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Abstract
This article addresses temporary labour migration – known in Russian as otkhodnichestvo (going away on foot) – from the Russian republic of Dagestan. The discussion is situated within reviews of current work on migration in the former Soviet Union, push-pull factors determining migration behaviour in the North Caucasus, and the historical importance of otkhodnichestvo in imperial Russia and the USSR. The paper then turns to the results of a census conducted in summer 2006, which found that most migrants come from Dagestan's mountainous southwest, frequently obtain work at locations characterized by economic growth and high pay, and rely on ethnic or communal networks as a basis for choosing employment sector and destination when searching for work.
Notes
The preliminary results from the 2010 census report total population for the eight federal districts and their constituent units (Perepis Citation2010). The regions of the North Caucasus are now included in the North Caucasus Federal District (NCFD), which hived off six republics (Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia) and Stavropol krai from the Southern Federal District (SFD).
The republic's rural population increased by 10.5% over the same interval, versus a 22% rise in the urban population.
Prior to emancipation, peasants could leave their feudal estates or villages, but required the permission of their lords or administrators (Johnson Citation1979). They were also required to pay a significant amount of their earnings for the permission to leave the estate or village temporarily.
In the wake of the revolutions of 1917 and the civil war, many otkhodniki left Moscow and returned to their native villages. Hoffmann (Citation1994, p. 638) suggested that this mass return had social as well as economic impacts on village life: ‘the sudden return of eight million otkhodniki, mostly young male peasants accustomed to the independence of city life, therefore undermined the traditional village order and raised the level of social tensions.’
The data used in this article are available in Eldarov and Efendiev (Citation2008). We acknowledge that such large-scale data collection faces a variety of challenges in Dagestan, beyond the ongoing insurgency and the resultant suspicion of government present in many rural parts of the republic.
These are in addition to the usual caveats regarding migration data in Russia and the former Soviet states, as discussed by Heleniak Citation(2008) among others.
This diversity has been previously discussed quite widely. Most commonly, it is reported that there are 34 distinct ethno-linguistic groups in the republic (though this number would be larger if it included local dialects), of which 13 are considered to be titular nationalities (Ware and Kisriev Citation2010). This latter category was reinforced in the structure outlined in Dagestan's 1994 constitution.
All three of these groups are traditionally Muslim. Additionally, though we do not claim a correlation between migration destination and national politicization, it is notable that the Nogai, Kumyk and Lezgin were three of the key groups that pushed for secession of their particular territories from the Russian republic between 1989 and 1991 (Holland and O'Loughlin Citation2010).
