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# Transferring Deceased Bodies, Building Transnational Communities. The Case of Kyrgyz and Tajik Migrants in Russia

*Transférer les corps des défunts, construire des communautés transnationales.*

*Le cas des migrants kirghizes et tadjiks en Russie*

*Traslado de cadáveres, construcción de comunidades transnacionales. El caso de los migrantes kirguises y tayikos en Rusia*

Juliette Cleuziou and Aksana Ismailbekova

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/remi/22131

DOI: 10.4000/remi.22131

ISSN: 1777-5418

**Publisher**

Université de Poitiers

**Printed version**

Date of publication: March 1, 2023

Number of pages: 77-100

ISBN: 978-23-81940-23-6

ISSN: 0765-0752

**Electronic reference**

Juliette Cleuziou and Aksana Ismailbekova, "Transferring Deceased Bodies, Building Transnational Communities. The Case of Kyrgyz and Tajik Migrants in Russia", *Revue européenne des migrations internationales* [Online], vol. 39 - n°1 | 2023, Online since 01 January 2024, connection on 26 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/remi/22131 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.22131

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# Transferring Deceased Bodies, Building Transnational Communities. The Case of Kyrgyz and Tajik Migrants in Russia

Juliette Cleuziou<fnref n="1" /> and Aksana Ismailbekova<fnref n="2" />

Migratory flows from Central Asia to Russia have been taking place for more than twenty years, ever since the breakdown of the Soviet Union (1991), with a remarkable acceleration in the early 2000s, and Russia has become a place where migrants have now gained experience in terms of civic or even political organisations.

Among the primary incentives to organise solidarity, one can identify the management of the body of a deceased migrant abroad. As with many other Muslim countries, post-Soviet Central Asian states do not have commercial funeral homes: death is a matter of collective management by the local community of relatives and neighbours. Only specific services such as reciting prayers, ritual body washing or grave digging may be compensated financially or by in-kind gifts, but the nature of the exchange is never thought to be a service provider-customer one. In Russia, on the other hand, the funeral sector is notoriously contaminated by corruption and fraud (Mokhov, 2021), and even a lack of competence in some regions with regard to Muslim rituals. Although Muslim funeral homes do exist, for example, in Moscow or Saint Petersburg, most Muslim migrants do not address them; among their major reasons are the financial costs and their different relation to Islam (Oparin, 2020).

As in other diasporic contexts, the issue of dead care is particularly acute given the high number of Tajik and Kyrgyz migrants working in Russia and sending money home to support their families. The heavy dependence of families on their migrant relatives in Russia reflects the broader political and economic dependence of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan on Russia, although Russian public opinion remains quite hostile to migration, and Central Asians are particularly affected by negative stereotypes (Zakharov, 2015; Agadjanian et al., 2017). In this context, caring for a dead compatriot is often considered a fundamental ethical act, if not a political one. Yet, if the death of a compatriot encourages migrants

<footnote n="1">1 Anthropologist, Associate professor (MCF), University Lumière Lyon 2/LADEC, 5 avenue Mendès France, 69500 Bron, France; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4170-5528; juliette.cleuziou@univ-lyon2.fr</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 Anthropologist, Research Fellow, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Kirchweg 33, 14129 Berlin, Germany; aksana.ismailbekova@zmo.de</footnote>
to donate money or provide logistic support, not all solidarity practices are embedded into formalised organisations and develop into stable and regular practices. Our paper seeks to understand how dead care may be a starting point for the creation of stable transnational solidarity groups and hometown organisations, and the concrete operator of translocal practices adapted to the constraints, circumstances and needs surrounding death in Russia.

A substantial and still growing anthropological literature on migration in the post-Soviet space addresses transnational familyhood, focusing on transnational family networks that maintain remote family ties with the decision to migrate being family-oriented and embedded in broader social, cultural and community projects (Rahmonova-Schwarz, 2012; Cleuziou, 2013; Abashin, 2014; Aitieva, 2015; Reeves, 2011 and 2017; Urinboyev, 2017; Abashin and Brednikova 2021; Cleuziou, 2023). However, less attention has been paid to the emergence of migrant community practices in Russia, and especially migrant-supporting associations (whose members sometimes refer to themselves as “activists”) and their impact on the daily life of migrants and community-building (see Rahmonova-Schwarz, 2012: 199 sq.; Kluczewska and Korneev, 2018; Sahadeo 2019: 183-186). Drawing a general picture of Central Asian migrant organisations in Russia is quite challenging, as they are multifaceted. They may bring together friends and colleagues, co-villagers, extended family members or lineages. They may have as their main objective the defence of migrants’ rights and a commitment to political outcomes, but they may also be more concerned with day-to-day difficulties and provide in-kind services, as well as material and legal support to migrants in need. Some of them promote solidarity and community practices in the name of Islam, while others tend to emphasise local identities, kinship, *mahalla* (neighbourhood), and translocal practices. While some of these organisations are officially registered as ethno-cultural associations and referred to as “*diaspora*” (in Russian), others operate on a more informal level. Although their institutional framework may be loose, their power of constraint over their members may be strong — a dimension we shall explore below.

Literature on Central Asian migration also tends to overlook the management of death in a migratory context, despite the major role that migration plays in family planning and individual trajectories. Research in other diasporic contexts has shown that care for the dead is a particularly effective motive for initiating community practices in solidarity, and thereby constituting an organised collective (Chaïb, 2000; Gardner and Grillo, 2002; Petit, 2005; Masinda, 2014; Aggoun, 2006; Félix, 2011; Lestage, 2012a; Lacroix, 2016; Rachédi, Montgomery, and Halsouet, 2016; Kobelinsky and Rachédi, 2023). One thing to take from this literature is that transnational communities must not be taken for granted: they arise from regular activities and gatherings, as well as narratives of identity, moral and religious values, and relatedness, and are constantly renewed by their leaders. In this context, “doing death” transnationally (Matyska, 2019) is not only an incentive to build a solidarity group but is an actively community-building practice whose repetition in time and across borders contribute to the formalisation of transnational networks.

This already existing literature has indeed shown how death abroad triggers the need for an institutional organisation in the country of migration, which can lead to the creation of hometown based organisations (Petit, 2015; Lacroix, 2016)
and/or commercial funeral companies (Lestage, 2012b; Afiouni, 2019), and their role in the emergence of proper burial sites in the country of arrival (Ansari, 2007; El-Alaoui, 2012; Arraràs and Moreras, 2019); this reinforces transnational connections between migrants and their families who stay behind, as well as the emergence of a moral territoriality that circulates transnationally (Lacroix, 2019). Like their counterparts in other hosting countries, Central Asian migrants have learnt from the experience of sending bodies to their home countries and have therefore overcome substantial logistical, emotional and financial vulnerabilities. In so doing, some migrant-based organisations have developed specific routinised procedures in order to make it more efficient. Although we cannot assume that all forms of Central Asian dead care operate through such migrant organisations in Russia, we are suggesting that their internal structure, the values and shared identity they promote and the way leadership is understood enable us to understand community-building practices in a migration setting, and more generally how they contribute to the creation of a "transnational moral territoriality" (Lacroix, 2019), hence distancing from an often perceived hostile Russian society (Sahadeo, 2019).

To delve into these questions, we will focus on two hometown organisations, leaving aside the less formalised practices of solidarity. One of them is a Tajik association based in Tver, a Russian city with one million inhabitants, located north-west of Moscow, with whom Juliette Cleuziou has worked since 2017. The second one is a Moscow-based Kyrgyz organisation that Aksana Ismailbekova has followed since 2021. Both of us have been conducting ethnographic research in Central Asia and Russia for years, and this particular article is based on interviews, observations on site and online, as well as informal discussions with community leaders and migrants involved in these structures. While comparison is not our main goal, we were struck by the commonalities that both Tajik and Kyrgyz organisations share in Russia, especially when it comes to the rhetoric on death, identity, family, community and religious values, although it relies on different formations. Kyrgyz organisations are more lineage-based (as a mirror of Kyrgyzs in Kyrgyzstan), and Tajik organisations are rather village-based.<fnref n="3" /> Moreover, and although Tajiks and Kyrgyzs do not share the same migratory regime,<fnref n="4" /> both organisations rely on and perceive financial contributions as a pillar in the protection services they should provide. While taking care of the deceased in a migratory context is often described as a spontaneous ethical act by our informants, the collective management of death actually requires experiential learning (and thus takes time), some sort of stability, a minimum amount of resources and division of work that is to be carried out collectively. Death becomes a reason for mobilisation but also a rhetoric of identity, which can be

<footnote n="3">3 Kyrgyzs are a Turkic-speaking population who used to practise pastoral nomadism, while Tajiks speak an Iranian language and have been a pastoral sedentary population — although the Soviet regime has modified quite substantially modes of production and subsistence.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 Kyrgyzstan is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, whose statutes provide that member citizens are not subject to the monthly work permit regime in Russia, as it applies to other migrants. On the contrary, Tajik citizens have to pay the monthly "patent", which is sometimes as expensive as seventy euros/month in the region of Moscow. Moreover, while migration from Tajikistan started during the Civil War that hit the country in 1992 (until 1997), flows from Kyrgyzstan started in the early 2000s (Abashin and Brednikova, 2021).</footnote>
explored through the emergence of young leaders engaged in death-related activities, who have developed a narrative in close interaction with the authority of the (funerary) values embedded in the country of origin.

Through the analysis of different dimensions of dead care activities — namely, the experiential learning and commitment of certain individuals in managing and circulating bodies in and from Russia, the securitisation of funds through their institutionalisation and digitalisation, the division of transnational funerary work between Russia and the country of origin, the development of social expectations and pressure inside the group, and eventually the emergence of community leaders, who build their authority upon the concrete help they are able to organise — we see how dead care provides migrants in Russia with a solid ground for the creation of stable transnational communities and solidarity groups, which, in turn, secure future mobility between Russia and Central Asia.

## Ensuring a “Good Death” in and from Russia

To understand how dead care practices contribute to the creation of a stable transnational solidarity group, one needs to examine the cultural expectations that are related to death. According to most Central Asians working and living in Russia, their body should be buried in their hometown or home village in case of sudden death abroad. The final return should be organised quickly by his/her relatives and compatriots and follow Muslim requirements, as a reflection of what Thomas called a “good death,” meaning that the ritual procedure will allow the deceased to definitively separate from the realm of the living and society to recover from the rupture constituted by the death of one of its members (Thomas, 1988). In the context we study, a particular importance is given to visiting the grave of deceased relatives on Muslim holidays, which also plays a major role in body repatriation from Russia. The two hometown organisations we worked with have gathered on the basis of this expectation, often formulated as a duty. For their part, some local mortuaries that are unable to offer rituals similar to those of Central Asian Muslims now know that they should turn to migrant organisations if they are dealing with an unclaimed body, apparently or surely a Central Asian national.

## The Management of Death-Related Procedures

When Ali, a Russian citizen of Tajik ethnicity, receives a phone call from the mortuary, he knows that he might have to spend the day on the “case.” In the western Russian city of Tver where he lives, the hospital morgue calls him when a body of a Tajikistani citizen or an individual with Central Asian/Tajik ethnic origin is left without identification. Ali goes to the morgue, takes pictures of the deceased’s IDs, and tries to find information about the person through his network. Sometimes, he publishes the picture of the deceased on his Facebook page, and sends it to the various WhatsApp groups with whom he is in contact. Once the person has been identified, and the relatives in Russia or/and Tajikistan have been contacted, Ali organises the collection of the relevant documents (medical and civil death certificates), body repatriation when needed (corpses
carried in both wooden and zinc coffins<fnref n="5" /> by plane), or burials when the funeral takes place in Russia.

Ali has developed this know-how of the chaîne opératoire related to body identification and management of the bodies of Tajiks who died in his city during the many years he has been working in the migrant-supporting organisation that his uncle and the older generation of migrants created in the late 1990s. Informal at first, the now official "autonomous ethnic-cultural organisation of Tajiks in Tver"<fnref n="6" /> comprises seven regional sub-groups, each of them gathering several dozens or even hundreds of families from a common area in Tajikistan. Each group is led by a male leader whose task is to ensure the collection of annual contributions (regional fund) and concrete operational help for its members when needed. Each leader is assisted with a cashier, deputies and a council whose size depends on the sub-group.<fnref n="7" /> Recently, Ali has also become the vice president of the diaspora organisation, which claims that more than 16,000 Tajiks live in Tver and its surrounding areas,<fnref n="8" /> although obviously not all are active members or donors.

An organisation of similar complexity can be observed in the Kara-Kulja Kyrgyz group created in 2017 in Moscow and named after a region in Kyrgyzstan. Nurali, who was born there in 1987 and has been living in Moscow for fourteen years, was elected as its head in 2018. This organisation (which has recently submitted an application for registration with the Russian authorities) comprises members of forty-four villages in Kyrgyzstan, each of them having their own leader and representatives of each patrilineage<fnref n="9" /> as well as their own fund. In addition, each lineage has a sublineage head (joro bashy), who is in charge of collecting money by talking to each member individually.<fnref n="10" /> After several years of experience, the organisation now devotes its funds to three priorities: repatriation of bodies to Kyrgyzstan, legal and medical assistance for migrants in Moscow (in case of road accidents, hospitalisation), and help for vulnerable people (disabled children, pregnant women who cannot work, etc.).

<footnote n="5">⁵Those who identify under the name of “Cargo 200” (Gruz 200), as during the Soviet-Afghan war.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Officially registered on 2nd March, 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Ali is the head of a regional group that has had the following organisational structure for some years: an elected leader, two appointed deputies, an appointed treasurer and a council of twelve elected people. This regional group comprises about 360 men (and, sometimes, their families) who have to contribute 1,000 roubles/year. Inside the group, some extended families have also created their own fund, dedicated to helping kin (hospitalisation or medical problems, university fees, weddings, etc.). Some individuals give each year to their regional fund, and each month to their family fund.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸Mahhohob Акмал (2016) Муқим Майбалиев: Интеграция в ЕАЭС решит многие проблемы Таджикистана (Muqim Maybaliev: Integration into the EEU will solve many of Tajikistan's problems), AsiaPlus, 09/08, [online]. URL: https://asiaplustj.info/ru/news/tajikistan/society/20160809/mukim-maibaliev-integratsiya-v-eaes-reshit-mnogie-problemy-tadzhikistana</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹Lineage plays an important role in the Kyrgyz social structure, whereas in Tajikistan, the extended family and village ties are more relevant to understanding social organisation.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰According to their own census, the Kara-Kulja district (rayon) comprises 100,000 people in Kyrgyzstan, approximately 20,000 of whom now reside in Moscow. They are all connected by territoriality and lineage ties and are expected to be active contributors to a common fund dedicated to the mutual help and festive activities of the diaspora.</footnote>
Similarly to Ali, Nurali is also in charge of the management of a deceased member of the Kara-Kulja group, especially if the relatives are unable to get involved. When he is informed about someone's death, Nurali is expected to organise the repatriation of the body to Kyrgyzstan. He also has to announce the death and collect money from the leaders under him. This means that the money is not available immediately. Unlike the Tajik example, the money is collected after death. However, the strong demarcation of community membership makes it easy to target contributors, and attachment to the group tends to make the line between voluntary and compulsory donations very thin.

## The Procedures of Transfer and Burial

These formalised organisations are involved in guaranteeing proper death care at different levels: institutional and financial. a) At the institutional level, since they control the whole administrative process and its subtleties; b) at the financial level, to make sure that the body receives the adequate treatment. Dealing with a body requires going to the mortuary with some of the deceased's relatives to clarify the cause of death. Officially, an unembalmed body can be stored free of charge for a few days, but informal payments often take place.<fnref n="11" /> In the case of "death due to natural causes"<fnref n="12" /> the body can be transferred to Central Asia within two or three days, depending on the available flights. Ali or one of his helpers usually drives the body to Sheremetyevo Airport (near Moscow), which is a two-hour drive. In both cases, Ali and Nurali may be in charge of informing relatives in Moscow and sometimes even at home if no one else can do it.

Overall embalming services, coffins, transportation and flight tickets require between 50,000 and 80,000 roubles (650-950 euros). These amounts are evidently difficult to gather for individuals on often low and irregular incomes. Both organisations show that one coping strategy when faced with this type of situation is to create standardised procedures where money is either immediately available or collected quickly. In both the Tajik and Kyrgyz groups we followed, solida- rity community administration comprises several tasks. The leader is usually assisted by an "accountant" (ru. *kaznachey*), who reports on the amount of money collected and the expenses. Since the money is now transferred through digital (bank) applications, financial matters are quite transparent, which is a strong incentive to secure trust among group members. The accountant is thus expected to provide community members with regular financial updates via WhatsApp messages and during meetings. Not only does this procedure reduce mortuary costs (by shortening the storage period) but it also provides more time to focus on the administrative and logistical tasks (transportation, repatria- tion and burials, etc.) and less time on caring for the deceased. The remaining money is usually sent to the bereaved family home "to help buy the food for the funerals" (Ali) or to make sure that relatives arrive on time without worrying about travel expenses (Nurali).

<footnote n="11">11 Individuals who die from COVID-19 related complications are not embalmed. This reduces mortuary costs to zero — but the body cannot always be repatriated due to border closures.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12 According to Russian regulations, if the case has criminal connotations, the permission of the criminal investigator must be obtained.</footnote>
Thus, money remains the most sensitive issue. Without money, every step of
this funerary *chaîne opératoire* may pose a challenge. It is needed to get the
body from the morgue (we mentioned the fact that morgue staff often demand
informal payment) and to transport it, to obtain documents, to buy coffins and
sometimes zinc coffins (for freight transportation) and to buy plane tickets
home for one relative of the deceased, etc. Therefore, the routine procedure is
also highly dependent on the ability to gather money quickly and in sufficient
amounts.

Close scrutiny of these internal mechanisms highlights one visible absence — that of the Russian funeral sector; not only are Muslim funerary services rare all over Russia (although Muslim Russians account for about 25 million people, or about 17% of the population), but the provision of Muslim services to migrants is also depicted (by migrant organisations) as discriminatory because of its costs. <fnref n="13" /> Furthermore, given its poor reputation, most migrant organisations try to avoid funeral homes and have as little contact with them as possible (see Cleuziou, introduction, this volume). Ali and other Tajik leaders have been in contact with only one funeral home in Moscow that may provide particular products and services, such as wooden and zinc coffins (mandatory for freight) and transportation to the airport. Moreover, until quite recently, institutional support from the States of origin was rather limited: consulates, embassies and other state representatives only very occasionally provide financial or technical support in such cases. The Tajikistani national airline Tajik Air used to fly coffins to Tajikistan free of charge but is on the verge of bankruptcy since 2021. Instead, there is discussion about the private airline Somon Air providing free repatriation of the bodies to Tajikistan, but this remains uncertain. Since 2021, the Kyrgyzstani State has been distributing allowances (70,000 roubles, approximately 800 euros) to the bereaved families upon the presentation of a death certificate from the mortuary. <fnref n="14" />

The two detailed cases highlight the complex negotiation and arrangements that require a lot of energy. We see how the guaranty of a "good death" is ensured through the formalisation of hometown organisations, who capitalise on their experience to mitigate the disruption caused by the death of one of their compatriots abroad.

Emergency "Kassa" and Preventive Funds

Another dimension of these risk-mitigating practices is the development of preven-
tive funds. When we look closer at the Central Asian context, collective funds (ru.
*kassa*; kg. *yntymak*, *katysh*; tj. *pul*) are quite common, and are used in particular for
life-cycle and religious events, such as births, marriages, funerals, circumcisions,
etc. Money and in-kind donations contribute to the reproduction of kinship and
social ties more generally (Kuchumkulova, 2007; Ilkhamov, 2013; Ismailbekova,
2014; Rubinov, 2014; Light, 2018; Cleuziou, 2019; Murzakmetov, 2020).

<footnote n="13">13 Two mosques in Moscow have funeral homes that offer commercial Muslim funerary services (the Mosque cathedral and the historical mosque).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 Uzbekistan has launched a fund dedicated to helping migrants abroad, including the repatriation of deceased migrants. It is also likely that the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled the need for more assistance from the authorities, although discussions are ongoing.</footnote>
In addition, and as mentioned above, funeral homes do not exist in Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan: the deceased is buried in the cemetery by men and relatives, neighbours and friends, who are expected to feed the bereaved family for three days after the death, and then help them to organise large meals (with meat, because “blood has to flow”) on the third, seventh and fortieth days of remembrance, as well as after six months and on the one-year anniversary that concludes the mourning period. The collective dimension of mortuary events is a fundamental pillar in local social events, and the material organisation of gatherings relies on the help of relatives and close neighbours.

In Russia, where people are more dispersed, the sense of responsibility to help in the event of a person's death usually results in occasional gifts of money rather than help in kind, and depends on individual benevolence. The practice of circulating a "box" is well known, as it has been used both among Tajiks and Kyrgyzs in difficult times in Russia. At marketplaces, in restaurants and on construction sites, every location where Central Asians work, people with a body "in charge" request charitable donations (the "good deed"<fnref n="15" />). But this de facto generosity, based on religious ethics and anonymity, may be problematic. No one can ever be certain of collecting enough money. The person commissioned with the task is responsible for collecting the money and "running all over the city", etc. In short, it is quite a demanding exercise with sometimes a poor outcome. Nowadays, this practice is still widespread, but the material collection of money is accompanied by calls for help online, through various networks and digital apps, in order to save time and to reach a bigger audience. In this regard, ICT-based communication has considerably improved visibility and probably also efficiency. Banking and payment apps have also facilitated money transfers and the monitoring thereof.

In many ways, the preventive funds<fnref n="16" /> that are organised by hometown organisations — and which contributed to their internal structuration — are envisaged by their contributors as an informal insurance. Should something happen to them, they know that the funds will be available to help their family arrange the funeral (see Pellet and de Talancé, this volume). But insurance against what? Given the fact that the visibility of death on social networks and calls for help have raised awareness of the risk of death in Russia, preventive funds work as a risk-mitigation practice, evidently not against death *per se*, but against the possibility of being desocialised after one's death. In fact, the main fear associated with dying for most of the contributors was the possibility that their body could be "stuck" in the mortuary, in Russia, or that their family would be unable to recover it. Rumours of mass burials or forced cremations sometimes circulate, reflecting a latent fear of being treated in this way if one died on Russian soil.

Whereas in Central Asia financial aid is based on interpersonal donations, preventive funds in Russia work as redistribution funds financed by more or less voluntary and compulsory contributions and managed centrally. For many

<footnote n="15">15 The good deed (tj. *Savob*; kgz. *Soop*) refers to a religious belief that positively connoted action during a person's life and may reap rewards in the afterlife.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 By preventive funds, we understand a collection of money of people who know one another, that takes place regularly (monthly, annually, etc.) *in case* tragic events happen. Money is *already* gathered.</footnote>
members, this process seems quite fair when the funds contribute to ensuring
the dignity of the deceased and supporting his or her family — and is rarely
debated. However, when it comes to other causes (e.g. medical or administrative
support for migrants in Russia, or development, restoration of buildings or the
village of origin, etc.), there are regular discussions about fairness in terms of
who should contribute, who should be supported, the level of contribution and
the reason for support, etc.<sup>17</sup>

The Division of Transnational Death Work

In both our cases, the funds help rationalise dead care in order to minimise the time and energy spent in arranging repatriation. As a result, we see well-organised procedures in detail. The division of funeral arrangements between groups in Russia and families at home is quite striking. Funeral rituals rarely take place in Russia as they are generally performed when the body arrives in Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan — commemoration begins once the dignity of the body is secured. Migrant communities take care of the logistics required to transfer the body while the family and relatives at home manage most of the religious and commemorative elements. “Doing death”<sup>18</sup> in a transnational context thus often reflects tandem (but differentiated) activities here and there, abroad and at home, and contributes to reinforcing transnational kin networks and transnational ties in general. As Nurali says:

"Unfortunately, because of frequent death cases, many understand the importance of contributing money to the fund. Everybody understands its importance. No one is protected from bad luck, because tomorrow any person might face difficulties in life (oor kun tushup kalishi mumkun). It is not only important as a financial contribution but it strengthens the connection with distant relatives. Now the event of death is well organised and has even been institutionalised."

This division of work reflects the authority of the burial values back home, and death-related activities tend to depend greatly on considerations of what “good” means in the country of origin. While Gardner (2002) refers to the “sacred capital” of the country of origin when focusing on posthumous repatriations of UK-based Sylheti bodies to Bangladesh, Lacroix (2019) refers more generally to a transnational morality, emanating from the community of origin and dissemi-nated through transnational institutions (such as transnational families, migrant associations or ethnic business). The latter function as a relay of the diffusion of values, and these values serve to build a form of transnational authority of those

<footnote n="17">17 Several of the preventive funds we observed, including the two discussed here, have extended their activities beyond the management of death in Russia (see also Lacroix, 2016). They now also work as a banking group (individuals can borrow small amounts of interest-free money for a short time), as development funds to send money back home for different issues (renovating schools or mosques, celebrating traditional holidays, supporting villagers in case of natural disaster, etc.). However, the expansion of the fund's activities is not without discussion.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 "Doing death" is understood as a part of "doing kin work". This concept aims to "draw attention to the role of death in the making of transnational families and to stress that death, similarly to kinship, is work rather than a biologically determined phenomenon, enacted through mutual agency and effort by the dying and the survivors, who as transnational family members simultaneously do transnational kinship by doing death" (Matyska, 2019: 49).</footnote>
who stayed, which is exercised over those who migrate (see also Urinboyev, 2017), thereby drawing the boundaries of a “transnational moral territoriality”. We see how the division of funerary work is part of this moral geography, where the values and skills present in the countries of origin take precedence. In this respect, the forms of rationalisation (particularly financial) and modernity (in terms of institutionalisation) displayed by Tajik or Kyrgyz village/lineage associations are justified in the name of the reproduction of religious values, traditions and culture.

This division of ritual work also highlights a gendered division of communi-
ty-building practices. In Tajikistan as in Kyrgyzstan, the management of life-cycle
rituals is structured by the division of gender roles. However, both men and
women usually contribute to the events be it a celebration of birth, a circum-
cision or marriage, or indeed paying respects to the deceased (both men and
women may perform the ritual washing of the body depending on the gender
of the deceased. The men pray for and bury the deceased while the women
organise the commemorative meals). This collective involvement according to
gender and status is seen to be a dominant factor in making everyone a “good
person”, i.e. a good man or woman, a good parent, a good neighbour, and so on
(Murzakmetov, 2020). However, in the migration context, funerals highlight even
more striking gender division of work: caring for the deceased’s body in Russia
is considered a male affair, to which women make only a marginal contribution
(but nevertheless benefit to the same extent as men). The leaders and their
assistants, the drivers and the contributors are all men. In the group headed
by Ali, only men over eighteen years of age are allowed to participate with the
exception of students, conscripts, invalids and pensioners (although some of
them contribute in the name of their family). In Kara-Kulja, women have their
own fund, but it does not contribute to the burial or repatriation of a deceased
compatriot. Both organisations rely on the work of men to ensure the proper
treatment of bodies until they leave Russia. Once the body arrives in the country
of origin, men pray at the mosque and bury the body in the cemetery, while
women organise memorial events at home in honour of the deceased. As in the
case of Sylhetis living in the UK analysed by Gardner (2002), the transnational
management of death may intensify gendered division of funeral work and grief,
but also of male-based community organisation since women play no part in
the decision-making processes linked to funeral care. Although it can be argued
that there are fewer Tajik women than Tajik men in Russia (they represent less
than 20% of the migrant population), this is not the case for Kyrgyz women who
account for 40% of migrants from Kyrgyzstan. In both cases, migration helps to
reinforce ritual and social gender segregation. On a general note, we can say
that women are less or not involved in community-building practices abroad
(see also Roche, 2019).<fnref n="19" />

Another type of task division is also apparent when burials take place on site, i.e. in Russia. This occurs when the body has deteriorated significantly and cannot be transported, when the family has decided that the burial should take place in Russia (when the family lives in Russia, for example), when no relatives were found at home, or because of external constraints such as the sudden border

<footnote n="19">19 Women seem to be more involved in human rights organisations that do not necessarily rely on a hometown-based network. But this needs to be explored further.</footnote>
closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. In such cases, Ali and Nurali must find
a place to bury the deceased. In this regard, Moscow poses quite a challenge as
central cemeteries either do not have a Muslim section or are far too expensive
(as they are for Muscovites too).<fnref n="20" /> Thus, on-site burials often take place on the
city outskirts, several dozens or even hundreds of kilometres away from the
centre, where plots are much cheaper or sometimes free of charge (which they
are supposed to be since all cemeteries in Russia are supposedly a public asset).
In such cases, migrants outside Moscow (and indeed any other major city in the
country) may be of assistance to those who live in the centre. As Ali pointed
out, he regularly receives bodies of Tajiks who died in Moscow for burial in the
Tver region, and he himself brings in helpers from a rural area next to Tver
where there is a free Muslim cemetery<fnref n="21" />. A network of informal volunteering
undertakers has developed in central/peripheral areas of Moscow, and possibly
in other major cities (topic for further discussion). They do not always know each
other personally, but call each other and rely on each other, at least to some
extent.

A Community of Care and Control

We have mentioned the strength of transnational authority and the interde-
pendence between those who stay at home and those who migrate. This
authority, relayed through migrant associations, is notably embodied by the
imperatives of financial contribution for the deceased. A growing number of
registered or less formal associations has developed preventive funds to this
end.

The emergence of preventive funds is conditioned by several factors. We have
already referred to ICT-based communications, which facilitate their emergence
without being a *sine qua non* condition, and the poor state of the Russian funeral
sector as mobilising factors (see also Cleuziou, *introduction to this volume*). But
the use of territorial identity is also highly significant. Tajik and Kyrgyz preventive
funds are based on village affiliation and draw on the more or less close ties
between their members as well as between their families in their home village
(Aitieva, 2015; Urinboyev, 2017). In this regard, these connections are not only
transnational but also translocal — they connect two specific locations (see also
Schröder and Stephan-Emmrich, 2018).

We previously quoted Nurali who highlighted the fact that streamlining the
collection of money provides a solid basis for forging links and connections
between migrants. Indeed, regular messages, calls for donations, greetings and
the circulation of information and advice all help to build the community, and
allows the latter to become embedded in the daily life of migrants. It also adds
to the digital dimension of transnational deathscape (Teather, 2001; Hunter, 2016;

<footnote n="20">20 Funeral costs can be equally as expensive in the case of on-site burials. Mokhov (2021) states that a burial plot in central Moscow can cost up to 1.7 million roubles (about 27,400 euros), and that the average cost of funerals in a more provincial cemetery generally ranges from 70,000 to 200,000 roubles (from 1,100 to 3,200 euros) (Mokhov, 2021: 76). Repatriation to the home country may therefore appear as the cheapest option for migrants in Russia.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21 See also the interview of Zarnigor Omonillaeva and Karimdzhon Yorov in this volume.</footnote>
Maddrell, 2020). Interestingly, in the cases of preventive funds that we have observed, money collection is framed by the assumption that some contributors already belong to the community (while for other funds, “membership” usually derives from payment). Not only does the donation make a contributor part of the group, but sometimes an individual is expected to donate as his place and family of birth make him a de facto member of the group. In summary, the community in Russia should somehow mirror the community in Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan. As an example, here is an extract of a meeting of one regional group that makes up the ethnic-cultural organisation of Tajiks in Tver. During the meeting, the leader of one sub-regional group openly complained about the fact that many of the expected annual contributions were missing:

> "All of them say 'yes, we are going to contribute' and there you are, only lies [...] Only lies, and not a single true Muslim. Don't be offended but it's not Muslim [...] don't talk about Islam [...]. I ran into F. and his brother, I said to them, 'So you two are not going to die? No-one knows who will die first - you or me!' I was talking figuratively, of course. F. replied, 'you can't tell us what to do.' [...] I swear, we're getting up and going to F tonight."

Following the meeting, the leader took several men with him to F's house, knowing that the latter would have to serve them food, including meat, as the Tajik custom demands. This meant that F spent a lot more money than if he had contributed to the kassa in the first place — at least, that is what the leader said. We can see how the group can exert pressure to collect money and then exert control over its (expected) members.

In order to prevent the lack of contributions, the Kara-Kulja group has also made lineage interdependence a form of financial security: when someone does not pay (whether he cannot or does not want to), his contribution is expected to be paid by one of his lineage relatives. In other words, it is very hard to get out of the system because kinship and community identification are intrinsically linked with issues of honour, reputation and trust. This is a burden that people are sometimes keen to take on as the family's reputation must prevail, especially under pressure from the village of origin. In the Tver Tajik community, members with and without Russian citizenship are expected to contribute to the same extent, while economic and social uncertainty weighs more heavily on the latter. We see how the constraints linked to community ethos can impact fairly heavily on migrants, from both an economic and a moral perspective. Undoubtedly, there are attempts to circumvent, avoid or distance themselves from it which – but there are not the main focus of this paper.

To describe this community/kinship-based social pressure on individuals, Lacroix (2019) speaks about an "economy of shame" that uses shame-anxiety and name-shaming against those who would not contribute. Indeed, in both cases we study how members can be singled out, particularly through rhetoric that places shame at the very core of the denunciation device, often based on religious, moral and cultural arguments. "They say they're Muslim but they don't give money," "They are from our village but they turn their back on us," and so on. In Kyrgyzstan, fathers who remain in the village can enquire about their son's position in the group (el menen kattashaby). The social pressure on migrants to be part of the lineage organisation is as prevalent in Kyrgyzstan as it is in Russia. Leaders claim that avoiding the group could bring shame (uiat) on the family:
"Do not make your father ashamed of himself because of your behaviour (atanin bashyn jerge karatpai)"<fnref n="22" />

The Tajiks in Tver also told us that making money from the dead is a sin and should be avoided: the idea of a business related to death is strongly depre-cated, while volunteering is described as a cultural and religious prescription. Shame (tj. Ayb; kgz. Uiat) is associated with immoral, asocial and individualistic behaviour, ultimately opposing what the community demands. Moreover, many of the people we spoke to said that the surplus money collected to repatriate a deceased person is always sent to his or her family, and not kept by the associa-tion. Finally, few of these organisations benefit from fundraising on behalf of the deceased; however, their structuring is closely associated with it.

In these tight-knit communities, close inside knowledge, care and control are two sides of the same coin.<fnref n="23" /> Therefore, collecting money is not easy, but neither is avoiding contribution. Hence the group not only provides insurance-like services to individual members but also demands that they fulfil their duties not only regarding donations but also in terms of expected behaviour and solidarity. These demands emphasise the existential threat of dying without being taken care of, without being able to benefit from a proper burial and/or repatriation. In many ways, preventive funds provide a relatively strong basis for building a rhetoric of identity and belonging. This narrative is also demanding of its contrib-utors (since it aims to make them give money and feel obliged to do so), and relies in turn on this shared identity to function. In this respect, we see leaders who, during meetings, stress the religious duty of a Muslim to help a fellow Muslim, the traditional (and ancestrally blessed) practice of helping a co-villager, as well as to maintain cultural identity as an existential marker of each member.

Since community is understood as the sum of the living and the dead, it also discriminates between who, among them, is in and who is not. In fact, one of the important questions raised by these preventive funds is, to whom are they dedicated? Are they restricted to their contributors? Who are the dead who can and should be covered by these funds? Both funds we observed could be described as hometown organisations, which try to draw people together on the basis of origin and identity, which is supposed to prevail over differences (such as working place, migratory status, financial and social resources, etc.). But while the fund run by Nurali looks after the dead of the Kara-Kulja lineages, Ali's fund also finances the burial and repatriation of Tajiks who do not live or work in the region, and whose death there was accidental<fnref n="24" />. Ali's political ambitions may be behind this extension of solidarity: the organisation aims to protect (and thereby reunite) all Tajiks, regardless of their place of birth. According to Ali, this practice is a more literal application of (religious) ethical duty, but also works to strengthen the community on a regional scale. In this case, community building

<footnote n="22">22 In Nurali's organisation, the leaders of sub-lineages are supposed to include all newcomers in their group. Instead of waiting for members to join, leaders must be proactive in reaching out to those who would not otherwise know about the group (especially those who were raised outside the village).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">23 The educational role of the leaders and of the community towards their youth is an oft-repeated rhetoric.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24 The fund also helped repatriate two deceased citizens of Uzbekistan, since no one else in Tver was willing to do it.</footnote>
is based on the extension of the dead who may benefit from collective care, thereby illustrating more generally how the circulation of money epitomises the dual dimension of transnational care and control exercised by the community over its members.

## Building Leadership: Youth, Charisma and Work "on the Ground"

The formalisation of a stable transnational community around preventive funds and through practices of care and control towards the dead and the living is perpetuated through the emergence of "activists" or community leaders. For the latter, caring for the dead has become a routine tainted with sad repetition and managed with professional expertise: the morgue, the registry office, the funeral home, transportation, department of freight at the airport, etc. All of these locations have become familiar to them. After more than two decades of migration, they have come to know the procedure well. Eventually, they are often contacted by mortuaries when a Central Asian national dies, and it is up to them to find solutions to care for the deceased. Both groups we presented have organisational differences, but they also share commonalities, including the election of leaders with very similar responsibilities.

Traditionally, leaders (tj. *Rais*; kgz. *Uluu*; ru. *Starshe*) in both Kyrgyz and Tajik societies are expected to be men of a certain age, with experience and honour (tj. *Odam bo obru, nomus*; kgz. *Namys*) (see also Oparin, 2020). Interestingly, in the context of migrant groups in Russia, leaders are often younger than their counterparts in the country of origin (Ali is in his mid-thirties, Nurali in his early forties). They are expected to know both societies and Russian institutions, and to speak Russian well. Nurali has been in Russia for fourteen years. Ali grew up there, and belongs to the second generation of migrants who capitalised on the experience of their parents. Leaders are also expected to master digital apps (especially banking/money transfers) which have become extremely useful when collecting money. They also have to be in good shape because mobility is a strong asset (having a car, waking up at night to collect someone from the police station, sometimes carrying heavy items such as food stocks for distribution, etc.). They also need loyal friends and partners to help them accomplish these tasks. In short, leaders are expected to deal with the day-to-day problems that migrants (but also former migrants who have obtained Russian citizenship) may encounter. They must also be in a position to enlist the help of others who will act on their behalf for the purposes set out above. Leaders thus have to play a complex role of coordination and mediation in time and space: they mediate relations between individuals and the collective, between individuals in Russia and those in Tajikistan, and finally between the living and the dead who compose the community. The accomplishment of their duties is effectively made possible by the support of relatives, assistants and supporters, who make up the indispensable network of loyalty that enables them to secure their position.

In fact, leaders in both groups are elected regularly. But to reach (or remain in) these positions, as we said, candidates must be men of good standing with a healthy reputation stemming from a professional and family background, an ability to speak out and, most importantly, the proven ability to help others and
solve problems. Usmon, one of Ali's uncles, who was actively involved in the
creation of the Tajik Tver community in the 1990s, also explained the close rela-
tionship between community, charismatic leadership and the voluntary nature
of the process, requiring constant renewal (in Russian):

"You know, there are mostly representatives [predsedateli] on paper here in Russia. But to be a real leader [starshe], you have to be the slave of your people [rab svoego naroda]. You have to be the servant [sluzhitel'] of your people, to serve the people. Because for people who are sick, for those who are arrested by the police, for those who are not paid, for those who are in trouble with criminals — here at the time criminality was rife —, those who were caught by criminals, those who had an accident, those who were dying, all these issues are ours to settle. For me and the others, with our council [sovet]. We can't do anything on our own. A government is not built around one person. It will collapse without a strong team to support it. And because I had organisational skills, because I had been deputy head of a school [and had taken on leadership roles in the komsomol], I got people on board and I said: No matter where you are, if I say 'come', you have to come — whether you are at work or sleeping, you have to come. And then if we do that, we'll be fine, if we help each other, we'll be fine. If we don't help each other and everyone pulls the wool over our eyes, everyone thinks they're doing better for themselves, and we won't get anywhere."

Leaders' tasks related to leadership/mediation practices are demanding, in men ("assistants") and time. Leaders often "work" on their duty on weekends, and have little time for their own family and children. Isakbek Orozbekov, the leader of the Zhalchiman lineage from Kara-Kulja, says for example:

"I would like to go to the park with my children on the weekend, but something always happens on the weekend, either good or bad events. I have to control the situation by checking people and finances. I have to list the participants."

Similar to Usmon's idea of "being the servant of his people," Isakbek is suggesting here that a leader's work should take precedence over his family's comfort and well-being.

Like other "active" men, these fund organisers, who can be found at different
levels in Russia, are responsible for the effective protection of group members.
The authority and trust they generate is not only derived from status (a profes-
sional or statutory religious title, for example) but more effectively from their
ability to "organise": funds, solutions, relationships, meetings, and ultimately
self-help groups — and all without any direct financial reward. They take
responsibility for interacting between the group and its members: a collective
("gosudarstvo") based at least on various forms of reciprocity, where help and
support are matched by respect, gratitude and even obedience, and where the
collective defines itself and acts through certain individuals, whose authority
is not only rarely exclusive, but is often held by several individuals working
together (Usmon, Ali and the other regional leaders; Nurali and the sublineage
leaders). A Tajik regional leader summed up the role as follows: "Leaders [lider]
must be respected first of all. And secondly, they must be ready to serve others."
In Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, hierarchies between individuals are very clear-cut.
They are expressed by the terms of address used, and are derived from religious
or kinship terminology, indicating the respect and deference linked to eldership
and status. Because of these hierarchical relationships, figures in authority
can have a decisive impact on how a group is formed. Community leaders are
thus frequently referred to using terms associated with respect and authority,
although there is a certain graduation.<fnref n="25" />

Leaders' influence is always rooted in "field" experience and Usmon makes this a specific feature in relation to the supposedly administrative management of the Russians (he contrasts it with "paper representatives"). In the two groups we discussed, the leaders have indeed gained a certain level of authority from taking concrete action to helping migrants. This has led to an ability to mobilise people and to get them to act voluntarily on their behalf. Often overwhelmed by the amount of requests (the telephone is constantly ringing), they surround themselves with a team of reliable helpers, ready to respond to a phone call that tells them person a is in police custody, person b needs assistance to complete administrative documents, person c is trying to arrange for his wife to come over, or person d informs him of the death of a work colleague, etc. The demands made on them appear proportional to the number of contributors to the funds they organise. The social function of the elders allows these individuals to secure and perpetuate the funds and thus the transnational hometown organisations. At the same time, there seems to be a clear reinforcement of hierarchies when the community is built abroad — the boundary making and the "politics of belonging" (Haapajärvi et al., 2020) implemented and reproduced by community leaders justify the need for a specific organisation and hyper-normalisation of behaviours, particularly when it comes to honouring the dead. In addition to all of the qualities mentioned above (charisma, quality of attention to detail and coordination, knowledge of Russian institutions, rhetoric skills, etc.), community leaders also share in common an individual trajectory marked by difficulties in integrating the Russian socio-professional fabric despite their professional skills and sometimes high aspirations. The discrimination they faced led them to devote their skills to the service of migrants, whether in a paid capacity (within the framework of NGOs, for example) or free of charge. Ali resigned from the police force, where he was denied an interesting career "because we will always be black to them".<fnref n="26" /> Nurali studied journalism at Osh State University in Kyrgyzstan, but despite his studies, he cannot get a qualified job in Russia. Instead, he works as a security guard in the park; additionally, he uses his oratory skills as a master of ceremonies at weddings.

Preventive funds as a mode of organisation can pave the way to mutual aid and
individual careers. We note that Ali is trying to pursue a career in politics through
the community door if he cannot do it "like a Russian" — he is now in regular
contact with local deputies of the ruling political party (Edinnaya Rossiya), who
approach him as a community representative. For these men on the ground,

<footnote n="25">25 In Russian, the terms "starshe" (elder, leader), used by Ali's uncle, or "lider" (leader), particularly in institutional organisation contexts (NGOs), or "avtoritetnyi chelovek" (person of authority) are used; in Tajik, "amak" (paternal uncle), "aka" (elder brother), "hodji aka", or "odam bo obru" (person of honour) are the most common terms. Among the Kyrgyz, terms referring to leadership are distinguished according to levels of responsibility: the head of the Kara-Kulja district (töröga) differs from the head of the lineage (el bashy), and the head of the sub-lineage (joro bashy).</footnote>

<footnote n="26">26 The use of the epithet "Black" by ethnic Russians to despicably refer to Caucasus and Central Asia migrants dates back to the 1970s (Sahadeo, 2019: 114-115).</footnote>
the solidarity groups also provide additional resources in terms of service and information networks, or even a social springboard. Political ambitions can allow these men to climb the social ladder as representatives of their community — a route that is often only available within the Russian social-professional fabric.<fnref n="27" /> But perhaps they also express various “contestations in death” that Stierl (2016) discusses in a different context altogether, embodying forms of resistance to the Russian state, and even the Kyrgyzstani or Tajikistan states. Indeed, the community members answer primarily to their leaders rather than to Russian institutions, and aid sent to the country preserves layers of loyalty that escape both Tajikistan’s hyper-centralised and increasingly authoritarian control as well as Kyrgyzstani democratic state.

Conclusion

In 1999, Verdery stated that dead bodies have a political life since they force the living to define their relationship to the dead, to their ancestors and/or their country of origin. They also force the living to establish a moral order among themselves. Following thirty years of independence and two decades of migration experiences, community-based practices among Tajiks and Kyrgyzs show that the deceased do have agency over the living. In the words of people we met, they are able to impose narratives of a moral order (here, based on beliefs related to religion and customs) and a demand for dignity. The moral order it entails plays a crucial role in ensuring the dignity of the living too, possibly associated with their social distancing from the Russian host society. Unlike “individualistic Russians”, the Kyrgyz and Tajik residents embody self-commitment to community life, providing protection and giving meaning to their lives despite structural uncertainties, which often characterise their lives in Russia. Quoting the work of Nira Yuval-Davis on the politics of belonging, Haapajärvi et al. (2020: 53) cast light on how death abroad may entail specific political projects of collective identity, whose boundaries are shaped by the interaction between migrant groups and the country of arrival’s national understanding of identity and citizenship. Our research shows that both Kyrgyz and Tajik leaders implement such politics of belonging through active rhetoric and practices linked to the management of the deceased in a transnational setting. In their narratives, death becomes a serious incentive to secure community practices and contribute to community funds: financial support functions as a risk-mitigation practice against a lonely death, against the potentially improper treatment of one’s body and the negative consequences on the deceased and their family. In this regard, “dead care” is a major springboard for the creation of stable transnational solidarity groups and hometown organisations.

<footnote n="27">²⁷ The organisation embodied by Ali reflects a clear desire to act as a visible and assertive intermediary between the public authorities and institutions (town hall, mortuary, mosque) and the Tajik community at city level. It is hardly surprising then that local branches of national political parties (in particular *Edinaya Rossiya*, V. Putin’s party) went into Ali’s office in the run-up to the 2017 municipal elections to negotiate a vote from the “Tajik community” (ru. *tadjikskaya obshchina*) in their favour, in exchange for job offers.</footnote>
The latter also allows positive distancing from hostile Russian narratives: the community rhetoric seems to prove that migrants are more capable of protecting their deceased than Russians themselves, who are prisoners of individualistic practices in a state monopolised sector paradoxically contaminated by ultraliberal excesses. These community-based practices value interdependency over individual autonomy among migrants in Russia, between migrants past and present who have settled in Russia (with their children), as well as between communities in Russia and their relatives in Central Asia. In this specific context, caring for the deceased relies on translocal practices, which explicitly and voluntarily create a moral territorial unit that connects both spaces. Yet, both spaces do not convey the same authority: the moral geography of the deceased reflects that transnational connections are organised according to a geography of power (Massey, 1994), within which migrant associations paradoxically reinforce hierarchies between a centre (the country of origin) and its periphery (the country of migration). In so doing, village associations tend to reverse the centre-periphery hierarchies in which migrants are embedded: Russia becomes a periphery where migrants have to organise themselves to support the centre, i.e. the country of origin. The discussions we had with leaders all suggest that the deceased should be cared for regardless of the situation, and that the dignity of the deceased necessarily reflects on that of the living. Yet our work also shows that the deceased have not always been a collective matter of interest. Leaders are constantly trying to steer this issue whilst building the community — and the development of ICTs has certainly helped to accelerate the process. In this context, Central Asian migrant leaders are framed as transnational actors — as vectors of transmission of local values of “good death”. Yet there is also local adaptation of leadership, community building to the social and political conditions of Russia as well as the transnational field. One of the main features of this localised authority, at least among the Kyrgyz ad Tajik leaders, is its mobile, young, and active stance; far from positioning themselves as a traditional leader upholding “original” authority.

As a final note, we would like to acknowledge the fact that we mostly explored community-based practices as they are ideally promoted and to a certain extent, performed by the community leaders. We did not focus much on how people may react to or contest leaders’ decisions. Yet, as briefly mentioned above, tensions do exist, which are related either to the expectations towards leadership, or to the heterogeneous nature of the group.

Therefore, communities offer a form of protection and security to their members via the mediation of their leaders. But the tensions between the ideal of equality under a single authority can contrast sharply with the diversity of the concrete economic and administrative situations of the people in the community. Finally, within these groups, the dignity of the dead, like that of the living, is often acquired at the price of allegiance to the collective.
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Juliette Cleuziou and Aksana Ismailbekova

Transferring Deceased Bodies, Building Transnational
Communities. The Case of Kyrgyz and Tajik
Migrants in Russia

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Central Asian hometown organisations in Russia, this paper focuses on the interplay of funerary practices and the construction of transnational communities among Kyrgyz and Tajik immigrants. In particular, the authors examine how good death and the moral economy of death are enacted in a transnational setting and contribute to reinforcing forms of “transnational moral territoriality” (Lacroix, 2019). Through experiential learning on the ground, community leaders have learnt to take care of and send home a deceased fellow citizen, organising routine procedures and emergency funds. In doing so, they actively contribute to the stabilisation of transnational community practices. Inspired by the growing anthropological literature on transnational community building elsewhere, the authors contribute to this body of scholarship by focusing on post-Soviet hometown associations (whose members sometimes refer to themselves as “activists”), their impact on migrants’ daily lives, as well as community-building and death-related practices abroad that are socially, culturally, or economically significant.

Transférer les corps des défunts, construire des communautés
transnationales. Le cas des migrants kirghizes
et tadjiks en Russie

À partir d'un terrain ethnographique auprès d'organisations villageoises centra-
siatiques formées en Russie, cet article s'intéresse aux interactions entre les
pratiques funéraires et la construction de communautés transnationales parmi
les immigrés kirghizes et tadjiks. En particulier, les autrices examinent comment
la bonne mort et l'économie morale de la mort sont mises en œuvre dans un
cadre transnational, et contribuent à renforcer des formes de « territorialité
morale transnationale » (Lacroix, 2019). Grâce à l'expérience de terrain, les
leaders communautaires ont appris à prendre soin d'un concitoyen décédé et à
le rapporter chez lui au moyen de procédures routinisées et de fonds d'urgence
organisés à cet effet. Ce faisant, ils contribuent activement à la stabilisation des
pratiques communautaires transnationales. Inspirés par l'importante littéra-
ture anthropologique sur la construction de communautés transnationales, les
autrices contribuent à cet ensemble d'études en se concentrant sur les asso-
ciations villageoises post-soviétiques (dont les membres se désignent parfois
comme « activistes »), leur impact sur la vie quotidienne des migrants, ainsi que
sur la construction de communautés et les pratiques liées à la mort à l'étranger
qui sont socialement, culturellement ou économiquement significatives.
## Traslado de cadáveres, construcción de comunidades transnacionales. El caso de los migrantes kirguises y tayikos en Rusia

Basado en un trabajo de campo etnográfico entre organizaciones locales centroasiáticas formadas en Rusia, este artículo se centra en las interacciones entre las prácticas funerarias y la construcción de comunidades transnacionales entre migrantes kirguises y tayikos. En particular, las autoras examinan cómo la buena muerte y la economía moral de la muerte se implementan en un entorno transnacional, y contribuyen a reforzar formas de «territorialidad moral transnacional» (Lacroix, 2019). Gracias a la experiencia de campo, los líderes de las comunidades han aprendido a atender y enviar a casa a un conciudadano fallecido mediante procedimientos rutinarios y fondos de emergencia. Con ello, contribuyen activamente a la estabilización de las prácticas comunitarias transnacionales. Inspirándose en la creciente literatura antropológica sobre la construcción de comunidades transnacionales, las autoras contribuyen a este corpus enfocándose en las asociaciones de ciudades de origen postsoviéticas (cuyos miembros a veces se refieren a sí mismos como «activistas»), su impacto en la vida cotidiana de los migrantes y la construcción de comunidades y prácticas social, cultural o económicamente significativas relacionadas con la muerte en el extranjero.