Sdelat' ZAGS (Russia)

Sdelat' ZAGS 🇷🇺
Location: Russia
Definition: Lit. "to do the marriage registration" to facilitate the obtaining of Russian citizenship
Keywords: Russia – Marriage – Wedding – Informal Welfare – Migration – Opportunity – Imitation
Clusters: Gaming the system
Author: Elena Borisova
Affiliation: Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK

By Elena Borisova, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK

Sdelat’ ZAGS (Taj. ZAGS kardan) – literally ‘to do the marriage registration’. ZAGS is an abbreviation for the Russian Zapis’ Aktov Grazhdanskogo Sostoianiia – an office where people register their marital status, newborn children, paternity, change of names, and death. Sdelat’ ZAGS stands for the practice widely used by migrants from Tajikistan: by officially registering a marriage with a Russian citizen they gain eligibility for the ‘fast track’ citizenship procedure. Once the eligibility is achieved and a migrant spouse secures a residence permit or citizenship, such marriages are usually discharged. In legal terms, it is a ‘fictive marriage’ (fiktivnyi brak), that, according to the Russia’s Family Code, occurs when one or both spouses register their marriage without the intention to create a family. Such marriages are considered legally invalid and citizenship acquired through them might be revoked. However, there are no legal mechanisms to ensure that marriages between Russian and foreign citizens are not fictive. The definition of intention is left to the discretion of the courts dealing with concrete cases, and the legal procedure must be initiated either by one of the spouses or a public prosecutor. This means that for migrants sdelat’ ZAGS effectively remains a pathway to ‘fast track’ Russian citizenship vis-à-vis the Russian draconian migration regime.

Beginning as early as the mid-1990s, migration from Tajikistan was to a large extent prompted by the ruination of the local economy, a sharp drop in standard of living, and the Civil War (1992-1997). Over the past three decades, labour migration to Russia has turned into the main livelihood strategy for many families, with the economy of Tajikistan becoming heavily reliant on migrant remittances as a source of poverty reduction and development. In 2020, Tajikistan was on the list of the top five most remittance-dependent countries in relation to GDP (31%) in the world (IOM, 2020). Migrant remittances have inflated mobility expectations and made migration a highly desired option for the younger generations. Migration has become a normalised dimension of male social becoming, opening a path to marriage and family life, and reshaping domestic moral economies, gender roles, ideas about social propriety and respectability, and people’s experiences of time and place (Cleuziou, 2017; Ibañez-Tirado, 2019; Reeves, 2012).

The question of how many migrants from Tajikistan are on the territory of Russia is far from having a straightforward answer. Different sources of data are based on various answers to the crucial question of who counts as a migrant. However, the estimates that different scholars provide show that, out of the population of 9.5 million people, there are around 700-800,000 Tajiki-stani nationals residing and working on the territory of Russia (Zotova & Cohen, 2020). Migration in Tajikistan is highly gendered, with men constituting almost 90% of the migration flow (Chudinovskikh & Denisenko, 2020). The move to Russia is usually accompanied by downward social mobility. Most migrants are pushed to engage in unqualified cheap labour satisfying the Russian labour market’s needs. Most of them are employed, often informally, in prestige state construction projects and in small businesses (Urinboyev, 2020).

The contemporary Russian migration regime is rooted in the distinction between the resettlement of ‘compatriots’ (Rus. sootechestvenniki) and the temporary mobility of ‘labour migrants’ (Rus. trudovye migranty) (Abashin, 2016). While the former is encouraged, the latter is subject to strict regulation that differentiates between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ migrants. One’s migration status is closely tied to residency registration (propiska) and work documents as a labour license (trudovoi patent). The condition of illegality emerges out of the inconsistencies in Russian migration regulations, the tension between the law and its enforcement, the distinctive political economy of housing, and the mediated production of documents vis-à-vis widespread police harassment and the historically informed dynamics of racialisation (Kubal, 2016; Reeves, 2013; Schenk, 2018). This means that struggling to reconcile the realities of exploitative work schedules, the pressing need to remit money home, and the necessity to document themselves, migrants often find themselves sliding into illegality and becoming deportable.

In Tajikistan, fears of collective entrapment and loss of opportunity to maintain transnational livelihoods coupled with an awareness of their asymmetrical relationship with the Russian migration regime have translated in the recent trend towards mass search for a Russian passport (Borisova, 2020). It came to be considered the best strategy to secure much‐desired ‘legality’, reduce the risks of deportation, and get access to better paid jobs and welfare services. Consequently, in 2018, 35,732 Tajikistani nationals secured Russian citizenship, while in 2020 the number reached 63,380 (Voices on Central Asia, 2021). The majority of migrant workers from Tajikistan obtain Russian passports via a ‘fast track’ procedure (uproshchennyi poriadok), which allows one to reduce the time required from at least 6 years to a year (for the residence per-mit). However, many are ineligible, and that is when registering a marriage in the state registration office (ZAGS) with a Russian citizen ‘just for papers’ (radi dokumentov) comes into play.

Although it is difficult to estimate the scope of this practice, fictive marriage is a well-trodden path to obtaining a Russian passport among Tajikistani migrant workers, while being a source of extra income for unmarried Russian women. Some migrant workers find a potential ‘spouse’ willing to help them as a favour among their Russian co-workers and acquaintances, while oth-ers turn to the services of intermediaries and meet their ‘brides’ only briefly on the day of the registration in ZAGS. Offers may vary from $150 in small towns and villages up to $3,000 in big cities, yet the payment does not guarantee that marriage will happen.

Polygamy is outlawed in Russia (as well as in Tajikistan), which means that if a migrant worker is already married in Tajikistan officially, he firstly needs to divorce his wife and produce written evidence. Thus, the practice of fictive marriages has caused a significant increase in divorce rates in Tajikistan, which became a matter of concern for the Tajik state and society. Tajik men registering marriages with Russian women sometimes raises anxiety about transnational polygyny among their Tajik families and contribute to the alarmist discourses about ‘abandoned wives’ (Bahovadinova, 2018; Cieślewska, 2021). However, the historical flexibility of forms of marriage in Tajikistan means that ordinary people do not attach value to the official state registration of marriage in ZAGS, and it is the Islamic ritual (nikoh) and the large-scale extravagant celebration (tui) that validate a union between a man and a woman for God and the community. Following the practices of the Soviet state, the Tajik government itself has struggled to make these practices more legally legible. It is precisely this flexibility that allows a certain degree of public consensus around fictive marriages. Although a match between a Tajik man and a Russian woman made for documents creates ambiguity, often migrant wives told me that they did not care whom their husbands are married to ‘officially’ as long as they keep taking care of their families.

References

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