Legal Pluralism and Everyday Life in Multicultural Prisons: A Case Study of Central Asian Muslim Prisoners in the Russian Penal System
This is an application for a twelve-month sabbatical grant. The home institution is the Department of Sociology of Law, Lund University and host institutions abroad are the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul and the Academy of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Uzbekistan. The choice of these two host institutions is motivated by the applicant’s proposed project which requires archival research and the study of penal culture and history in the post-Soviet context. The overall aim of the project is to conduct socio-legal research on legal pluralism and everyday life in multicultural prisons through the ethnographic study of Central Asian Muslim prisoners in the Russian penal system. The main reason for focusing on Russia is that its penal system is marked by heavily punitive prison administration practices, ethnic and religious diversity, and the criminal subculture which has its origins in the Stalinist Gulag system. The project is very timely. The ever-growing calls for penal reform that began in the last century did not produce expected outcomes, and the rate of incarceration continues to rise on a global scale. An understanding of how prisoners’ identity and life trajectories are shaped by the legally plural environment is vital for our comprehension of penal law and ideologies. The project results will lead to a book on Legal Pluralism, Informality and Everyday Life in the Multicultural Russian Prisons, which will be published by the University of California Press.
Final report
The program's most significant results and publications as well as a discussion of the conclusions.
The overall aim of the RJ-funded sabbatical project was to conduct socio-legal research on legal pluralism and everyday life in multicultural prisons through the ethnographic study of Central Asian Muslim prisoners in the Russian penal system. The main rationale for focusing on Russia rested on the premise that its penal system is marked by heavily punitive prison administration practices, ethnic and religious diversity, and the criminal subculture, which has its origins in the Stalinist Gulag system. Theoretically, in exploring the normative pluralism in the Russian prison context, I drew on the legal pluralism perspective, which emphasises the coexistence of and clash between multiple sets of rules that mould people’s social behaviour: the law of the nation-state, Indigenous customs, and rules, religious decrees, moral codes, and practical norms for social life. Empirically, this RJ-funded sabbatical project was based on the ethnographic data collected by the researcher Dr Rustamjon Urinboyev during two periods of fieldwork in two locations: in Uzbekistan, between January 2020 – April 2024 and in Russia, between January 2014 and August 2018 (before the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine).
In order to accomplish these research objectives, I have applied for and received a twelve-month (full-time research) Sabbatical Grant from RJ. Thanks to RJ Sabbatical funding, I was able to fully concentrate on my research project, which enabled me to produce several publications on legal pluralism, informality, and everyday life in Russian prisons, as well as several other key publications on law, society and governance in the post-Soviet context.
As a result of the RJ-funded Sabbatical project, I have produced these two core scientific outputs:
1. Urinboyev, R. and Pallot, J. (2024). Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions: A Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim Prisoners. Open Research Europe, 3(122) https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.16142.2
2. Urinboyev, R. (forthcoming 2025/2026). Legal Pluralism, Informality, and Everyday Life in Multicultural Prisons: A Case Study of Central Asian Muslim Prisoners in the Russian Penal System. Oakland: University of California (this monograph will be published open-access thanks to RJ’s open-access publishing grant).
The two core mentioned above publications produced novel empirical and theoretical insights on how a legally plural environment shapes prisoners’ identity, life trajectories, and choices within “inside” and “outside” contexts. Based on my findings, I put forward the proposition that the extant literature on prisoners’ attitudes, practices, and behavioural norms should problematise the concept of law and that it lacks a systematic explanation of the mutual interplay between the numerous normative and social phenomena that exist in the prison context. The ever-growing calls for penal reform that began in the last century did not produce expected outcomes, and the rate of incarceration continues to rise on a global scale. Drawing on the socio-legal framework of legal pluralism, I suggest that an understanding of how prisoners’ identities and life trajectories are shaped by the legally plural environment is vital for our comprehension of penal law and ideologies. Using the Russian penal system as a case study, I proposed a socio-legal framework on legally plural penal systems, which can be instructive in evaluating how the official and informal norms operate in the prison context, how they shape prisoners’ identity and life trajectories, and thereby facilitate or hinder prison reform and prisoner re-entry and reintegration programs in different parts of the globe.
What the project has resulted in aside from the publications.
In addition to scientific publications, the RJ-funded Sabbatical project enabled me to undertake a guest research stay at the following two academic institutions in Turkey and Uzbekistan.
1. The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), Turkey: six-month stay between March 1, 2023-August 31, 2023. During my research stay at SRII, I analysed the evolution of the Russian penal system from Imperial Russian times until the contemporary period. I greatly benefited from archival research at SRII library, which included a unique “the Gunnar Jarring Central Eurasian collection” of approximately 5,000 volumes, including books on history, religion, literature, and several other disciplines from the 19th and 20th centuries. Working at the SRII library enabled to examine the Soviet historical context and the religion, legal culture, and socio-political history of the Central Asian region.
2. The Academy of the General Prosecutor’s Office (AGPO), Uzbekistan: regular research trips to AGPO, Uzbekistan, between January 2023 and July 31, 2024. During my trips, I studied the penal ideology and legal mentality in the broader post-Soviet region and how they intersect with the treatment of ethnic, religious, and racial differences.
Any new research questions
While working on the RJ-funded Sabbatical project, I dealt with several unanticipated situations and new research questions.
First, the empirical data on Central Asian Muslim prisoners serving sentences in Russian penal institutions was collected between January and September 2020. However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine necessitated new fieldwork. This was due to the fact that Russian authorities started using Central Asian Muslim prisoners as cannon fodder, forcibly sending them from prison in Russia to death in Ukraine. As the Radio Free Europe reported, many Central Asian migrants were among the estimated 50,000 prisoners who were sent from Russian jails by the Wagner mercenary group to fight in Ukraine (https://www.rferl.org/a/central-asia-migrants-prison-russia-death-ukraine-wagner/32568047.html). Given these unforeseen developments, I felt that I needed to update my fieldwork data to capture these latest developments. With this in mind, I made several field trips to Uzbekistan in order to interview Uzbek ex-prisoners who had recently completed their prison sentence in Russia and been sent back/deported to Uzbekistan. I was able to conduct interviews with five ex-prisoners recently returned to Uzbekistan.
Dissemination of results
I have used different venues to communicate the project results to target audiences.
As I was hosted by the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), I presented my research during the research seminar organized by the SRII on April 27, 2023. The seminar participants included the SRII staff, guest researchers based at SRII, Turkish academic and policy communities as well as the representatives of the French Institute for Turkish Studies.
Internationally, I presented the sabbatical project results at the following venues:
Invited lectures and presentations
• Invited lecture “From the Shadow Economy to Prison: A Case Study of Uzbek Migrants in Russian Penal Institutions”, April 4, 2024, Nava’i-Nalle Lecture series, the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
• Invited lecture “Islam and Community Building in Russian Prisons: Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Prisoners in Russian Penal Institutions”, October 18, 2023, Abusulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies, George Mason University, Virginia, USA.
• Keynote speech “From Prisons to Organized Crime”, October 27, 2023. Plenary VI: Roundtable: From Prisons to Organized Crime, Aleksanteri Annual Conference, University of Helsinki, Finland
Presentation at international conferences and workshops
• Concluding workshop of the ERC-funded Horizon 2020 project "Gulag Echoes in the “multicultural prison.” Historical and geographical influences on the identity and politics of ethnic minority prisoners in the communist successor states of Russia and Europe", held at Oxford University, UK. Paper presented: The Carceral Journey of Uzbek Muslim Prisoners.
A list of publications and links to personal websites
During the RJ-funded sabbatical period, I have published the following books, journal articles and book chapters which directly or partly resulted from RJ funding:
Monographs and edited volumes
Urinboyev, R. (forthcoming 2025/2026). Legal Pluralism, Informality, and Everyday Life in Multicultural Prisons: A Case Study of Central Asian Muslim Prisoners in the Russian Penal System. Oakland: University of California Press
Urinboyev, R. and Svensson, M (2024). Law, Society and Corruption: Lessons from the Post-Soviet Context. Routledge: Law, Justice and Power series https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9780429952968/law-society-corruption-rustamjon-urinboyev-m%C3%A5ns-svensson
Urinboyev, R. eds. (2024). The Political Economy of Central Asian Law: A Law and Society Analysis. Palgrave: International Political Economy Series https://link.springer.com/book/9783031553400
Journal articles
Urinboyev, R. and Pallot, J. (2024). Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions: A Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim prisoners. Open Research Europe, 3(122) https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.16142.2
Eraliev, S. and Urinboyev, R. (accepted, forthcoming 2024). Social Media, Anti-Corruption Activism and Democratisation in Authoritarian Contexts: A Case Study of Uzbekistan. Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization
Sobirov, E. and Urinboyev, R. (2024). Debt-Based Trade, Social Norms and Informality in Uzbekistan: Case Study of Rassiychilar in Rural Fergana. Communist and Post-Communist Studies. https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2024.2017417
Urinboyev, R. and Dogan, E. (2024). Navigating the Legal Uncertainty and Informality in Authoritarian Regimes: Legal Culture, Governance and Business Environment in Uzbekistan. Central Asian Affairs. https://doi.org/10.30965/22142290-bja10052
Urinboyev, R. (2023). Islamic Legal Culture in Uzbekistan. Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, 55 (3), 402–429. https://doi.org/10.1080/27706869.2023.2269511
Eraliev, S. and Urinboyev, R., 2023. ‘What have you done, brother Putin?’: Everyday geopolitics and Central Asian labour migration to Russia. Central Asian Survey, 43(2), 215–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2023.2266519
Book chapters
Eraliev, S., and Urinboyev, R. (2023). Informality and Uzbek Migrant Networks in Turkey and Russia. In J. Fe´aux de la Croix and M. Reeves, eds. The Central Asian World. Routledge Worlds series, 577-590. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003021803-46
Popularisations
Urinboyev, R. (2024). Mahalla in Uzbekistan: An Embodiment of Muslim Values of Neighbourliness and Mutual Support. Maydan – An online publication of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University
All listed publications above are accessible open-access and comply with RJ’s open-access requirements through open-access publishing grant or being made freely accessible through Lund University’s institutional repository. All of these publications are freely accessible and can be found on my personal profile at Lund University: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/rustamjon-urinboyev/publications/
The overall aim of the RJ-funded sabbatical project was to conduct socio-legal research on legal pluralism and everyday life in multicultural prisons through the ethnographic study of Central Asian Muslim prisoners in the Russian penal system. The main rationale for focusing on Russia rested on the premise that its penal system is marked by heavily punitive prison administration practices, ethnic and religious diversity, and the criminal subculture, which has its origins in the Stalinist Gulag system. Theoretically, in exploring the normative pluralism in the Russian prison context, I drew on the legal pluralism perspective, which emphasises the coexistence of and clash between multiple sets of rules that mould people’s social behaviour: the law of the nation-state, Indigenous customs, and rules, religious decrees, moral codes, and practical norms for social life. Empirically, this RJ-funded sabbatical project was based on the ethnographic data collected by the researcher Dr Rustamjon Urinboyev during two periods of fieldwork in two locations: in Uzbekistan, between January 2020 – April 2024 and in Russia, between January 2014 and August 2018 (before the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine).
In order to accomplish these research objectives, I have applied for and received a twelve-month (full-time research) Sabbatical Grant from RJ. Thanks to RJ Sabbatical funding, I was able to fully concentrate on my research project, which enabled me to produce several publications on legal pluralism, informality, and everyday life in Russian prisons, as well as several other key publications on law, society and governance in the post-Soviet context.
As a result of the RJ-funded Sabbatical project, I have produced these two core scientific outputs:
1. Urinboyev, R. and Pallot, J. (2024). Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions: A Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim Prisoners. Open Research Europe, 3(122) https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.16142.2
2. Urinboyev, R. (forthcoming 2025/2026). Legal Pluralism, Informality, and Everyday Life in Multicultural Prisons: A Case Study of Central Asian Muslim Prisoners in the Russian Penal System. Oakland: University of California (this monograph will be published open-access thanks to RJ’s open-access publishing grant).
The two core mentioned above publications produced novel empirical and theoretical insights on how a legally plural environment shapes prisoners’ identity, life trajectories, and choices within “inside” and “outside” contexts. Based on my findings, I put forward the proposition that the extant literature on prisoners’ attitudes, practices, and behavioural norms should problematise the concept of law and that it lacks a systematic explanation of the mutual interplay between the numerous normative and social phenomena that exist in the prison context. The ever-growing calls for penal reform that began in the last century did not produce expected outcomes, and the rate of incarceration continues to rise on a global scale. Drawing on the socio-legal framework of legal pluralism, I suggest that an understanding of how prisoners’ identities and life trajectories are shaped by the legally plural environment is vital for our comprehension of penal law and ideologies. Using the Russian penal system as a case study, I proposed a socio-legal framework on legally plural penal systems, which can be instructive in evaluating how the official and informal norms operate in the prison context, how they shape prisoners’ identity and life trajectories, and thereby facilitate or hinder prison reform and prisoner re-entry and reintegration programs in different parts of the globe.
What the project has resulted in aside from the publications.
In addition to scientific publications, the RJ-funded Sabbatical project enabled me to undertake a guest research stay at the following two academic institutions in Turkey and Uzbekistan.
1. The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), Turkey: six-month stay between March 1, 2023-August 31, 2023. During my research stay at SRII, I analysed the evolution of the Russian penal system from Imperial Russian times until the contemporary period. I greatly benefited from archival research at SRII library, which included a unique “the Gunnar Jarring Central Eurasian collection” of approximately 5,000 volumes, including books on history, religion, literature, and several other disciplines from the 19th and 20th centuries. Working at the SRII library enabled to examine the Soviet historical context and the religion, legal culture, and socio-political history of the Central Asian region.
2. The Academy of the General Prosecutor’s Office (AGPO), Uzbekistan: regular research trips to AGPO, Uzbekistan, between January 2023 and July 31, 2024. During my trips, I studied the penal ideology and legal mentality in the broader post-Soviet region and how they intersect with the treatment of ethnic, religious, and racial differences.
Any new research questions
While working on the RJ-funded Sabbatical project, I dealt with several unanticipated situations and new research questions.
First, the empirical data on Central Asian Muslim prisoners serving sentences in Russian penal institutions was collected between January and September 2020. However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine necessitated new fieldwork. This was due to the fact that Russian authorities started using Central Asian Muslim prisoners as cannon fodder, forcibly sending them from prison in Russia to death in Ukraine. As the Radio Free Europe reported, many Central Asian migrants were among the estimated 50,000 prisoners who were sent from Russian jails by the Wagner mercenary group to fight in Ukraine (https://www.rferl.org/a/central-asia-migrants-prison-russia-death-ukraine-wagner/32568047.html). Given these unforeseen developments, I felt that I needed to update my fieldwork data to capture these latest developments. With this in mind, I made several field trips to Uzbekistan in order to interview Uzbek ex-prisoners who had recently completed their prison sentence in Russia and been sent back/deported to Uzbekistan. I was able to conduct interviews with five ex-prisoners recently returned to Uzbekistan.
Dissemination of results
I have used different venues to communicate the project results to target audiences.
As I was hosted by the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), I presented my research during the research seminar organized by the SRII on April 27, 2023. The seminar participants included the SRII staff, guest researchers based at SRII, Turkish academic and policy communities as well as the representatives of the French Institute for Turkish Studies.
Internationally, I presented the sabbatical project results at the following venues:
Invited lectures and presentations
• Invited lecture “From the Shadow Economy to Prison: A Case Study of Uzbek Migrants in Russian Penal Institutions”, April 4, 2024, Nava’i-Nalle Lecture series, the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
• Invited lecture “Islam and Community Building in Russian Prisons: Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Prisoners in Russian Penal Institutions”, October 18, 2023, Abusulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies, George Mason University, Virginia, USA.
• Keynote speech “From Prisons to Organized Crime”, October 27, 2023. Plenary VI: Roundtable: From Prisons to Organized Crime, Aleksanteri Annual Conference, University of Helsinki, Finland
Presentation at international conferences and workshops
• Concluding workshop of the ERC-funded Horizon 2020 project "Gulag Echoes in the “multicultural prison.” Historical and geographical influences on the identity and politics of ethnic minority prisoners in the communist successor states of Russia and Europe", held at Oxford University, UK. Paper presented: The Carceral Journey of Uzbek Muslim Prisoners.
A list of publications and links to personal websites
During the RJ-funded sabbatical period, I have published the following books, journal articles and book chapters which directly or partly resulted from RJ funding:
Monographs and edited volumes
Urinboyev, R. (forthcoming 2025/2026). Legal Pluralism, Informality, and Everyday Life in Multicultural Prisons: A Case Study of Central Asian Muslim Prisoners in the Russian Penal System. Oakland: University of California Press
Urinboyev, R. and Svensson, M (2024). Law, Society and Corruption: Lessons from the Post-Soviet Context. Routledge: Law, Justice and Power series https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9780429952968/law-society-corruption-rustamjon-urinboyev-m%C3%A5ns-svensson
Urinboyev, R. eds. (2024). The Political Economy of Central Asian Law: A Law and Society Analysis. Palgrave: International Political Economy Series https://link.springer.com/book/9783031553400
Journal articles
Urinboyev, R. and Pallot, J. (2024). Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions: A Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim prisoners. Open Research Europe, 3(122) https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.16142.2
Eraliev, S. and Urinboyev, R. (accepted, forthcoming 2024). Social Media, Anti-Corruption Activism and Democratisation in Authoritarian Contexts: A Case Study of Uzbekistan. Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization
Sobirov, E. and Urinboyev, R. (2024). Debt-Based Trade, Social Norms and Informality in Uzbekistan: Case Study of Rassiychilar in Rural Fergana. Communist and Post-Communist Studies. https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2024.2017417
Urinboyev, R. and Dogan, E. (2024). Navigating the Legal Uncertainty and Informality in Authoritarian Regimes: Legal Culture, Governance and Business Environment in Uzbekistan. Central Asian Affairs. https://doi.org/10.30965/22142290-bja10052
Urinboyev, R. (2023). Islamic Legal Culture in Uzbekistan. Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, 55 (3), 402–429. https://doi.org/10.1080/27706869.2023.2269511
Eraliev, S. and Urinboyev, R., 2023. ‘What have you done, brother Putin?’: Everyday geopolitics and Central Asian labour migration to Russia. Central Asian Survey, 43(2), 215–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2023.2266519
Book chapters
Eraliev, S., and Urinboyev, R. (2023). Informality and Uzbek Migrant Networks in Turkey and Russia. In J. Fe´aux de la Croix and M. Reeves, eds. The Central Asian World. Routledge Worlds series, 577-590. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003021803-46
Popularisations
Urinboyev, R. (2024). Mahalla in Uzbekistan: An Embodiment of Muslim Values of Neighbourliness and Mutual Support. Maydan – An online publication of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University
All listed publications above are accessible open-access and comply with RJ’s open-access requirements through open-access publishing grant or being made freely accessible through Lund University’s institutional repository. All of these publications are freely accessible and can be found on my personal profile at Lund University: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/rustamjon-urinboyev/publications/