(Il)legality and psychosocial well-being: Central Asian migrant women in Russia. Issue 1 (2nd January 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Agadjanian, Victor; Oh, Byeongdon; Menjívar, Cecilia
• Is Part Of: Journal of ethnic and migration studies. Volume 48:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 53
• Page End: 73
• Publication Date: 2022-01-02
• Subjects: Legal status -- psychosocial well-being -- gender -- Russian Federation -- respondent-driven sampling; Ethnic relations -- Periodicals; Race relations -- Periodicals; Emigration and immigration -- Periodicals; Assimilation (Sociology) -- Periodicals; 305.8005
• DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2021.1872373
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1369-183X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Legal status has shown far-reaching consequences for international migrants' incorporation trajectories and outcomes in Western contexts. In dialogue with the extant research, we examine the implications of legal status for psychosocial well-being of Central Asian migrant women in the Russian Federation. Using survey data collected through respondent-driven sampling in two large cities, we compare migrants with regularised and irregular legal statuses on several interrelated yet distinct dimensions of psychosocial well-being. We find that, regardless of other factors, regularised status has a strong positive association with migrants' perception of their rights and freedoms but not with their feeling of being respected in society. Regularised status is positively associated with self-efficacy and negatively with depression. Yet, no net legal status difference is found in migrants' views on their relations with other migrants or on treatment of migrants by native-borns. The findings are situated within the cross-national scholarship on the ramifications of racialized immigrant (il)legality and its implications for membership and belonging.