MEAT FROM HOME: MODES AND MEANINGS OF THE MOVEMENT OF MEAT PRODUCTS FROM DAGESTAN TO THE CITIES OF THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC

Abstract

The translocal mode of labor migration between the Republic of Dagestan and the Arctic and subarctic cities of Western Siberia gives rise to specific practices of materiality associated with the transportation of things between sending and receiving societies. Food products in this series occupy the most prominent place both in terms of the scale of transfers and in terms of their importance in the daily life of migrants from Dagestan in northern cities. The article analyzes various options and mechanisms for the movement of meat and meat products through Dagestan migrant networks. Attention will be paid to the movement of meat as a multi-stage process - from its preparation in Dagestan to the organization of a storage system in a migrant's family. In this case, both commercial transfers and family and compatriot parcels will be of interest, since in both cases similar schemes can be used and the same networks are involved. Meat, intended primarily for migrants, becomes a migrant itself in the process of shipment, its appearance in the place of migration is endowed with meanings and characteristics associated with migration between these regions as a whole. Through the role and scale of the use of Dagestan meat in the daily practices of migrants' nutrition, the article demonstrates one of the aspects of constructing the translocal world of Dagestanis working in Arctic cities. In particular, of interest are the reciprocity regime both within the migrant community and between migrants and non-migrants in Dagestan, as well as the construction of symbolic representations of an abandoned house and a house built in migration, reflection on the degree of complementarity of the material worlds of Dagestan and the north, their fundamental differences and benefits.