Try to live far away from your Homeland...: social justice in the poetry of Uzbek migrant workers in Russia

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2021-4/92-115

Abstract

Poetry in national languages is one of the prominent cultural innovations introduced by migrant workers in Russia. The focus of the present work is migrant poetry in the Uzbek language, which has become a noticeable phenomenon of today's Russian reality. However, so far it only exists “in a parallel reality” – in social networks and on Internet sites, and is mainly aimed at migrant workers. Its motives and main topics differ from those that inspired poets at home. Labor migrants write about longing for their homeland and their loved ones. A whole layer of migrant poetry is devoted to the difficulties experienced in a foreign country. Social justice is also an important theme in the poetry of migrants. Poets convey a generalized reaction of the majority of migrants to certain social trends. In this sense, migrant poetry can be considered a kind of a barometer of all the labor migration. In Russia, this topic remains practically unexplored. Scientists working in this direction can do a lot to ensure a scientific approach to the problem. This work is the first attempt to analyze the poetry of migrant workers writing in the Uzbek language.

For Citation: Primov, A.R., Omanov, Z.M.  2021. Try to live far away from your Homeland...: social justice in the poetry of Uzbek migrant workers in Russia. Herald of Anthropology (Vestnik Antropologii) 4: 92-115.