Private Farmers vs. Landless Peasants in Rural Uzbekistan, with Franco Galdini

Galdini explores the transformations in the Uzbek economy since independence

This is the sixth episode of our new podcast. Find here the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth episodes.

In this episode, Paolo is speaking to Dr. Franco Galdini, a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Birmingham.

A political economy scholar, Franco is the author of “Rise of the Surplus Population? Land Decollectivization, Class Stratification, and Labor Precarization in Uzbekistan,” an article published by International Labor and Working Class History, a leading journal in labor studies, in a 2023 special issue [available in open access].

His fieldwork experience in Uzbekistan helped him track the transformation from full employment and low migration during Soviet times to the mass informalization of economic activity and rural outmigration after independence – a phenomenon he has written extensively about.

Franco is also a co-editor, together with Eugenia Pesci, of What’s in a Job? – Rethinking Labour, Gender, and Precarity in Central Asia – an edited volume that will be published in July by Springer.

In our conversation, we talk about the effects of decollectivization, which created a new class of landless peasants that are often employed as day laborers. As we’ll hear, the economic consequence was the class stratification of Uzbek society, especially in rural areas.

Listen to this episode on Amazon Music or Apple Podcasts.

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