Exposure to Immigration and Sense of Socio-Territorial Belonging: Evidence from Russia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the relationship between exposure to immigration in one’s region or locality and sense of socio-territorial belonging, understood as a “we-feeling” toward other inhabitants of the territory. Based on the Russian case, it addresses the question whether higher intensity of in-migration is related to weaker sense of belonging and how this relationship depends on immigrant origin. Using survey data combined with official statistical data, I found a negative relation when immigration from non-CIS states is considered, but not in case of in-migration from CIS states. I interpret these findings in terms of symbolic boundaries and the Soviet legacy.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank members of the Socio-Economic Research Unit at the Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, especially Saja Toruńczyk-Ruiz and Anna Janicka, for their valuable comments at the initial stage of this research project, and Wiktor Soral for his kind advice on statistical matters.

Data availability statement

The survey data that support the findings of this study are available from RLMS-HSE at www.hse.ru/rlms/spss. The official macro data were derived from the online databases and publications of the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (exact links provided in the references).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website at https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2022.2062385

Notes

1. This conceptual approach resembles Cho and Lim’s (2019) proposition that distinguishes two mechanisms through which residential mobility influences social trust in a neighborhood: unbundling neighboring ties (the process-based channel) and diluting sense of belonging (the characteristic-based channel).

2. Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of the Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) National Research University Higher School of Economics; ZAO Demoscope; Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Institute of Sociology Russian Academy of Sciences, available at: www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/rlms-hse, www.hse.ru/org/hse/rlms.

3. A comparison of Cohen’s d for the standardized measures (d_Cohen = −0.20 for the regional level and d_Cohen = −0.21 for the local level) supports this explanation.