Moscow’s mayoral elections have seen a sharp rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric —language common in Europe, but previously confined to Russia’s far right. Madeleine Reeves has been following the campaign.
The collapse of the Soviet Union left desperate human situations in its wake: prices shot up, wages weren’t paid and people were forced to travel in search of work. The post-Soviet migrant’s life — one typically fraught with problems of health, family and home — is the subject of Madeleine Reeves'
Ten days ago, an “underground town” of migrant workers was discovered below a military factory in Moscow. The discovery played into popular anxieties about migrants and was heavily spun by the national media. For Madeleine Reeves, however, it highlighted the daily struggle migrants face to stay “l
Poorly researched, political and overly assertive, the official report into last year’s violence in Osh and Jalalabat leaves as many questions as it answers. The national discussion to follow must avoid similar pitfalls.
Media talk of ‘ethnic conflict’ in Kyrgyzstan is misleading, in that it takes ethnicity to be causal. This does not describe the complex, messy process – political, economic, social and structural – whereby this crisis has become ethnicised. What matters now is to understand why and how this has o
Kyrgyzstan is suffering from a crisis of governance, reports Madeleine Reeves. But an analysis of the problems that limits itself to “state failure” is missing the point. What brought the Kyrgyz on to the streets was inequality and economic misery, muffled for years by the New Great Game.
