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Marshrutka minibuses are in charge of providing daily transport services for millions of passengers in the post-Soviet space. In doing so, they shape the perception of public sphere and contribute to the production of community. In this sense, the interior design of marshrutka minibuses contribute to a number of publicly negotiated discourse formations on collective identity patterns, such as nationhood, memory culture, as well as folkloristic values. Drawing on empirical evidence from Kyrgyzstan and Russia, we try to deconstruct multiple layers of marshrutka signposts. In their heterogeneity and contrariness, the marshrutka semiotics unveil the minibuses as a place of encounter and conflict, where fluid social institutions are consistently calling for negotiation. Triggered by the question how cultural trajectories of identity are performed, we will choose a number of marshrutka messages like official licenses, advertisements or patriotic proverbs and analyse them in the local setting of application. The expected insight of this paper is twofold: firstly, we contextualise societal struggles, which are reproduced in everyday marshrutka encounter and secondly, we contribute to a better understanding of the mobility practice as such, pointing to general deficits in the broader marshrutka enterprise, read out from visualised statements in the social space of marshrutka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that labor migrants from different countries all over the Eurasian Union are the backbone of crucial economy sectors in the Russian Federation as, inter alia, construction, agriculture or trade. This article deals with another less mentioned but similarly significant labor market, which substantially changed its assemblage during the last couple of years, namely commercial urban transport services. In the last two decades, the marshrutka sector underwent major reforms and formalization processes that, on the one hand, brought operators back into the tax net and ensured a certain extension of control to the local transportation departments but, on the other hand, worsened the labor conditions of the transportation workers. Drawing from the empirical evidence of my fieldwork in southern Russia, I describe currently problematized mobility assemblages and embed the actor's articulations in broader conflicts within the marshrutka business and transportation regulation policy. I further analyze how labor migrants have been forced to accept unfavorable working conditions in the enterprises as a direct result of politically triggered reforms in the marshrutka business. The paper provides insights into the social arena of the marshrutka , which serves as a societal encounter of urban conflicts and transformation mirroring (un-)intended effects of the local transportation reformation attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]