Rustam Urinboyev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of Law. He is an interdisciplinary socio-legal scholar, studying (anti-)corruption, law and society, governance, migration and penal institutions in the context of Russia, Central Asia and Turkey. He is the author of Migration and Hybrid Political Regimes: Navigating the Legal Landscape in Russia (2020, UC Press) and Law, Society and Corruption: Lessons from the Central Asian Context (2024, Routledge).

Research Areas

• Corruption and Informality
• Socio-Legal Approaches to Migration
• Legal Pluralism and Legal Culture
• Religion and Ethnicity in Post-Soviet Prisons
• Islamic Public Administration
• Law and Society in Central Asia
• Central Asian Studies
• Sociology of Authoritarian Law
• Political Economy and Legal Reform in Eurasia

Current Research

1) Legal Pluralism, Informality and Everyday Life in Multicultural Prisons: A Case Study of Central Asian Muslim Prisoners in the Russian Penal System (to be published by the University of California Press, under contract, forthcoming 2025)

A book project on the daily experiences of Central Asian Muslim prisoners in the Russian penal system. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among migrants from Uzbekistan who have served prison sentences in the Russian Federation, the book analyses the everyday practices of Central Asian Muslim prisoners in Russian penal institutions. Emphasis is placed on Muslim prisoners’ religious practices, ethnic identities and their interaction with the traditional Russian prison sub-cultures.

2) ADLAW: Administrative Law Reform and Legal Integration in Hybrid Political Regimes (2021-2025)

The ADLAW project, entailing international collaboration between Lund University and the University of Birmingham, aims to produce a new framework for interpreting processes of constitutional legitimation in hybrid political regimes. It analyses two constitutional orders in the former Soviet sphere of influence, in Tatarstan and Uzbekistan. These constitutional orders are representative examples of an increasingly frequent type of hybrid constitutionalism. This type is marked by the fact that: (1) it provides relatively strong guarantees for access to law; for claims against administrative agencies; and for protecting individual rights against violation by public bodies; (2) it does not provide strong mechanisms for competitive democracy or rotation of governmental office. Consequently, responsibility for the construction of recognition for law and legitimacy for the polity as a whole is partly displaced into legal institutions.

The Co-PI of the project is Dr. Chris Thornhill, Professor of Law at the University of Manchester, UK.

The ADLAW project is funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).

3) MOCCA: Multilevel Orders of Corruption in Central Asia (2023-2027)

The main aim of the MOCCA project is to contribute to the global and national efforts of understanding and counteracting corruption by conducting interdisciplinary research on the multilevel orders of corruption in five countries in Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. More specifically, the project aims to: 1) collect original empirical data on the interplay between global anti-corruption norms, nation-state laws, and local meso- and micro-level (everyday) legal cultures in Central Asia and their implications for understanding corruption and its societal effects; 2) engage with and situate our research in relevant theoretical debates and thereby advance scholarly debates on (anti-) corruption by developing new conceptual and methodological approaches to study and understand it; 3) provide strategic intelligence for EU-based political and economic actors interested or already working in the region; and 4) inform international organisations and decision-makers in the EU and Central Asia on ways to combat corruption and improve the business and investment climate, the rule of law and governance in the region.

The MOCCA project is funded by the European Commission Horizon Europe MSCA – SE Programme. Project budget: € 1.6 million).

The ADLAW project is funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet)

4) MARS: Non-Western Migration Regimes in a Global Perspective (2024-2028)

The main aim of the MARS project is to enhance our knowledge and scientific understanding of global, regional and national governance of migration and mobilities. This aim will be accomplished by conducting interdisciplinary research on non-Western migration regimes. More specifically, MARS is constructed around three interlinked goals which are to: 1) produce original empirical material data and comparative perspective on migration governance and migrants’ experiences in non-Western migration locales; 2) engage with and situate our research in relevant theoretical debates in (comparative) migration studies and thereby contribute to theory-building efforts in migration studies by developing new conceptual and methodological insights on migrants’ experiences and migration governance practices in non-Western migration locales; and 3) provide strategic intelligence and policy insights for international organisations, development agencies and decision makers and practitioners inside and outside the EU on possible ways to better understand and improve migration governance practices, and thereby support the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration and Global Compact on Refugees.

The MARS project is funded by the European Commission Horizon Europe MSCA – SE Programme funds the MARS project. Project budget: € 1.6 million).