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# Migrating from Tajikistan to Russia: Intimacies and Risks in Images

*En migration du Tajikistan vers la Russie : intimités et risques en images*

*Migrando de Tayikistán hacia Rusia: intimidades y riesgos en imágenes*

Ariane Zevaco

Translator: Alexandra Poméon O'Neill and Katherine Booth

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/remi/28359

DOI: 10.4000/15aqs

ISSN: 1777-5418

**This article is a translation of:**

En migration du Tadjikistan vers la Russie : intimités et risques en images - URL : https://journals.openedition.org/remi/22294 [fr]

**Publisher**

Université de Poitiers

**Printed version**

Date of publication: March 1, 2023

ISBN: 978-23-81940-23-6

ISSN: 0765-0752

**Electronic reference**

Ariane Zevaco, "Migrating from Tajikistan to Russia: Intimacies and Risks in Images", *Revue européenne des migrations internationales* [Online], vol. 39 - n°1 | 2023, Online since 01 November 2025, connection on 09 December 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/remi/28359; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15aqs

This text was automatically generated on December 9, 2025.

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.
# Migrating from Tajikistan to Russia: Intimacies and Risks in Images

En migration du Tajikistan vers la Russie : intimités et risques en images
Migrando de Tayikistán hacia Rusia: intimidades y riesgos en imágenes

Ariane Zevaco

Translation : Alexandra Poméon O'Neill and Katherine Booth

1. How can images be used to examine how people migrating to work between Tajikistan and Russia perceive and manage risk? Rather than seeking to “illustrate” this field of research—an approach that would require consideration of the subjectivity of images in light of the scientific goals of analysis—I offer, based on my own experience, several avenues to explore how we, as researchers, can construct and use moving images, media-produced images, and those created and processed by the migration protagonists. Comparing images produced in different ways allows us to consider the heuristic value of the complementary perspectives of those involved in research into migratory situations and journeys.

2. In 2021 and 2022, I filmed and directed two short documentaries, as part of the French National Research Agency (ANR) REFPoM project (Postsocialist Funeral Rituals and Economies in a Migratory Context). Drawing on an anthropological approach informed by creative documentary filmmaking, I sought to explore the intimate dimensions of stories and experiences of migratory journeys, examining the social and political meanings of individual experiences and feelings.

3. Unable to enter Russia, I carried out this work in various places in Tajikistan. I met numerous individuals, men and women, who had spent months or years working in Russia, and who had returned, either temporarily or permanently. Whenever possible, I asked about their fears along their journey, their key memories, their hesitations about leaving or returning, and their relationships with both countries. Based on these conversations, I looked for images that could shed light on the ways they perceive and manage risk, and individual or shared feelings about situations of vulnerability during these migratory journeys.
4 The fears expressed verbally during our conversations largely centred on police controls in Russia (fear of arrest, expulsion or imprisonment), dangerous working conditions, and above all, the uncertainty of whether they would succeed in earning money, whether they would “make it through” and return “head held high”, to use some frequently heard expressions. This fear of “failing” their migration, in other words the desire to make a success of it, was often expressed on return to Tajikistan, by highlighting what expatriation and work in Russia have enabled, the reward for the risks taken: marriage (of oneself or a close relative), renovation or extension of a house.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Photograph 1</figcaption></figure>

Caption: Renovation work at the E. family home was paid for by the family's sons, using money earned on construction sites in Russia.

Credit: A. Zevaco, Shahrituz district, Tajikistan, 2021.

5 During these conversations, no one ever explicitly told to me: “I was afraid of dying”, except when referring to a situation of immediate danger (such as a workplace injury or violence experienced in prison). However, the risk of disappearance and death was sometimes present in the background, expressed through the fear of not returning, a thread running through accounts of moments of solitude: “I thought of my husband, my children, my parents, my house, my neighbourhood... I wondered when I would see them again”, which often meant “*Would I see them again?*” The risk of death appeared to be twofold: death of the migrant (in Russia) and death of his or her loved ones (in Tajikistan). Each labour migration journey is intimately linked to the family, which enters the imaginary of disappearance in the particular, uncertain temporality of these situations.
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Photograph 2</figcaption></figure>

Moi, parce que je souhaite améliorer ma vie

Caption: This image is taken from the short documentary *Marhamat*, which I filmed in 2021 and edited in 2022. Her story is translated into French in the subtitles ("Because I wanted to improve my life"). At this point in her account, Marhamat explains the reasons for her migration (now complete) to Moscow, and for accepting work as a kitchen porter there, a demeaning and degrading job. She recounts how much she missed her town, Khujand, and her family. By juxtaposing this narrative with the image of the cable car crossing the Syr Daryâ river, which is emblematic of Khujand for its inhabitants, at sunset, I sought to evoke the nostalgia Marhamat felt for her city during her time in Moscow. More symbolically, the cable car represents the intimate, "timeless" experience of her migration to Moscow (the slow, heavy passage of time at work, the feeling of solitude, the constant projection towards a future return to Khujand): a space and time suspended in vulnerability, uncertain, whose points of departure and arrival are nonetheless known and expected.

Credit: A. Zevaco, *Marhamat* (short documentary, 07'20), Khujand, Tajikistan, 2021.

6 Following the initial phase of research and the production of *Marhamat* in 2021, which took the form of a portrait-interview, I explored visual representations of labour migration to Russia by people from Tajikistan, and more generally from Central Asia, with the aim of creating a second short film.

7 In most of the news media and in communications from international organisations, photographs emphasise the migrants' precarious living and working conditions, the surveillance and controls carried out by the Russian police, and the impoverished living conditions in Tajikistan. The way the images are staged creates categories for thinking about and analysing migration that are often black and white (migration = hardship + poverty, police = power + danger), rather miserabilist (the characters rarely smile and there are no moments of joy) and reductive (the image of men on building sites has become emblematic of labour migration of Central Asians, particularly in relation to the risk of death at work, masking other occupations and women's labour migration).
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Photograph 3</figcaption></figure>

Caption: Published on the Eurasianet.org news website on 10 May 2016 (https://eurasianet.org/ uzbekistan-labor-migrants-looking-beyond-russia), this photograph by Konstantin Salomatin (whose film and photographic work can be seen on his website: http://www.salomatin.org) has the following caption: "Russian police talk to Uzbek migrant laborers living illegally in an apartment basement in Moscow in September 2013. According to Russia's official migration data for January, there are 1.9 million Uzbeks working in Russia—around 1 million fewer than during the same period in 2015." The police officer in the foreground, with his back to the camera, symbolises strong power, while the focused gazes of the two men seem to signify their determination to negotiate their place. In the background, living conditions are reduced to a dirt floor. The journalistic caption adopts a generalist discourse based on factual demographic and political data about a migration situation that is described solely in terms of its illegality. This discourse obliterates the space for negotiation suggested by the exchange of glances highlighted by the photographer.

Credit: K. Salomatin, Moscow, Russia, 2013.

8 Photographs published in the news media are often reused in representations of labour migration by Tajikistanis on social networks. On YouTube, many video clips of “migration songs” (a musical genre that has been developing in Tajikistan since the 2010s) are created by individuals using these images, sometimes reworking them and adding a layer of documentary meaning.

9 For example, Sangali Sharifzod's song *Gar bimiram dar gharibi Tojikistonam bared* ("If I die in exile, bring me back to Tajikistan"), has inspired numerous photo-clips on YouTube. Two of them in particular caught my attention.

10 The first one,¹ on the “Media Live” channel (apparently managed by a private individual based in Russia), alternates between images of a funeral (at an unspecified location), people weeping, Dushanbe airport, immigration controls in Russia, and crowds (perhaps to signify the scale of migration?). The images “illustrate” the lyrics without personification; death is evoked directly, but the gaze remains distant.

11 The second photo-clip for the same song,² on the YouTube channel “_amina.tj_official” (which appears to be managed by a Tajik woman called Amina), does not visually depict death, which is evoked only through the lyrics. The situation of migrants in Russia is highlighted through photomontages that portray the working conditions on
construction sites and police controls, but also migrants' daily life, always focusing on the difficulties: collective meals, waiting in airports, cramped living spaces, etc.

12 The crying emoji sticker is used as a caption for the images, but like the YouTube play button sticker in the top left-hand corner, is also part of the creative work involved in the images. For one image in particular,³ a collage combines several images (statue of Lenin, background/work scene), with saturated orange and yellow tones. In another collage, stones take flight. The difficulty of the situation and the sadness (song and emoji) are thus offset by the colours and the flying stones. Using the juxtaposition of media and personal images and a close perspective, this creativity reflects a reappropriation of the migration situation (and the discourse of death and risk).

13 The images reused in this type of photo-clip often blend collective stories (media images of crowds, airports, luggage, construction sites, abandoned women in villages), and personal stories, through videos and photos, often tightly framed, depicting individual lives: workers gathered in an overcrowded flat, lunch or a night spent on a building site, a football match, a hospital bed, an outing to Red Square, etc. These are also the images sent by many migrants in Russia to their relatives in Tajikistan. Through these photo-clips, the protagonists of labour migration appropriate the risks evoked, asserting their acceptance of the dangers. By reinvesting them with a close perspective and personal commentary, these images and montages become forms of documentary expression.

14 As a researcher, I find that achieving the proximity of perspective required for documentary work in this area is far from straightforward. The subject is saturated with visual clichés (internet and television media, social networks) and represented in amateur production (by migrants, in photographs and videos) and professional creation (in recent years, the fiction film industry in Tajikistan has produced a number of films and series depicting labour migration).

15 While filming a second short film at Dushanbe airport in 2022, I was confronted with this difficulty in a very practical way. I wanted to film the expectations of those departing and those awaiting their return, and to reflect the particular atmosphere of these nighttime flights to and from Russia. I found myself in a crowd of people on the move or waiting, loaded down with luggage, filming, photographing and observing each other, and sharing in this commonplace experience of migration to Russia—either having lived through it themselves, or through their family history. In this precise space and time, I was struck by the ordinary nature of the experience of migration to Russia. It seemed pointless to choose one situation or a single character to embody migration, and I did not want to create a reportage or vox pop effect. Instead, I sought to explore the shared nature of waiting, the collective aspect of departures and arrivals. After considering a fictional re-enactment (or a fictional voice-over of footage at the airport), I eventually decided to stick with a documentary approach. Through editing, I chose to evoke the expectations, fears and hopes by creating motifs embodied by the characters and locations at the airport, in an attempt to convey the ordinary nature of the migration experience for many Tajikistanis today.
<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Photograph 4</figcaption></figure>

Caption: At Dushanbe airport, outside the arrivals gate, two women waiting for travellers take selfies to pass the time.

Credit: A. Zevaco, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, 2022.

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Photograph 5</figcaption></figure>

Caption: Sitting on a bench in the square in front of the Dushanbe airport gates, Muhammadjon and his wife Firuza wait for their daughter-in-law's return from St. Petersburg. Having arrived more than twelve hours earlier from the south of the country, they watch the comings and goings, the discussions and encounters that punctuate the airport's nightlife, and the arrivals and departures to and from Russia.

Credit: A. Zevaco, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, 2022.
NOTES

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNsgi4Hires

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohY8f9lN8yU

3. Image visible at 01'25 of the clip.

INDEX

**Mots-clés:** image, intimité, risque, migration, recherche

**Keywords:** image, intimacy, risk, migration, research

**Palabras claves:** imagen, intimidad, riesgo, migración, investigación

AUTHORS

ARIANE ZEVACO

Anthropologist, associate researcher at the *Centre d'études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques* (CETOBaC-UMR 8032), fellow of the *Institut Convergences Migrations* (French Collaborative Institute on Migration), 2 cours des Humanités, 93322 Aubervilliers Cedex, France; azevaco[at]yahoo.fr

TRANSLATORS

ALEXANDRA POMÉON O'NEILL

KATHERINE BOOTH