When I left Ainura’s container-shop at the Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, I found the market eerily quiet. I had not noticed the passing of time, while she generously shared her life story with me.

Walking towards the mini-bus stop at the square in front of the bazaar, the echo of her words mixed with the end-of-day soundscape at Dordoi: the heavy slam of container-shops’ metal doors and the resonant clang of heavy padlocks clicking into place.

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A moment later, only the sound of stray plastic wrappings stirred up by the last vendors and customers heading home, hinted at the day’s bustling activity.

Soon, the cleaners would sweep them down the pathways between the containers and children would try to snatch the recyclables. Answering my question about why she thinks Dordoi is a good place to work, Ainura explained:

Here in Kyrgyzstan, we can’t rely on the state. Dordoi feeds the country. It feeds our families; and it allowed me to start a new life after I had left my husband.

Here in Kyrgyzstan, we can’t rely on the state. Dordoi feeds the country. It feeds our families; and it allowed me to start a new life after I had left my husband.

Ainura is one of thousands of people – many of them women – who found a new livelihood at Dordoi after life took an unexpected turn. Estimates of people working there range from 30,000 to 150,000, depending on whether auxiliary jobs, such as food hawkers, drivers, packers and carriers are included.

In 2025, these diverse economic activities generated roughly US$7.9 million in tax revenue: a substantial contribution to the city’s public finances.

Spanning more than 100 hectares and built from up to 60,000 double and triple-stacked shipping containers, Dordoi stands as one of Kyrgyzstan’s most important economic engines since the country gained independence in 1991.

More than a trading centre, Dordoi is a city within a city. Beyond shops and storage spaces, it also has currency exchanges, medical centres, a fire station, hotels, a gym, beauty salons and a mosque.

Its liveliness is equally reflected in the languages spoken along its aisles. While Russian and Kyrgyz remain the languages of commerce, Dungan, Uyghur, Uzbek, Tajik, and Chinese can also be heard, revealing the extensive trading networks that converge here from across Central Asia and beyond. Traders sell almost anything that can be bought, packed and shipped – from sewing needles and refrigerators to cars and spare parts.

Yet clothing remains Dordoi’s lifeblood. Textiles, knitwear and ready-made garments dominate the trade, arriving chiefly from China and Turkey alongside an increasing volume of locally produced apparel.

At the heart of the market, the central passageway serves as both a shopping boulevard and the bazaar’s main artery. Cart pushers weave through the crowded aisles, shouting “Jol, jol, jol, jooool, daroga!” (“Make way!” both in Kyrgyz and Russian) as they manoeuvre heavily laden carts through the throngs of daily visitors.

Threading their way through the crowds, they deliver goods to packing stations near the long-distance bus terminal, where workers compress merchandise into tightly packed bales and sacks. Every centimetre matters in the effort to minimise shipping costs.

By midday, the pace begins to slow. The air fills with the scent of roasting meat and fresh dough as food stalls offer a culinary map of Central Asia, from Dungan laghman and Uzbek plov to Uyghur samsa.

Tea vendors, coffee sellers and fruit merchants weave through the crowds, while – to my own delight – a growing number of barista coffee shops have become an increasingly visible part of the market landscape.

I began studying market biographies in 2018, at first with a focus on the emotions involved in losing a career after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also the trauma that is often associated with the post-Soviet period. In 2019, I extended my research to include the Dordoi Bazaar in Kyrgyzstan.

Ever since, I have returned to Dordoi for extended fieldwork in 2021-22, 2024 and 2026. For my dissertation I conducted a comparative study of Dordoi and the remarkably similar container-built 7th Km Market in Odesa, Ukraine.

I am now turning that research into a book – Lived Geopolitics – which traces the history of both markets from their rise after the collapse of the Soviet Union to the consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

From a bird’s eye view, both the Dordoi Bazaar and the 7th Kilometer in Odesa appear as vast expanses of corrugated metal.

At ground level however every container opens onto its own distinct social world. That tension between scale and intimacy is what keeps drawing me back. These markets offer a unique vantage point from which to explore how personal histories, aspirations and moral commitments intersect with abstract forces of markets, logistics and global economic and political power.

My research examines how people make lives, livelihoods and futures within these intersecting forces and the ways traders create pockets of stability despite recurring crises and upheaval.

Bishkek’s Dordoi Bazaar is neither an anomaly nor a continuation of the ancient bazaars often associated with Arab cities. Its origins lie in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when countless similar markets appeared across the former socialist world. As factories closed and rapid market reforms pushed millions into economic uncertainty, large numbers of newly unemployed workers were left to seek livelihoods in the booming retail........

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