Informal Currency Exchange among Chinese Students in a Siberian City in Times of Sanctions

Authors

• Yiyang Wang Tomsk State University https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2623-5038
• Sebastjan Jemec https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3845-7084

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.161019

Keywords:

cross-border finance, informal support networks, black market, currency exchange, WeChat, international students, sanctions, Russia

Abstract

Faced with limitations to transnational transactions, Chinese students in Russia engage in informal currency exchanges. Through fieldwork in a Siberian city, we discovered how, against the backdrop of sanctions, fluctuating official exchange rates, and cumbersome bank procedures, Chinese students build informal networks on WeChat, a Chinese multifunctional mobile application that combines messaging, social media, and payments. Such a group-based money exchange reflects students’ economic activities in a foreign country and their reliance on informal financial channels. In addition, this type of exchange highlights the contradictions between the financial system of the sanctions-hit host country and the needs of internationally mobile subjects—that is, students. In this essay, we elucidate new understandings of social and financial strategies from grassroots-level operations that function like a black market exchange system. The outcome provides a fresh ethnographic case for rethinking the informal financial economy in a localised and transnational context.