Between a Knife and the Law Bureau-Legal Engagement With Migrant Workers in Russia and Tajikistan

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among migration officials, this article explores the role of legal professionals and their work in migration bureaucracy in Tajikistan and Russia. It brings together the literature on the anthropology of bureaucracy and law to suggest lawyers in this bureaucracy attempt to maximize legal protection and promote the rule of law in Russia by engaging in various bureaucratic practices. It applies the concept of bureau-legal engagement to explore scales of bureaucratic expertise, labor, and institutional differentiation across geographies. Practicing a form of nonstate bureaucratic labor, lawyers have both reproduced and challenged Russian legality, spreading Russia's punitive migration legislation in Tajikistan. In the process, legal professionals have become integral in defining the population's needs and attuning those needs to the Russian legal field. These processes have been essential in producing an understanding of locality, authority, and expertise.