Queer Coalitions: An Examination of Political Resistance to the Russian Migration Law

Abstract

Migration policy in Russia is implemented by a variety of actors, such as state officials, market actors, and social activists. In the implementation of migration policy, they inevitably interact with one another. Having examined the categories used by the people involved in the implementation of migration policy, I explore the potential of coalition-building in this process. In order to scrutinise these fluid political forms, I make use of the concept of ‘queer coalitions’. This concept draws on literature in queer theory, which I argue is also productive for the analysis of current political actions in the migration domain.

Notes

¹ Federal’nyi zakon ‘O grazhdanstve Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, 31 May 2002, No. 62-FZ, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_36927/, accessed 21 August 2017; Federal’nyi zakon ‘O pravovom polozhenii inostrannykh grazhdan v Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, 25 July 2002, No. 115-FZ, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_37868/, accessed 21 August 2017.

² The Mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, ordered a raid against foreign citizens identified in terms of a racial profile, while earlier explicitly arguing that ‘Moscow is a Russian city and must so remain. It’s not a Chinese, Tadzhik, neither Uzbek city’ (‘Sergei Sobyanin protiv formirovaniya v stolitse raionov s monokul’turoi’, TASS, 30 May 2013, available at: http://tass.ru/moskva/585645, accessed 21 August 2017). As for oppositional candidate Aleksei Naval’nyi, apart from xenophobic comments, one of six proposals he made in his electoral campaign was for the regulation of migrant labour in Moscow. The proposed piece of legislation basically banned migrant labour in the capital of Russia (Zakon goroda Moskvy ‘Ob osobennostyakh trudovoi deyatel’nosti inostrannykh grazhdan v gorode Moskve i o vnesenii izmenenii v Kodeks goroda Moskvy ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniyakh’).

³ ‘“Eto khuzhe tyur’my”—v Rossii poyavlyayutsya kontslagerya dlya migrantov’, Censor.net, 6 August 2013, available at: http://censor.net.ua/video_news/249537/eto_huje_tyurmy_v_rossii_poyavlyayutsya_kontslagerya_dlya_migrantov_video_fotoreportaj, accessed 10 October 2015.

⁴ ‘Dlya migratsionnogo spetslagerya nashli mesto pod Peterburgom’, RBK, 22 August 2013, available at: http://www.rbc.ru/spb_sz/22/08/2013/5592a8a09a794719538d031a, accessed 21 August 2017.

⁵ ‘U kontslagerya v Gol’yanove proshla aktsiya “Nelegal’nykh lyudei ne byvaet”’, Grani, 8 August 2013, available at: http://grani.ru/Politics/Russia/activism/m.217716.html, accessed 10 October 2015.

⁶ ‘Gruppa “Prava dlya vsekh” sozdana v Peterburge’, Cogita!ru, 18 August 2013, available at: http://www.cogita.ru/grazhdanskaya-aktivnost/migranty/gruppa-prava-dlya-vseh-sozdana-v-peterburge, accessed 10 October 2015.

⁷ Gender and sex are no less important in this regard. However, migration policy in Russia might be blind to gender as, according to analysis by Brednikova (2003), its addressee is an adult man, while the position of women and children is generally ignored. Besides, the vocabularies discussed in this section arose from the analysis of empirical materials (interviews and observations) where gender and sex categories were mostly absent. It will be specifically mentioned later when those categories did emerge.

⁸ ‘International Migration 2015’, Department for Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, available at: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/wallchart/docs/MigrationWallChart2015.pdf, accessed 10 January 2017.

⁹ Data retrieved from reports of the Federal Migration Service that were previously posted on their website, available at: http://www.fms.gov.ru/, accessed 10 October 2015.

¹⁰ Konstitutsiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 12 December 1993, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_28399/, accessed 21 August 2017.

¹¹ Federal’nyi zakon ‘O pravovom polozhenii inostrannykh grazhdan v Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, 25 July 2002, No. 115-FZ, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_37868/, accessed 21 August 2017.

¹² Before its adoption, the citizens of states of the former Soviet Union were almost equal to Russian citizens in their legal status and consequent rights (Osipov 2004, p. 18).

¹³ Original reading: ‘inostrannyi grazhdanin, pribyvshii v Rossiiskuyu Federatsiyu v poryadke, ne trebuyushchem polucheniya vizy,—inostrannii grazhdanin, pribyvshyi v Rossiiskuyu Federatsiyu v poryadke, ne trebuyushchem polucheniya vizy’.

¹⁴ Unfortunately, for these visitors, a purely statistical paper (an ‘Immigration Card’ similar to those used in the US or the UK that foreigners fill in on arrival) has since become their ‘visa’. This paper, which is supposed to be used for purposes of statistical registration, must be kept by foreign nationals as a proof of their legal stay in Russia if no other proof (that is, a visa) can be provided on request (for example, by the police). So long as visa-free foreigners do not have visa in their passports, all they have to prove their documented status is this small and fragile piece of paper.

¹⁵ Federal’nyi zakon ‘O gosudarstvennoi politike Rossiiskoi Federatsii v otnoshenii sootechestvennikov za rubezhom’, 24 May 1999, No. 99-FZ, Article 1, available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_23178/, accessed 21 August 2017.

¹⁶ ‘Prezident utverdil Kontseptsiyu gosudarstvennoi migratsionnoi politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii na period do 2025 goda’, 13 June 2012, available at: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/15635, accessed 21 August 2017.

¹⁷ ‘Postanovlenie’, Pravitel’stvo Sankt-Peterburga, 27 December 2012, No. 1229, available at: http://ktzn.gov.spb.ru/media/acts/2013/12/11/migrac1.pdf, accessed 21 August 2017.

¹⁸ See for example the discussion in Hendley (2017, pp. 24–5).