Russia as a New Immigration Country: Policy Response and Public Debate

Abstract

Both the Russian public and its elites were taken by surprise by the fact that Russia has become an immigration country. It has resulted in widespread anti-immigrant sentiments and inconsistency in government actions. Russian immigration politics, as well as immigration politics in liberal democracies of the West, are characterised by a wavering between protectionist and liberal laissez faire approaches. This leads to a mismatch between public rhetoric and legal decisions. However, two features seem to make the Russian situation specific: open borders with most of the countries of the former Soviet Union and omnipresent corruption. Corruption results in a discrepancy between formal (legal) decisions and informal (illegal) practices.

Notes

¹ Whereas policy is about official decision making, politics is about the struggle for power (be it economic, political or cultural power).

² On the impact of ethnic nationalism on the exodus of Russians from the Soviet periphery see Beissinger (1992), Brubaker (1992) and Korobkov (2003).

³ Regarding immigrants from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in the early 1990s their period of employment in Russia ranged from between two to three weeks and one to two months. Then, the period increased to three to six months; see Olimova and Bosk (2003) and Olimova (2009).

⁴ On the Afghani natives living in Russia, see Ivanova (2009a).

⁵ According to official data, there were 148,556 ethnic Koreans with Russian passports in the Russian Federation at the end of 2002. See ‘Vserossiyskaya perepis’ naseleniya 2002. Tom 4. Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniya', available at: http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_04_01.xls, accessed 3 May 2014.

⁶ On gender aspects of labour migration into Russia see Tyuryukanova (2005), Ashwin (2006) and Salmenniemi et al. (2011).

⁷ According to Zaionchkovskaya et al. (2009), every third family in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan has a family member working in Russia.

⁸ This excludes the three Baltic States, which are EU members now.

⁹ ‘Federal'nyi zakon o grazhdanstve RF’, available at: http://www.rg.ru/2002/06/05/zakon-gragdan.html, accessed 27 April 2014.

¹⁰ ‘Federal'nyi zakon o provovom polozhenii inostrannykh grazhdan v Rossiskoi federatsii’, available at: http://www.rg.ru/oficial/doc/federal_zak/115-fz.shtm, accessed 27 April 2014.

¹¹ Permissive registration was a variant of the Soviet ‘propiska’ system. Any individual moving from one residence to another was required to register themselves within three days of their arrival (this rule applied to Russian citizens as well). However, registration by place of residence in actuality required obtaining a residence permit in that location (and at that address). Because this procedure was accompanied by a large number of documents, it was easy to refuse issuing this permit. In accordance with the new system, in effect since 2007, it was sufficient for newcomers to notify authorities of their actual place of residence in Russia by letter sent to the Federal Migration Service. The only requirement for this document is a confirmation from a Russian citizen who resides at the mentioned address that he or she has no objection to the arrival of the new tenant. The temporary residence permit is originally granted for 90 days, but can be subsequently extended for up to a year.

¹² While liberal minded authors blame the authorities for excessive regulation (Zaionchkovskaya 2002; Gradirovskii 2007), their conservative counterparts blame the same authorities for poorly organised regulation (Modenov & Nosov 2002).

¹³ The meaning of the term ‘sootechestvenniki’ is not clearly defined. It might mean ethnic Russians living outside the Russian Federation, all Russian speakers or all former citizens of the USSR (see Shevel 2011).

¹⁴ They were called ‘Amendments to the Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens’ (‘Izmemeniya k zakonu o pravovom polozhenii inostrannykh grazhdan’), available at: http://base.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?req = doc;base = LAW;n = 76813;fld = 134;dst = 100040;rnd = 0.8763888936955482, accessed 27 April 2014.

¹⁵ This law was enforced in April 2007.The only consequences of this decision were that prices increased and markets ended up half-empty.

¹⁶ For further discussion, see Korobkov (2007).

¹⁷ ‘Kak integrirovat' migrantov v obshchestvo?’, interview with Yuliya Florinskaya and Gavkhar Dzhuraeva on the programme ‘Poekhalya’ on the radio station Ekho Moskvy, 27 April 2011, available at: http://www.echo.msk.ru/programs/poehali/769544-echo/, accessed 27 April 2014.

¹⁸ Previous rules regulating the labour market resulted in between 5% and 10% of labour migrants working legally. The new system allows these numbers to increase to between 30% and 35%. That is to say between 60% and 65% of labour migrants still work illegally; see Tyuryukanova (2009).

¹⁹ Vadim Volkov, a St Petersburg sociologist who has long studied the phenomenon of organised crime in Russia, suggested the term ‘violent entrepreneurs’ in place of ‘criminals’ or ‘bandits’. This term not only allows us to describe a liaison between corrupt officials and the criminal world, but also highlights a special type of social interaction when the border between legality and illegality is blurred (Volkov 2002).

²⁰ This point of view has been consistently defended in numerous publications by Zhanna Zaionchkovskaya and her colleagues (Zaionchkovskaya & Vitkovskaya 2009; Zaionchkovskaya et al.2009). See also Andrienko and Guriev (2005), Mukomel and Pain (2006), Korobkov and Mukomel (2008) and Molodikova and Dyuvel (2009). An illustrative example of high quality publications produced by liberals (even though it was not written by an expert) is an article by the famous journalist Andrei Kolesnikov in Novaya gazeta (Kolesnikov 2011).

²¹ For an overview of conservative attitudes to immigration issues among Russian academics see Robarts (2008).

²² Further details on the Forum pereselencheskikh orgaziztsii can be found on the organisation's website at: http://www.migrant.ru.

²³ A collection of Grafova's essays published between 2001 and 2005 can be found in Grafova (2006).

²⁴ ‘Migration and Law’ is a programme within the framework of the Human Rights Protection Centre ‘Memorial’.

²⁵ ‘Mezhnatsionalnye braki s uchastiem russkikh zhenshchin—eto forma genotsida russkogo naroda’, Pravaya. Ru, 31 August 2007, available at: http://pravaya.ru/news/13389, accessed 3 May 2014.

²⁶ ‘Mezhnatsional'nye braki vredny i opasny’, Russkii Vzglyad, 16 January 2009, available at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q = cache:ASSu8XwXFfwJ:russview.ru/main/99-multibrak.html+&cd = 2&hl = ru&ct = clnk&gl = ru&client = opera, accessed 1 May 2014.

²⁷ Lidia Grafova has become editor-in-chief of the journal ‘Migratsiya: XXI vek’ (Migration: 21st Century), founded by Vyacheslav Postavnin.

²⁸ Nataliya Narochnitskaya is former Deputy of the Duma (in the faction ‘Rodina’), and was one of the co-chairs of the First and Second Russian World People's Council (Russkii Vsemirnyi Narodnyi Sobor). She currently heads the Paris branch of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation (Institut demokratii i sotrudnichestva) and also the Commission to Combat the Falsification of History to the Detriment of Russia (Komissiya po protivodeistviyu fal'sifikatsii istorii v ushcherb interesam Rossii).

²⁹ Mikhail Delyagin is a former member of the government (under Mikhail Kasyanov, 2000–2004) and is now the Director of the Institute of Globalization Issues (Institut problem globalizatsii). He takes part in television talk-shows in an effort to draw attention to ‘ethnic criminality’, as well as publishing numerous articles and books; see Delyagin (2007, 2009).

³⁰ The following think tanks can be considered liberal (referencing the most prominent only): the Institute for Economic Forecasting (Institut ekonomicheskogo prognozirovaniya), the Demography Institute (Institut demografii) at the Higher School of Economics (Director Anatoly Vishnevskii), the Institute of Modern Development (Institut sovremennogo razvitiya—INSOR, Head Igor Yurgens), the Gaidar Institute of Economic Policy ((Institut ekonomicheskoi politiki imeni Egora Gaidara) formerly the Institute for the Economy in Transition (Institut ekonomiki perekhodnogo perioda), whose founding father was the late Egor Gaidar), and the New Economic School (Director Sergei Guriev). Also worth noting is the New Eurasia Foundation, created in 2004 with the assistance of the European investment community (Baring Vostok Capital Partners). Among the members of the Board of Trustees are Andrei Melville (Dean of the Department of Political Science at the Higher School of Economics) and Liliya Shevtsova (Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center). Among the conservative think tanks are: the National Strategy Institute (Institut Natsional'noi Strategii, President Mikhail Remizov, Rector Stanislav Belkovsky), the Institute of CIS Countries (Institut Stran SNG, Director Konstantin Zatulin) and the Historical Perspectives Foundation (Fond Istoricheskaya perspektiva, Head Nataliya Narochnitskaya).

³¹ There are some openly xenophobic television programmes, for example, the weekly programme Russkii Vzglyad (The Russian View) on Moscow Channel 3.

³²Russkaya Liniya, available at: http://rusk.ru/.

³³Pravye Novosti, available at: http://pn14.info/.

³⁴ Rogozin was one of the founders of the ethnonationalist organisation Congress of Russian Communities (Kongress russkikh obshchin—KRO) in the 1990s and the leader of ethnonationalist party Rodina (Homeland) between 2003 and 2006. During the election campaign of 2007, he was one of the authors of the controversial anti-immigration video ‘Let's Clear Moscow of its Trash!’. His activity as a protagonist of Russian ethnic nationalism was interrupted by his appointment as the Russian representative to NATO in 2008. Since December 2011 Rogozin has been a cabinet minister.

³⁵ Shortly after his appointment in Brussels, Rogozin said in an interview: ‘The demographic issue cannot be solved by migration. Immigration will ruin us’. ‘Migratsionnyi khaos’, interview with D. Rogozin, available at: http://kro-rodina.ru/all-news/502-migr-haos, accessed 1 May 2014.

³⁶ Thus the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (Dvizhenie protiv nelegal'noi immigratsii—DPNI) was banned in April 2011.

³⁷ This statement was made on 11 April 2012 at a meeting of the economic committee of the Moscow Mayor's Office; see ‘Moskva otkazyvaetsya ot privlecheniya soten tysyach migrantov’, available at: http://m.rambler.ru/news/economics/13532403/, accessed 1 May 2014.

³⁸ See ‘Mer Moskvy Sergei Sobyanin: O razvitii obshchestvennogo transporta, gastarbaiterakh i otstavkakh v stolichnom pravitel'stve’, Komsomolskaya Pravda, 2 March 2012, available at: http://kp.ru/daily/25844/2815504, accessed 1 May 2014.

I would like to express my appreciation to the Fulbright Foundation and the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for providing me with an opportunity to conduct research in a splendid environment. I would also like to thank the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University where this article started. Special thanks to Hilary Hemmings for editing my clumsy English.