Locals and immigrants on the Yamal Peninsula. Social boundaries and variations in migratory experience

ABSTRACT

Western Siberia and the entire Arctic region have been a beacon for migrants from the European part of Russia, from the national republics and the southern regions of Siberia in the post-war era. In contrast with the other regions of Siberia, the oil- and gas-rich North remains a magnet for migration from the entire former Soviet Union to this day. This paper presents research into the contemporary sociocultural environment of Yar-Sale, the administrative centre of the Yamal district of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The research focuses on the migrational experiences of ‘new’ migrants and their relations with the native Nenets population. Special attention is paid to concepts such as ‘local’/‘immigrant’, and ‘insider’/‘outsider’. The author holds that the boundaries between these categories are flexible. An immigrant may become a local and an insider may become an outsider, with ethnicity far from always being the deciding factor.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
• Nenets
• Islam in the North
• migrants
• xenophobia
• interethnic relations

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my informants and anonymous reviewers. I wish to thank Dmitriy Funk, Elena Lyarskaya and Alexandra Terehina for their intellectual guidance. Translation into English was done by the author and Benjamin Rodin. The preliminary version of the paper was published in Russian in Sibirskiye istoricheskiye issledovaniya (Siberian Historical Research) 2016, No. 4, pp. 108-130.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Heleniak, Holzlehner, and Khlinovskaya, “Der Grosse Exodus”.

2. Laruelle, “Assessing Social Sustainability,” 94.

3. Zayonchkovskaya, Mkrtchyan, “The Role of Dynamic,” 26.

4. Averkieva et al. Between Home, 144.

5. See Kapustina, “Northern Ownership”; Zmeeva, Razumova, “I decided to live here”; Yarlykapov, “Oil and Nogai Migration”.

6. See Laruelle, “Assessing Social Sustainability”.

7. Tishkov et al., Russian Arctic; Funk et al., Culture and Resources; Golovnev et al., Ethnic Expertise.

8. Report.

9. Golovnev et al., Ethnic Expertise, 17.

10. Ibid., 12.

11. Report.

12. Yarlykapov, “Oil and Nogai Migration”.

13. Volgin, “Republic of Kalmykia,” 328.

14. Kapustina, “Northern Ownership,” 123

15. See above 9.

16. Lyarskaya, “Somebody has to live,” 58.

17. Tishkov et al., Russian Arctic, 117.

18. See Habeck, “Dimensions of Identity”.

19. Reed-Danahay, “From the ‘Imagined Community’; Lave, Wegner, “Situated Learning”.

Additional information

Funding

Fieldwork was carried out within the framework of the project “The resource curse in the circumpolar areas: Russian and international experience in the field of analysis and resolution of conflicts over non-renewable resources in areas traditionally inhabited by indigenous ethnic groups (RSF, grant No. 15-18-00112, PI prof. D. Funk)“. The translation and revision were carried out as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

Notes on contributors

Dmitriy A Oparin

Dmitriy Oparin has a PhD in History and is anthropologist. He is a senior lecturer at the Department of Ethnology, Moscow State University and a research fellow at the Institute for Social Development Studies, Higher School of Economics. His research focuses on ritual space and ritual dynamics in Chukotka, migration to the North, and Islam in the North and in Moscow. Dmitriy Oparin conducts fieldwork in Chukotka, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and is the author of more than 20 academic papers on history and culture of the indigenous Siberia. For the last two years, he conducts fieldwork among the Muslim migrants in Moscow.