Migrant communities in Moscow : their origins, functionality, and maintenance mechanisms

This text presents the results of a study in which we have sought answers to questions of: what kinds of migrant communities exist in Moscow, how they arise and function, what types of people they unite, and how they are structured. Due to the peculiar circumstances encountered by migrants in the process of integration into the cityscape and social spheres of Moscow, we chose as our setting-off point not "ethnic neighborhoods," which unlike in European and American cities do not exist in Moscow, but rather the "ethnic cafés" that are scattered throughout the city. Our study draws upon interviews and observations done in eighty Moscow cafés - empirical data collected over the research project's six-month period. Having chosen as a conceptual centerpiece the appellation "community," we will delineate in the first portion of this paper a theoretical framework for our research, after which we will progress to the main portion, an ethnographic description of two different types of community, in order to depict here how such migrant communities are, in reality, structured in Moscow.