Internal Migration, Identity and Livelihood Strategies in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

This article applies the concept of ‘livelihood strategies’ to analyse the motivations of migrants within European Russia in the years 1999–2005. While not ignoring the economic rationale for migration—the obvious draw of Moscow, where wages are several times higher than those in the provinces—it also examines the aspirations and norms which help to dictate the choice of migration in preference to other strategies. It argues that the current boom in popularity of higher education in Russia reflects the emergence of a new social norm, prompting the adoption of more entrepreneurial livelihood strategies by millions of parents. For small-town and rural households, this often implies the temporary labour migration of fathers, with mothers expected to manage the household smallholding as well as hold down a low-paid local job. Successful migration of both graduates and older adults is still highly dependent on personal connections. These are facilitated by dense urban–rural networks, perpetuated by the custom of city-dwellers spending their summer holidays with rural relatives, in a society where foreign holidays are still the luxury of a minority.

Keywords:

• Russian Migration
• Internal Migration
• Identity
• Labour Migration
• Networks
• Regional Disparities

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the British Academy for funding the main part of the fieldwork on which this article is based.

Notes

1. They also help to explain how migrants fare once they arrive in their new location although, because of space constraints, this latter topic will not be discussed in the present article.

2. The data are for the whole Khanty-Mansiisk sub-region, not just Surgut.

3. A study of small-town households found that only 12.5 per cent of people who had started engaging in labour migration in the post-communist period had given up this status, most commonly because they had found employment in their home town. These returnees were rarely heads of households (Flyurinskaya and Roshchina 2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne White

Anne White is Senior Lecturer in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Bath