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This study is a compelling ethnographic journey into the lives of Central Asian migrants whose labour sustains Russian cities while their faith, mobility and belonging remain closely scrutinised. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, the book reveals how migrants navigate informal economies, police surveillance, racialised exclusion and everyday precarity, while Islam offers ethical orientation, community and survival strategies. It challenges simplistic views of migration, religion and integration by showing how state power, labour markets and moral worlds intersect in daily life. Essential reading for scholars, students and policy audiences interested in migration, Islam, Russia and post-Soviet societies today globally.
Price: $97.00
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Publication Date:
17 December 2026
ISBN: 9789004763111
Format: Hardcover
Migration and Islam in Russia provides an innovative and much needed framework to analyze the way migrants weave their own social, economic, and religious orders transnationally and in the face of hostile regimes. Rano Turaeva traces migrants agency in constructing infrastructures of trust, survival, and caring building on the moral authority and economy of a lived Islam. Turaeva’s book is a pathbreaking contribution to the intersection of migration studies, urban studies, and religious studies.
Nina Glick Schiller, Professor Emeritus University of Manchester, Research Partner, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Editor Anthropological Theory
Rano Turaeva’s book provides a masterful insight into a major knowledge gap concerning Russian studies: on the one hand, widespread racism (with the fundamental distinction between Slavic and non-Slavic) and police harassment of Muslims; on the other, the resourcefulness, initiative and solidarity demonstrated by Muslim immigrants in a context marked by insecurity and informality. A remarkable work that subtly combines analysis of contextual constraints and analysis of actors’ agency, in depth fieldwork and grounded theory, anthropology and institutionalism.
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
Nina Glick Schiller, Professor Emeritus University of Manchester, Research Partner, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Editor Anthropological Theory
Rano Turaeva’s book provides a masterful insight into a major knowledge gap concerning Russian studies: on the one hand, widespread racism (with the fundamental distinction between Slavic and non-Slavic) and police harassment of Muslims; on the other, the resourcefulness, initiative and solidarity demonstrated by Muslim immigrants in a context marked by insecurity and informality. A remarkable work that subtly combines analysis of contextual constraints and analysis of actors’ agency, in depth fieldwork and grounded theory, anthropology and institutionalism.
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
Rano Turaeva, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, LMU Munich, is a habilitated anthropologist specializing in Central Asia, migration, Islam and post-Soviet societies. She is the author of Migration and Identity (Routledge, 2016), and co-editor with Rustamjon Urinboyev of Labour, Mobility and Informal Practices in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2021).