Financial and emotional support in close personal ties among Central Asian migrant women in Russia

This study advances research on the role of personal networks as sources of financial and emotional support in immigrants' close personal ties beyond the immediate family. Because resource scarcity experienced by members of immigrant communities is likely to disrupt normatively expected reciprocal support, we explored multi-level predictors of exchange processes with personal network members that involve (1) only receiving support, (2) only providing support, and (3) reciprocal support exchanges. We focus on an understudied case of Central Asian migrant women in the Russian Federation using a sample of 607 women from three ethnic groups-Kyrgyz, Tajik, Uzbek-who were surveyed in two large Russian cities-Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. The survey collected information on respondents' demographic, socioeconomic, and migration-related characteristics, as well as characteristics of up to five individuals with whom they had a close relationship. Multi-level multinomial regression analyses were used to account for the nested nature of the data. Our results revealed that closer social relationships (siblings and friends) and greater levels of resources (income and regularized legal status) at both ego and alter levels were positively related to providing, receiving, and reciprocally exchanging financial and emotional support. Egos were more likely to provide financial assistance to transnational alters, whereas they were more likely to engage in mutual exchanges of emotional support with their network members from other countries. Personal network size and density showed no relationship with support exchanges. These findings provide a nuanced picture of close personal ties as conduits for financial and emotional support in migrant communities in a major, yet understudied, migrant-receiving context.