Care Economy: Central Asian Caregivers in the Russian Labor Market

Abstract

In this article, I present the results of a study aimed at understanding how women from Central Asia are becoming active participants in elder care in Russia today. Due to negative attitudes toward Central Asian migrants, Russian families almost never hired women from this region as domestic workers in the past. However, amid the shortage of personnel due to the outflow of migrants from Ukraine and Moldova before and during COVID-19, as well as after February 2022, potential employers have been forced to consider their candidacies, and agencies have begun to actively offer the services of Central Asian migrants. I analyze the relationships between employers, intermediaries (agencies), and domestic workers and show how all participants in this sector of the labor market—care for the elderly—are responding to the changes associated with the need to attract migrant women from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to work as caregivers. I show how agencies manipulate this sector of the labor market to make Central Asian migrants attractive workers for Russian families, how the migrants themselves create their own social networks to improve working conditions and increase pay rates for their services, and how the relationships between employers, those who receive care, and migrants change through constant interaction in the caregiving process. The central theme of the study is ethnicity. I analyze why ethnicity is important for employers and at what point it becomes irrelevant for all participants in the labor market.

Text in Russian