Mobile Lives in the Petroleum Industry

Long-distance commute work (LDC) and so called fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) operations are essential methods for the provision of labour force for the extractive industries in the remote Arctic and Subarctic. So far little research is available on this particular section of the mobile workforce. In public discourses as well as partly in academia, LDC workers are constructed as being problematic in their interactions with resource communities as well as in the context of their family life. Consequently, the mobile lifestyle is connoted with leading to abnormal behaviour. However, my research among mobile and multi-locally living workers in the Subarctic north of Western Siberia (the North) has shown that this group consists of a variety of people in terms of social characteristics such as gender, age and professions as well as in terms of values and ideas. The conception of normality and normalization of this particular life-style which is defined by the socially constructed spheres of Home Journey on Duty lies at the heart of this book; as well as ways of negotiating and integrating the multiple meaningful spheres of life of long-distance commuters. I employed ethnographic methodology in a mobile and multi-site field that connects the North with the southern and central regions of Russia. My travels back and forth, over 25.000 kilometers between Moscow and Novy Urengoy, provided deep insights into ideas and lives of mobile workers. Furthermore, I spent time in sending as well as in receiving regions and in camps where the employees live for a couple of weeks during their shift. The theoretical framework comprises aspects of social space, place making, social differences and conceptions of normality. Departing from the micro-level, this study aims to deliver insights on a broader societal level of contemporary Russia. This research has shown that LDC workers do not live in a social vacuum while on-site and therefore, should be seen not solely as human resources but as partners and stakeholders when it comes to the facilitation of LDC operations in general or to negotiations with communities near the extraction sites. Seeing LDC workers as mature stakeholders with specific needs and clear ideas about their way of life can foster the improvement of LDC as method for labour force provision for remote resource extraction sites. This book should contribute to LDC studies in the extractive industries, to circumpolar studies and to Russian studies from an anthropological angle.