‘In Short, We Will Deport You’: Disrupted temporalities of migrants with HIV in Russia

ABSTRACT

Migrants experience several challenges en route to or in their host country. Current legislation in Russia imposes a permanent ban on international migrants with HIV obtaining a residence permit in Russia. Using qualitative methodology, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 international migrants who have lived with HIV in Russia and 12 interviews with healthcare providers in Russia. With the help of Bonnington’s temporal framework, the study finds that the HIV-positive status of migrants becomes a biographical event that interrupts their migration cycle, thereby leading to the disruption of their normal life course which results in ‘short term planning’ and instability. Although most people living with HIV face similar challenges, Russian law concerning international migrants living with HIV worsens their living experience in Russia. International migrants living with HIV further face social exclusion, serious stigma and discrimination. The results show that the country’s demand for migrants with HIV to leave the country to reduce the spread of HIV in Russia is counterproductive: it does not mobilise heath-seeking behaviour among migrants. Therefore, such legislation has to be amended to encourage international migrants living with HIV to access adequate HIV services.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration policy
• undocumented migrants
• HIV/AIDS
• stigma and discrimination
• Russia

Acknowledgements

Primarily we would like to thank the migrants who participated in the study for sharing their stories with us. That required a lot of courage, and we value the trust given to us. We also thank doctors and NGO professionals who assisted us with the recruitment of the migrants in particular, Kirill Barskiy, Andrey Petrov from Russia, Nasyiat Kemelova from Kyrgyzstan, Ilhomjon Nematov from Tajikistan, Sergey Uchaev from Uzbekistan. We are thankful for their valuable help in finding participants and building trust with them. We are grateful to volunteers Yana Bolshedvorskaya and Maria Vyatchina for taking interviews with the NGO experts and doctors as well as for valuable discussions during data analysis. Many thanks to Ekaterina Demintseva from the Higher School of Economics for kindly reading a draft of the manuscript and for her critical comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

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 (HSE), Moscow, Russia.