MOSCOW —
Long before she became just one of the financially destitute legions of street sweepers that dot Moscow's bitterly cold winter landscape, Shaknoza Ishankulova had simply wanted to do the right thing.
It was 2008, and the recent Uzbekistan National University graduate was ecstatic to secure a teaching post at a Tashkent high school, finally making good use of her diploma in secondary education.
Twenty-two years old and eager to guide younger Uzbeks toward a better life, she was shaken when Uzbekistan's notoriously vast culture of entrenched corruption revealed itself in the form of a personal mentor and supervisor — a deputy principal at the school who notified her that, if she wished to keep her job, a full third of her weekly salary would have to be kicked back to him.
It was his cut, he explained, for having hired her in the first place.
Years passed before Shaknoza gathered the courage to broach the issue with the school's principal, a suspiciously wealthy public servant who promptly dismissed the complaint as naively frivolous.
Taking her cue from the she had seen in Uzbekistan, marketed in the form of public service announcements since 2005, Shaknoza escalated her complaint to Russia's Ministry of Education, and was summarily placed on paid leave pending further investigation.
Two years and a cancer battle later, Shaknoza's case had wound its way through ministry proceedings, leaving her fate in the hands of her employer, who summarily fired her, demanded reimbursement for the two years of salaried leave, and permanently blacklisted her from any professional employment.
Like many unemployed Uzbek nationals, Shaknoza was lured by Moscow's abundance of service sector jobs that paid more than similar work in Tashkent. After spending nearly a year as a sweeper, she lucked out by landing a relatively well-paid waitressing job, only to lose the position when a Russian supervisor publicly castigated her for making conversation with foreign diners, an experience she attributed to the ethnic workplace discrimination many Uzbeks face in Russia.
Tall and slender with distinctly Asian facial features and straight shoulder-length hair, Shoksana, appearing older than her 34 years, is now a cashier and produce vendor at one of Moscow's many 24-hour convenience stores.
Speaking with VOA on a frigid afternoon in Moscow, her bare hands balled in fists as she stood stock still in seemingly arctic gales, the former high school teacher said she has done reasonably well for herself when compared to fellow migrants sleeping 10 to a room on the city's outskirts.
Making $37 per 24-hour shift, each of which is followed by 24 hours off, she said the salary is enough to share a two-room apartment with three other laborers: two Uzbek men and a woman, with whom she shares the bedroom.
After feeding and clothing herself, she says, she sends a small amount home to her mother.
"But it's not enough to save anything," she said, explaining that she lacks the resources to get ahead in Moscow and that, as a blacklisted whistleblower, any path back to Tashkent is surely a dead end.
By 2017, Russia was home to nearly 12 million migrants — the world's third largest foreign-born population.
Much like in western European nations and the United States, the large numbers of immigrants have triggered unease, and a majority of Russians have become increasingly intolerant of the newcomers.
A 2018 survey by the Washington-based Pew Charitable Trust showed that nearly 70 percent of Russian nationals felt the country should allow fewer or no migrants in the future.
While many of the migrants from China, eastern Europe and the West possess a broad range of professional skill sets, the vast majority of Russia's lowest-paid laborers hail from impoverished central Asian countries, of which Uzbeks are the largest group.
This makes them the most visible targets of anti-immigrant vitriol.
Some high-level Russian officials have relayed largely context-free statistics that they portray as an immigrant-fueled crime wave for which Uzbeks in particular are to blame.
"If you create a ranking of criminality, you will find citizens of Uzbekistan at the top," Moscow chief prosecutor Sergei Kudeneyev told newspaper in 2014. "They have committed 2,522 crimes; next is Tajikistan, with 1,745 crimes; and in third place there is Kyrgyzstan, whose citizens committed 1,269 crimes."