‘We are not sheep, I believe it is my choice’: Vaccine hesitancy and institutional agency among middle-class mothers in Russia

Abstract

Scholars frequently associate vaccine hesitancy with the effects of neoliberalism, including healthism culture, intensive mothering ideology, and a decrease in institutional trust. This article contributes to the discussion by exploring this link outside of established democracies, in a society that diverges from liberal principles on both political and institutional levels. Using qualitative interviews with middle-class Russian mothers, I trace how their doubts about vaccination reflect the specificities of neoliberal parenting in the contradictory post-socialist context. Research findings show that the mix of statist and neoliberal trends in Russian welfare translates into parents’ different perspectives on (state) institutions. This heterogeneity, in turn, leads to variation in their vaccine hesitancy, with parents oscillating between civic and consumerist critiques. Disunity of views and political restrictions on grassroots activism hinder mothers’ open opposition to vaccination. However, my interviewees still demonstrate institutional agency. They exercise it by developing informal workarounds and navigating paid healthcare options. As mothers repeatedly enact those diverse solutions, they routinize vaccine-hesitant parenting scripts and stimulate the development of organizational niches for unvaccinated children at the margins of the established welfare system.