The MOVE-INNOCOM team (NRWS, Finland) and Gertrude Eilmsteiner-Saxinger joined forces with the Novyi Urengoi Branch of Tyumen State University, and the city administration of Novyi Urengoi to organise a big conference of academia and practitioners about mobility and localitity in northern industrial cities.

PAPERS were presented on the following topics:

• International and Russian experience of circumpolar industrialisation
• Studies on all aspects of adaptation among incomers and their descendants in the North
• relocation, anthropology of labour, demographic development of the North.
• formation of collective identities and civil society in northern cities
• The history and principles of northern city development in the eyes of practitioners, participants, eye-witnesses and politicians
• Understandings of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’, and multiple senses of belonging among incomers in the north and their descendants.
• Relocation biographies and attachment to place among different groups of northerners.
• Ways of dwelling and social cohesion in northern industrial communities, in families of their inhabitants, families of vakhtoviki shift-workers. Socialisation and education youth under shift-labour working conditions in their families.
• Organisation of labour in northern industry. The past, present and future of intra-regional or inter-regional shift-work (vakhtovyi metod)
• Programmes of labour administration, settlement and relocation in northern industrial cities.

The conference was well attended and we are happy that this rather new topic attracted so much interest, including academic participants from other cities (Nadym, Ekaterinburg) and practitioners (company-representatives, civil-society initiatives). It was an interesting first experience of cooperation for both sides: Neither had MOVE members ever organised a conference in Russia, nor had the University colleagues from Novyi Urengoi ever worked with foreigners to set up such an event.

Presentations were a mix of academic papers, case-studies, fieldwork-reports, project-overviews, and practitioners-reports.

MOVE presentations were made by Florian Stammler, Gertrude Eilmsteiner-Saxinger, Alla Bolotova, Tim Heleniak, Elena Nuykina and Lyudmila Lipatova.

In his introduction to the conference, Florian Stammler tried to introduce some of the theoretical concepts with which we work to the Russian participants, linking identity, ’place polygamy’, mobility, and concepts like ’way’, ’line’ and ’route’ to the analysis of people’s life-histories in northern industrial cities.

Tim set the scene by highlighting the exceptionality of West Siberian regions within the general migration-pattern in the Russian North after the Soviet Union.
Alla Bolotova and Florian Stammler tried a comparison of ’sense of place’ in the cities Kovdor (Murmansk Oblast) and Nadym (Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug), similar to what they had presented in Nuuk.

Elena Nuykina, research assistant in MOVE-INNOCOM, presented first insights from her study of relocation policy in the Russian North and its implementation in the Murmansk Oblast – a MOVE topic that she will write up into her thesis.

Gertrude Eilmsteiner-Saxinger gave impressive insights from her fieldwork with long-distance commuters between the central regions of Russia and the West-Siberian gas fields, highlighting that not only ’home’ and ’work’ have the characteristics of ’places’ for the commuters, but also the way between the two.

Lyudmila Lipatova, local researcher with MOVE-INNOCOM, presented the highlights from 2 years of life-history interviews with early-comers who immigrated from temperate regions to the North to built up industry and cities there. This was insightful as it illustrated well changes in the senses of place among such people, who first arrived to the North as being ’away from home’, before these northern places became ’home’ in their own right.

Stephan Dudeck from the Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology presented fascinating insights on the mobility of Khanty reindeer herders between their places of life in the forest and their place of work on the oil deposits. His analyses of processes of identity-switching, inclusion and exclusion were careful enough not to fall into the trap of simply juxapposing ’two worlds’ of forest vs industry-deposit. Instead he showed how these herder-oil workers see themselves now as belonging to ’two reference systems’. His presentation was received with great interest.

The presentations by Russian participants covered a wide range of topics. Psychological research on northern city-identities and industrial commutors was extensively covered, and we got the rare opportunity of being introduced to company-internal research. E.g. a study by Gazprom about how young workers adapt psychologically to the harsh northern living and working conditions when they start their career, and what are the reasons for failure if they stop working for the company (Borovikova). A strong group of psychologists from the Nadym-based institute for medical and psychological research in the Far North presented similar studies and also compared the adaptation of incomers in the North with that of indigenous residents. Vice-Maire Vladimir Nuykin of Novyi Urengoi presented his vision of civil society in a northern industrial city, complemented by a presentation of colleauge Mikhail Zolotov about city-development and how the administration joins forces with private companies to stimulate innovative thinking and initiative to develop the still mono-industrial gas city into a viable vibrant community. Several of such initiatives were presented on the second day of the conference, e.g. special education projects, early-learning initiatives, housing-improvement initiatives, and innovative design-solutions for industrial commuter-settlements that take into account the specific psychological factors of commuting and moving as well as dwelling in harsh northern climatic conditions (Zhukovskaya and Zelinskii, Ekaterinburg). We were also happy to listen to some presentations by students from Novyi Urengoi, presenting their first research work to a larger audience.

Original conference abstract:

The industrialisation of the Arctic is a rather recent development, and the whole history of most northern industrial cities can be captured within one human lifetime. The third and fourth generation of inhabitants is now reaching adolescence. Only in the 21st century pensioners became a part of the city population.
In Russia, these cities started as part of one of the world’s largest relocation projects. They owe their existence to base-camps for temporary shift-workers and labour migrants for extracting mineral resources of the Russian North. With advancing industrialisation, many of the transient inhabitants of these cities made their home there, and base-camps for shift workers became permanent cities with an active social sphere, developed infrastructure, and high standard of living.
This transformation brings new challenges for the social and economical viability / sustainability of these cities, which influences various aspects of their inhabitants’ lives. The city-authorities as well as cultural, educational and scientific institutions are confronted with new challenges that call for alternative solutions and open new opportunities. Institutions have started to develop programmes for studying the specifics of the organisation of labour and the adaptation of the young generation in northern industrial cities. However, little is known to date on the everyday life, problems, and (multiple) senses of belonging of this population, in particular those of fly-in / fly-out shift-labourers (vakhtoviki).
This conference invites specialists and practitioners to analyse developments connected to the viability of northern industrial cities from different perspectives. It provides a forum of exchange and dialogue between Russian and Western scholarly expertise as well as with practitioners. This will contribute to a more holistic understanding of social dynamics in young northern industrial cities which may prove useful for further development and strengthening community-viability. Participants and organisers of the conference are united by a lively interest and affection to the North.

PUBLICATION

Some papers of the conference will be published by Tyumen State University, mainly in Russian, with english abstracts.