this last time was his third trip. All three of Abdullo’s older brothers have also spent time working in Russia. One, who works as the de facto head of a small Tajik construction crew in Moscow, has not been back to Tajikistan in years. His wife and children live, along with Abdullo and his family, in Abdullo’s mother’s house. Abdullo’s most recent trip was so short because it was not a success. Sanctions and falling oil prices have battered the Russian economy. There are fewer jobs for migrants. And the value of the ruble has fallen, eroding the value of the remittances they send home. Through a friend, Abdullo found work as the third man on a team of three that worked to rig some of the basicwork.” After he was deported, he bought a car with some of the money he’d made in Russia and began working as a local taxi driver, charging passengers a few somoni, the Tajik currency, to go back and forth between Somoniyon, his village, and a bigger town and local college a few kilometers away. He is waiting for his re-entry ban to lift sometime this year. He had a girlfriend in Russia, he said; he would like to see her again.

There isn’t much those who are forced to return to Tajikistan can do. According to Halimova, around 47 percent of migrants have never worked before they go to Russia. They are unskilled and largely uneducated. Some, like Daler, try to earn a living as taxi drivers. In a