Reducing Legalization Expenses as a Topic in Russian-Speaking Migrant Online Communities

Abstract

This article discusses the texts posted in migrant groups in social networks, on forums and YouTube-channels. It is hypothesized that legalization in a host country becomes a common and crucial topic for migrant groups: the potential trajectories of users’ moving to a city or a country, as well as the tactics of their integration into the host community, may depend on how legality is defined in a particular migrantgroup. Legalization is often defined by users as a meaningless, humiliating and tedious procedure, which is more of a ritual nature than of any practical significance, recalling the rite of passage. The article suggests that the ritual nature of the migrant legalization procedure leads to the fact that many of them are looking for ways to avoid it even at the initial stage of their migration process, using the Internet community as a tool to reduce the expenses associated with attaining legality. The selection of the material and its subsequent analysis was carried out with the help of digital ethnography, namely — online observation.