The nature of anti-immigrant sentiment in post-socialist Russia

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to investigate whether the competition and cultural theoretical models that have received solid empirical support in the context of Western European societies can explain anti-foreigner sentiment in post-socialist Russia as a society searching for new national identity borders. Data obtained from the third round of the European Social Survey (2006) indicate a high level of anti-foreigner sentiment in contemporary Russia – more than 60% of Russians claimed that immigrants undermine the cultural life of the country, and almost 60% claimed that immigration is bad for the economy of the country. Our multivariate analysis showed that the two sets of individual-level predictors of anti-foreigner sentiment – the socioeconomic position of individuals (as suggested by the competition model) and conservative views and ideologies (as suggested by the cultural model) – are not meaningful in predicting anti-foreigner sentiment in post-socialist Russia. The results are discussed from a comparative sociology perspective and in the context of the Russian society.

Keywords::

• anti-immigrant sentiment
• Russia
• xenophobia

Notes

^1. Russia is multi-ethnic society. According to the Russian Census, about 80% of the total population are ethnic Russians, while the other 20% comprises more than 150 ethnic groups. Two distinct words in the Russian language refer to Russians – Russkiye refers to Russians as an ethnic group, whereas Rossiyane refers to Russians as citizens of Russia. The slogan “Russia for Russians” (Rossiya dlya Russkikh) explicitly refers to Russians as an ethnic group.

^2. This number also includes ethnic Russians who arrived in Russia from the former Soviet republics.

^3. The cases were also selected in such a way that there are valid values for at least one of the two dependent variables.

^4. To test the robustness of the results referred to the cultural model, we estimated additional regressions predicting anti-foreigner sentiment as a function of variables pertaining to conservative views and ideologies (namely, level of religiosity, religious denomination, and party voted for in the last election) and control demographic variables (namely, age, gender, and rural versus urban residence). There were no meaningful changes in the effects of all variables capturing conservative views and ideologies (in comparison to models 2a and 2b).

^5. To establish a benchmark for evaluating the explanatory power of the general model (in other words, competition and cultural models combined) in Russia, we estimated models 2a and 2b separately for three Western European countries: Germany, the UK, and Sweden (using party voted for in the last elections as a measure of political orientation and controlling for religious denomination). These three countries were chosen because each represents a relatively different welfare regime, policy of incorporating immigrants, and composition of migrant population. The results show that the percentages of the explained variance in perceptions of foreigners’ impact on cultural and economic life in the three Western European countries were meaningfully higher than that in Russia. In the models predicting perception of foreigners’ impact on the economy in Germany, the UK, and Sweden, R² ranges from 0.111 to 0.144, while in the models predicting perception of foreigners’ impact on the culture, R² ranged from 0.127 to 0.177.

^6. We replicate the competitive model and not the general one, because changes in the party list and the elimination of the option to vote “against all” in elections between 2006 and 2012 do not allow full replication of this model.