Shukhrat Berdyev’s story (in Diary of a Gastarbeiter ) is a familiar one of a middle aged Uzbek school teacher who in the post-Soviet era is faced with the prospect of traveling to Moscow to work as a loader at the Tyoply Stan market. His experiences in the market as a loader, which include his reception and help from fellow country-men in the market, his existence on the edge of legality and the nightly encounters with the police are in sharp contrast to his first trip to Moscow in the summer of the Olympic Games when as a student but also a Soviet citizen he had enjoyed the city in all its glory. The Central Asian gastarbeiter experience follows a familiar trajectory. A stint in Moscow, followed by experiences in the Russian countryside as a labourer (in Shukhrat’s case as a carpenter) intercepted with news about violence and the looming presence of the Russian mafia boss. It is a story of repeated return, practically every year, if not to Moscow then to some other location (in Shukhrat’s case Siberia) despite the dangers of aggression and fraud in a system that offers no legal protection. But it is also a story full of unexpected developments as Shukhrat, like many others, enters into ‘civil marriage’ with a local woman with the knowledge and support of his Uzbek wife Gulsara. There is always the lurking threat of being replaced with local unskilled labour despite the conviction that Russians would not be interested in the menial labour contributed by the Uzbeks and the Tajiks. Shukhrat’s diary is also incomplete indicating at one level his continuing visits to Russia and on the other the ongoing global movement of illegal labour as an enduring reality.