder for them to find official work.

Another distinctive feature of the Kyrgyz community in Russia is that many of its members already have Russian citizenship. In the early 2000s, Russia offered an opportunity for Kyrgyz citizens to obtain Russian citizenship under a simplified scheme (abolished in 2012). From 1992 to 2013, 516,000 Kyrgyz citizens received Russian citizenship (Chudinovskih 2014, 14). Today, according to official data, there are about a million Kyrgyz citizens and migrants from this country in Russia.

As our previous studies show, many Kyrgyz citizens sought Russian citizenship for easier access to the labour market (Demintseva and Peshkova 2014). As citizens of Russia, they could claim better working conditions and salary. It was also important for families who wanted to bring their children into the country (Demintseva 2017), as Russian citizenship gives them use of educational and social services on an equal basis with other Russians. Russian citizenship allows them not only to be hired but even to set up their own companies. While researching migrants in Moscow, we found that Kyrgyz doctors with Russian citizenship were creating their own private clinics catering to migrants from Central Asia (Demintseva et al. 2016).

The first such clinic was established in 2010 with the support of the Embassy of Kyrgyzstan, as its founders noticed that migrants from Central Asian countries often face problems of access to the health system (Kashnitsky and Demintseva 2018). Today, there are more than 30 ‘Kyrgyz clinics’ in Moscow created by doctors and entrepreneurs from Kyrgyzstan. We found that such clinics also employ doctors from Kyrgyzstan who do not have Russian citizenship. This business, focussed on labour migrants, is actively developing thanks to the large network of Kyrgyz doctors in Moscow who help each other with jobs, and some come from Kyrgyzstan to work in their specialty.

Importantly, the Kyrgyz community in Russia is built on ethnic social networks (Varshaver et al. 2014). We can talk about different levels of communities that can unite migrants on the basis of country or city of origin (Demintseva and Peshkova 2014), profession (Kashnitsky and Demintseva 2018), or religious community (Oparin 2019). Through these networks, migrants from Kyrgyzstan can find work and housing in Russia, and also find out about places where they can get medical advice, or in which school it is easier to enrol a child. Basically, today migrants communicate on social networks like VKontakte, a Facebook-like social network popular in Russia and some of the post-Soviet states, creating and participating in various groups that help them solve various kinds of issues in immigration.

Scholars use the concept of Kirghiztown (similar to Chinatown in European and American cities) to describe the large social network of Kyrgyz in Moscow (Varshaver et al. 2014). Even though this network is not localized geographically, and there are no ‘migrant’ or ‘ethnic’ districts in Moscow, migrants from Kyrgyzstan actively support each other (Demintseva 2017). There are not only ‘Kyrgyz clinics’ (Kashnitsky and Demintseva 2018) in the city, but also Kyrgyz cafés and discotheques (Varshaver et al. 2014), where young people from Kyrgyzstan socialize, creating new networks inside the city, in addition to those they brought from their home countries.

The facilitated legalization procedure for migrants from Kyrgyzstan in Russia, the large population of Kyrgyz who already have Russian citizenship, and the density of social networks in this community in Russia – all of these factors make it easier for people from this country to create their own ‘migrant infrastructure’. Studies show that this infrastructure is created as businesses catering to labour migrants from Central Asia and in response to the needs of this community.

Here is another important factor that contributes to the emergence of this infrastructure in Moscow. According to experts, there are about 9 million migrants from the CIS countries in Russia, with about 4 million of them indicating that the purpose of their visit is work. Half of those who officially indicated that they would work in Russia came to Moscow and the Moscow Region (Mkrtchyan and Florinskaya 2018). These figures only reflect official statistics, but there are many who do not indicate work as the purpose of their visit, but work in the country without documents. Even if we look only at official data, there about 2 million people from the CIS countries working in the Moscow Region. The same study found that more than half of all labour migrants come from Central Asian countries.

The emergence of a new infrastructure focussed on the children of migrants is a continuation of the history of creating ‘places for their own people’. However, if the ‘Kyrgyz clinics’ are places where migrants come to solve their personal issues, ‘kindergartens’ and ‘clubs’ must solve a new problem. On the one hand, their emergence is associated with the lack of opportunities for migrant children to enrol in state kindergartens. On the other hand, they are the response of the migrant community to the absence of state educational programmes for children of migrants who do not speak Russian. Therefore, we will consider two cases, to understand not only how this infrastructure is structured but also how much it contributes to the integration of migrant children in Moscow.

‘Kindergartens for migrant children’

Gulnara, the founder of the ‘migrants’ kindergartens’, as the Kyrgyz social network advertisement calls them, came to Moscow from Kyrgyzstan with her husband in the early 2000s, having left her three children back home. A trained English-language teacher, she had worked at a school in Osh, in the south of Kyrgyzstan. During her first years in Moscow, she and her husband took odd low-paying jobs. Gulnara refers to her first years in Moscow as very challenging. The couple had to maintain their relationships with their children, constantly travelling back and forth. After they got an opportunity to rent their own tiny room, they decided to bring their elder daughter to Moscow. She was old enough to be enrolled in a public school, and Gulnara did not have to leave her job as a cleaner; their younger children were left in Osh. Having experienced how ‘tense it was to live apart from your kids,’ Gulnara thought about opening her own kindergarten for migrant children.

As a foreign citizen, she could not lease a space or register a company in her name due to a lack of necessary papers. Neither she nor her husband hold Russian citizenship. Gulnara opened her first kindergarten in a remote Moscow neighbourhood, where she and her husband rented an apartment.

I lived nearby and walked past this place every day. Then I saw the sign, ‘children’s club’. … I found the courage to talk to the administrator. … We started negotiating this in the middle of August. … I told them we were looking for a space and asked if they would consider a sublet or something.

The ‘club’ was a municipal leisure centre attended by kids from the neighbourhood. Gulnara explained that It was empty most of the day, and the administrator agreed to lease the space without official paperwork. There is no lease agreement between Gulnara and the centre; she pays the money directly to the administrator. In the records of the centre, as Gulnara says, the ‘kindergarten’ is listed as one of the club’s activities, and all the profit goes directly to the administration. As soon as the agreement with the administrator was made, she brought her two younger children to Moscow.

Gulnara established the first day care centre (Kindergarten A) in the vacant premises of the municipal children’s club in September 2016. This first group was made up of the children of Gulnara’s acquaintances, as well as those who replied to the advertisements on Kyrgyz social networks. The kindergarten consisted of four poorly equipped rooms which needed renovating. Gulnara and her husband cleaned the place up, decorated it and furnished it at their own expense.

There are usually 20 to 25 children in Kindergarten A. The fee is 15,000 rubles (around €250) per month. For a migrant family with an average monthly income of 25,000–30,000 rubles (€400–600) per employed adult, this is a considerable sum of money, but it is the only opportunity to avoid leaving a child home alone. The educator and her assistant spend the whole day with the children. In all five of the existing kindergartens, there are newly arrived Kyrgyz women whose children are attending the same day care. Gulnara intentionally employs mothers so that they can earn some extra money while staying close to their children. ‘There are lots of our [Kyrgyz] women in Moscow’, says Gulnara. ‘But not all of them speak Russian well enough to be hired as an educator. I only employ women with a university degree and those who have experience working with children.’

The children remain in the kindergartens from 8 am to 6 pm. The educators cook food at home and then heat it up in a microwave, because cooking is not allowed at the rented premises. The children have breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. In the afternoon, the children sleep on mattresses, which have to be hidden during the day, because according to the official paperwork, the children only spend three hours there, and they are not supposed to sleep during classes. The educators can only use the space rented by Gulnara, so children are not allowed to enter other rooms. The educators know that in case of a city administration check, they should put away the food and the mattresses and say that they are having an English class.

In 2016 most of the children in the migrant day care centres set up by Gulnara were Kyrgyz, but now there are children of different backgrounds. Enrolling a child in public kindergartens is challenging for all non-Russians (and also internal migrants), so the parents of other nationalities started calling Gulnara and asking to enrol their children in the kindergarten. Parents learn about day care centres from Facebook ads and their migrant ties.

At first, I took her to work with me and sometimes paid an acquaintance to babysit her. Then a friend told me that a kindergarten for migrant children had opened. No documents were needed. ‘Why don’t you try registering your daughter?’ I came here, and I liked everything at once

says the mother of a Moldovan girl. In view of the cultural diversity of her kindergarten, Gulnara changed the menu, excluding some authentic Central Asian cuisine, and made sure that the Russian language has priority.

Currently there are children from Armenia, Tajikistan, Moldova, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Philippines attending the kindergartens. The Kyrgyz children remain the majority. While establishing her first kindergarten, Gulnara wrote on her Facebook page about the kindergarten as a place ‘for the Kyrgyz children’. During the first year she advertised it as a place where ‘our children’ would learn Russian and practice the native culture. But as more and more children of other nationalities started attending, Gulnara changed the advertisements, started posting in Russian, and put new emphasis on the international spirit of her kindergartens.

The timetable and classes in the kindergartens are similar to those in Russian public nursery schools. The children usually have a meal three times a day, they play, prepare for school, go out for a walk to the nearby playgrounds, and celebrate holidays. Gulnara views teaching the migrant children the Russian language and helping them prepare for the state school as the key objective of her centres. Helping them prepare for the state schools is the main objective of her centres. As she says, most of the children who come do not speak Russian. Each day, the kindergartens offer a programme developed by Gulnara that teaches the children how to read, write and count in Russian. Every child has an exercise book and a list of grades. ‘If children stay at home in Moscow, all they do is play with their phones. And we don’t know how to keep them busy’, says one of the educators. ‘Kindergarten is a solution to this. Regardless of the conditions, the children are being taken care of. In just half a year, the children who couldn’t say a word start speaking.’

Gulnara’s youth was spent in Kyrgyzstan under the Soviet education system. In the Teachers’ Training University where she studied, pedagogy was taught based on Soviet textbooks. Gulnara knows how modern Russian kindergartens are organized because their programmes are often similar to those of the Soviet era. It is not a coincidence that the migrants who bring their children to the kindergarten see it as a place where their child can prepare for Russian public school. The children in Gulnara’s kindergartens are taught using the same books used by official educational institutions in Moscow. ‘I really like it here’, says an Armenian boy’s grandmother.

They have a wonderful programme, and I have noticed that D. is improving his Russian and even knows a few things in English. He is starting school next year. We didn’t know how to prepare him. They wouldn’t enrol him in kindergarten because we are registered in the Kaluga Region.

The kindergartens are technically illegal (there is neither a lease agreement nor a licence), but the children’s parents do not mention this. The parents get the services they need, and do not insist on the kindergarten’s becoming legally recognized or acquiring official status. Most of the parents we talked to felt positive about the kindergartens. When we asked them what they liked about it, many of them said it was that their children were being taken care of and taught the Russian language. Children who speak Russian poorly or not at all start making progress in a few months. One Russian respondent who comes to the kindergarten from time to time to pick up her Armenian friend’s daughter said:

Not all public kindergartens have this kind of approach. … I don’t mind Kyrgyz people working here. … I know what I’m saying, my daughter goes to a public kindergarten. I take her to prep classes to help her get ready for school, and we pay big money for this. Here, I see they speak English, have different classes, sing songs, and they are looked after very well.

The main achievement of her centres, as Gulnara puts it, is the ‘success stories’ of those migrant children who, having graduated from her kindergarten, were enrolled in highly ranked public schools in Moscow and continue to demonstrate good results in their studies.

Migrant children’s adaptation club

Opened in August 2015, Club B ‘was founded to assist in migrants’ adaptation and to improve Russian-language skills, cultural awareness, and foreign languages’, it says on the page in VKontakte. The CEO, founder and instructor of the club, Murat, mentions the same goals. A young man who moved to Moscow from Kyrgyzstan at the age of 10, he knows about the problems faced by migrant children:

I was one of those migrant children who was brought to Moscow and sent to school. I couldn’t speak Russian, and I know how challenging the first year is for such children. Migrants bring their children to Moscow more and more often, and I realized that Russian classes and school preparation is essential for them.

It is this experience, and the deep understanding of the circumstances that Kyrgyz migrants with children find themselves in, that made him come up with the idea of Club B.

Being a Russian citizen (his parents were granted Russian citizenship in the 2000s), Murat registered the club as a sole proprietor. He leases a small space in the attic of an office building in the city centre. According to Murat, his main goal was to find a space in a central location that would be convenient for families living in any part of Moscow. The building is close to the Kyrgyz Embassy, which is always full of Kyrgyz migrants taking care of their paperwork, and Murat occasionally goes there to leave flyers with information about the club. The main way to spread information about the club is social networks, such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, and Kyrgyz migrants’ community websites, where Murat often posts ads about children’s registration.

The club has a simple structure. It is headed by Murat, who also teaches one-on-one maths classes. A few years ago, Murat graduated from Moscow University with a degree in engineering. His mother, who earned a degree in elementary education in Kyrgyzstan in the Soviet era, teaches preschool preparatory classes. She used to work as a teacher before she left for Russia. She stopped working as a teacher after her arrival in Russia. She was glad to resume teaching at Club B. English classes, which are in high demand among high school students, are taught by Murat’s wife, who went through teacher training in Kyrgyzstan. Murat’s father, who is employed as a worker in Moscow now but was an engineering student here in the 1980s, sometimes helps schedule the classes and purchase the teaching materials. Murat takes care of promotion and finances.

Preschool prep classes take place twice a week and last three hours. The fee is 5000 rubles per month. ‘This is a usual price for Kyrgyz migrants,’ says Murat.

When we were setting this fee up, we considered that fines in Moscow range from 500 to 4000 rubles. Migrants spend 4000 to 5000 rubles per month on unexpected expenses such as fines and medical treatment. This is how we calculated the fee.

One-on-one classes for school students cost 700–800 rubles per hour, much less than the average private class in Moscow (which is 1500–3000 rubles).

Murat, his mother and his wife develop all the programmes. Aynur, Murat’s mother, created a preschool preparation programme:

I used to be an elementary school teacher. I know what children need. Here in Moscow, I go to bookstores to look for textbooks. ‘Are those special textbooks for teaching Russian as a foreign language?’ No. This kind of book is rare. These are textbooks for children with speech problems. They are very easy to use. The books are aimed at little kids. There are also math textbooks for school preparation. Russian children use them as well.

As for the private maths and English classes, the programme was also developed by Murat and his wife according to the children’s and parents’ requirements.

Let’s say a seventh-grader’s parents come to us and say that he has problems at school. We look at the seventh-grade curriculum and think about how we can help him. Usually, it’s just a matter of explaining something that has been covered at school and there’s no need to invent anything new.

The club operates all day. Six-to-seven-year-olds who have preschool prep classes come at around 11 am every weekday. The class lasts two and a half hours. After that, the children who attend private classes arrive. School students arrive in the evening.

Since summer 2017, the club has been providing a new service: accompanying a parent to enrol a child at school.

We prepare children for school, and then the parents have trouble with the enrolment. They just tell them that there are no spots available and reject the application. Many parents don’t speak Russian well and don’t know their rights. The cases when they can’t enrol a child in school are quite common.

Before the parents go to school to register their child, Murat calls the institution and talks to the principal.

It’s important to let them know in advance that you know your rights. Then the administration will accept the application and enrol a child in school. I just know what to say and how to say it, and I speak Russian well. I also know what documents are required.

For Murat, the club is not just a business but also his own career project. A year after opening the club, Murat began work on a master’s degree in educational policy at one of the best universities in Moscow. He wrote a thesis on migrants’ integration. He also won the student ‘innovative projects’ contest, in which he represented his club, and received a small grant to create joint events with the university. Though uncommon for Russia, this business project aimed at the integration of migrant children became a highlight of educational events in Moscow.

The club can be hardly called a business project. It’s just recently that we have started to make some profit. And we just started offering classes for adults. The children’s classes only covered the teachers’ fee and the lease. Now we can start thinking about making some profit and developing the club.

At this point, Murat’s main goal is cooperation with public schools that could help teach migrant children. These connections are already being established unofficially. ‘I got a phone call from a school I connected with while helping register Kyrgyz children. They asked me to have classes with other children. Two children started attending our club.’ But the club doesn’t have a licence, so it cannot be referred to as an educational centre and cannot grant certificates. The services provided by the club are in high demand among Kyrgyz migrants due to the lack of alternative adaptation programmes at schools and in the city in general. One parent said,

I didn’t consider bringing my daughter to Moscow. But my mom, who lived with her in Osh, died. I had to take her in winter. Didn’t even send her to school. She couldn’t speak Russian. In winter and spring, she just stayed at home. In June, I brought her to the club. I hope they will teach her Russian. Murat will help enrol her in school.

For many parents, the club remains the only opportunity to teach their children Russian and help them adjust to the Russian school system.

Discussion and conclusion

Researching migrants’ social exclusion in the context of their children’s access to the public preschool system in Russia, it is essential to consider the informal educational infrastructure that has been created by migrants themselves in recent years. Today in Moscow this infrastructure is created mainly by migrants from Kyrgyzstan who might or might not have Russian citizenship. As our two examples demonstrate, to create this infrastructure, an organizer does not necessarily have Russian citizenship. Their extensive social networks help migrants from Kyrgyzstan develop their business and attract new customers. At the same time, those who use the services of these clubs tend to trust the opinion of the community, rather than official documents (which this kindergarten does not have). Migrants enter this informal practice, which is their survival strategy under the conditions of the ‘unrule of law’ (Reeves 2015).

As mentioned earlier, many of the Kyrgyz do have Russian citizenship. But inside these centres we did not observe a division of customers into those with it and those without. Rather, this kindergarten caters to all children who could not enter state-run institutions and who need to learn a language or get help with school subjects, regardless of citizenship. Among them, there could be Russian citizens who do not have a local residence permit or who could not get a place at a state institution.

Similar cases of infrastructure being created by migrants to substitute for unavailable public options exist in some countries. The Chinese registration system, hukou, limits rural migrant children’s access to the education system in cities (Wei and Hou 2010; Zhou and Cheung 2017). There has been an increase of private kindergartens and schools created by rural migrants in big Chinese cities (Cook and Dong 2011). In Western Europe, where there are usually government programmes for migrant integration, migrant educational infrastructure (in particular, community or complementary schools) is in most cases institutional and is created by well-established migrant communities to preserve their culture. This is done with the help of NGOs, cultural centres, and embassies. Such schools usually focus on teaching migrants their native language, preserving their cultural identity and developing a sense of belonging to their own community (Zielińska, Kowzan, and Ragnarsdóttir 2014; Nordstrom 2016). In contrast, in the case of the Kyrgyz migrants in Moscow, the educational infrastructure for the children of migrants is created from below and has no institutional support.

The concept of social exclusion as analysed here, and by others, is the opposite of social inclusion. Ideally, the solution to social exclusion is social inclusion: including an individual in a social institution that is a priori universal and beneficial to them (Room 1999; Sin and Yan 2003). But research shows that participating in social institutions does not necessarily result in social inclusion (Good Gingrich 2006; Good Gingrich and Lightman 2015). In this case, the attitude to a marginalized social group may lead to ‘unfavourable inclusion’ (Sen 2000).

Being private initiatives, both the Kindergarten A and Club B aim to be included in the existing public education system. Kindergarten A offers an educational and leisure model similar to that offered by public institutions. Not only do children spend the whole day there, but they are also taught according to preschool educational programmes which are meant to help their transition to a Russian school. Club B offers migrants preschool preparation and language courses and assists with a child’s enrolment in school. In both cases, these commercial institutions provide a solution to the problem of migrants’ interaction with public institutions.

Though both children’s centres’ programmes aim to help children adjust to the public education system, neither has been officially registered as an educational institution. The owner of Kindergarten A does not have documents, and therefore, this infrastructure exists based on a personal spoken agreement and social connections. Club B is a private venture, but it does not have an educational licence. Neither centre can grant diplomas or certificates. Their operation is in high demand among migrants because of the range of services they provide (adjustment programmes, Russian classes, etc.). Here we see another example of the integration of migrants into the informal economy to adapt to their environment (Urinboyev and Polese 2016). Both the kindergarten and the club are elements of informal infrastructure that helps migrants build a new kind of relationship with the Russian state, one based on the strategy proposed by the organizers of these clubs (Urinboyev and Polese 2016; Urinboyev 2017)

Parents whose children attend these centres recognize their role in preparing children for school in Russia. They consider it important for their children to be able to speak Russian and have the necessary skill set (reading, writing) which is required even at the time of enrolment in school. Migrants are not worried about the legal status of the kindergarten and the school, or the fact that they cannot grant a diploma, because a Russian-language certificate is not required for public school registration.

These centres play an important role in migrant children’s socialization. Despite talking about the infrastructure created by migrants and for migrants, social integration still exists, but it has different patterns. Club B claims to be a space created for Kyrgyz migrants. One of their main aims is to create a space where local Kyrgyz people who speak Russian and know the Russian education system can teach Kyrgyz children and help them transition into this system. According to the owner of the club, the target audience is Kyrgyz children, as the preparation for school is conducted in two languages. The main goal of the owner is to help a child adjust to a Russian school, where they will be speaking Russian only (Demintseva et al. 2017).

The kindergarten, which was initially meant to be a children’s day care centre for Kyrgyz children, started to transform into an international kindergarten due to high demand from other labour migrants. Since a child spends the whole day there, the owner has two main goals. The first is to give socially excluded groups of people, such as labour migrants of different nationalities, an opportunity to have someone look after their children during the day. The second is to prepare children to start a Russian school. What started as a Kyrgyz project became an international one during its first year. Russian became the main language of interaction (at first, the kindergarten owner mostly spoke Kyrgyz), and the classes are conducted according to Russian preschool programmes.

In both cases we can see that the owners’ goal is to integrate children into the Russian education system. The emphasis is on the study of the Russian language, which is seen as the only language of communication for all children in the Russian school system.

Still, in both centres the children remain in an environment of social exclusion. They do not interact with other educational institutions or with the local community. This is especially noticeable in the case of the ‘kindergartens’. Though it is on the premises of a public children’s centre, from the very beginning, the administration of the centre demanded that the children have access only to the rented spaces and that its status as a full-time kindergarten had to be kept secret.

It would not be true to say that these children’s centres help migrants’ children escape social isolation. This is because of the status of these institutions and their lack of an educational licence. The centres’ marginalization takes place partly because of the position of the owners: these are ‘schools for migrants’, those who are excluded from society. On the other hand, both centres use educational programmes similar to those offered by public institutions. Their activity aims to provide an alternative to public institutions or compensate for the lack of adjustment programmes in Russian schools. I consider these centres one of the transition stages for migrant children towards escaping social isolation, though that end is not reached through the centres themselves.

Acknowledgements

This article is the product of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Programme at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and the Russian Science Foundation [grant no. 18-18-00293]. I am grateful to Daria Zelenova for the wonderful experience of jointly conducting field research in the kindergartens, and I appreciate helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Ekaterina Demintseva http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6402-5010

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Basic Research Programme at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), and the Russian Science Foundation [grant no. 18-18-00293].

Notes

1 A ‘patent’ is a document licensing migrants from countries that have a visa-free regime with Russia to work there.