Migrant sociality in a 'global city' : friendship, transnational networks, racism and cosmopolitanism : a study of Russian-speaking migrants in London

• Main Author: Malyutina, D.
• Published: University College London (University of London) 2013
• Subjects: 550
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.626068

This is a work on sociality amongst Russian‐speaking migrants in London. The research aims are to explore migrants’ informal relationships, particularly friendship, which is localized in London but has both local and spatially distanciated origins, and the construction and dynamics of their cosmopolitan and racialized attitudes as a part of urban sociality within the super‐diversity of London. It is based on the results of an ethnographic study of a Russian bar and two series of semi‐structured interviews with migrants. This thesis advances the understanding of contemporary migration by acknowledgement of complexity of the ways in which migrants rely on social relationships in their decisions and practices of mobility and lives in the host society. It is contributing to migration studies by stressing the need to pay more attention to the inner diversity of migrant populations, different structural and personal constraints affecting the mobility decisions and further lives as migrants, and valuable social relationships that are not confined to kinship or neighbourhood. I explore friendship as a specific pattern of connectivity between individuals and within groups, non‐reducible to ethnic/national communities or cross‐border relationships with relatives, and look at how it can inform Russian‐speaking migrants’ lives on different stages and from different localities. Also, in this work I focus on the cosmopolitanism and racialization in migrants’ relationships with other Londoners, in order to examine how migrants’ understanding and practicing of social relationships emplace them as members of the population of the ‘global city’. In doing so, I pay attention to the mutually constitutive relationship between migrants’ agency in social relationships and the super‐diversity of London. Although my findings are centred on the study of Russian‐speaking migrants, the research may have broader implications for the studies of ‘middling’ migration and complex processes of migrant community formation.