1,721,022 research outputs found
"I don’t really like tedious, monotonous work": working-class young women, service sector employment and social mobility in contemporary Russia
No full textThis article contributes a global perspective to the emerging literature on girlhood in western contexts by examining the changing shape of transitions to adulthood amongst working-class young women in St. Petersburg, Russia. As in many western countries, new forms of service sector employment and an increasingly accessible higher education system appear to offer young women new prospects for social mobility. In contrast to the increasingly impoverished and denigrated traditional pathways into work, the young women in the study derive significant value from these new opportunities, constructing narratives of self-actualisation and approximating notions of respectable femininity. Nevertheless, actual social mobility is elusive, as familiar patterns of classed and gendered stratification limit their prospects. Despite its specificity, the case thus further illustrates the limited nature of the transformations available to young women through the new forms of education and work characteristic of global neoliberal contexts
Remaking a “failed” masculinity: working-class young men, breadwinning, and morality in contemporary Russia
No full textMuch of the sociological work examining the changing fortunes of working-class young men has emphasized their newly precarious position as well as the “hollowed out” nature of their class subjectivities. By contrast, and echoing work on the adaptability of hegemonic forms of masculinity, this article points to the ongoing salience of working-class masculinities, drawing on longitudinal research with young men in Russia’s Ul’yanovsk region between 2004 and 2013. It examines how young men are able to shift from a position of marginality to one of a complicit, breadwinning masculinity by bringing to bear a variety of social, cultural, bodily, and institutional resources rooted in their class, gender, and ethnic location. This journey also reflects young men’s negotiation of dialogical, moral selves, central to which is their acquired ability to reflect upon different ways of being a man by appealing to wider moral currents within Russian society
Stability and precarity in the lives and narratives of working-class men in Putin’s Russia
No full textThe need for employers to adapt to global neoliberal capitalism has led to growing flexibility in employment relations, with more peripheral workers experiencing insecurity. In post-Soviet Russia, adaptation to the global marketplace created insecurity on a massive scale, coinciding as it did with the collapse of state socialism. Enterprises cut workers’ hours and wages in order to survive, and workers were forced to develop their own ‘survival strategies’ through secondary, informal employment. Although the legitimacy of the Putin presidencies has been built on the promise of greater economic stability, recent news reports point to the emergence of significant pay arrears. This article uses employment and income data to establish current trends in income insecurity, and a recent ethnographic study of working-class men to explore experiences of precarity amongst this group. Both data sources indicate ongoing instability, as many workers continue to rely on secondary incomes to make ends meet
<i>Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power and Law in Russia</i>. By Alexander Sasha Kondakov
No full textMasculinity and Gender-Based Violence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Engaging Men in the Gender Equality Agenda
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Die Jugend und die Generationen im postsowjetischen Russland: 30 Jahre nach dem Zusammenbruch
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Welfare in Russia and Eurasia in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textThis concluding article explores how inequalities and exclusionary processes surrounding a range of marginalised social groups addressed in this special issue – the elderly, children and young people in care, the children of economic migrants, and people with disabilities – have been highlighted by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ways in which state and third sector actors have responded to the pandemic and the success of any measures taken. The article situates each group within a wider international context, and draws on survey research exploring the experiences of NGOs assisting marginalised groups across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It is argued that the impact of COVID-19 on social and health inequalities in Eurasia has predominantly been to exacerbate them, and thus echoes patterns identified elsewhere in the world. At the same time, path-dependent factors rooted in Eurasia’s state-socialist and post-socialist history – notably the predominance of large-scale institutions in the care sector, the centrality of migrant labour to Central Asian economies, the low status of pensioners, low levels of social trust, the limited role of civil society organisations in the provision of welfare, and dependence on international aid for food security – have shaped the impact of the pandemic on the welfare of vulnerable groups in ways specific to the region
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