Experiences in Russia of Kyrgyz and Ukrainian labor migrants: ethnic hierarchies, geopolitical remittances, and the relevance of migration theory

ABSTRACT

Many aspects of labor migration to Russia are consistent with different strands of general social science theories of migration. We illustrate how based on an account of migrant experiences drawn from focus groups we conducted with return migrants in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. Participants discussed their motives for migrating, experiences in Russia, and the impact on their views of Russia. In contrast to the overwhelmingly negative portrayals that predominate in prior accounts, they report a diverse set of experiences. For many, appreciation for income earned in Russia is the most salient aspect of their time there, outweighing more negative aspects. Their views of Russia are generally positive, in part due to their perceptions of where they stand in Russia’s ethnic hierarchies. These findings suggest that Russia’s reputation benefits from migration through what we call geopolitical remittances.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• Central Asia
• migration
• ethnicity
• geopolitics

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this article have been presented at Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan), the University at Albany–State University of New York, the 2018 PONARS policy conference at George Washington University, and the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (Austin, Texas). The authors are grateful to attendees at these presentations, as well as Zoya Gubernskaya, Douglas Gurak, Wayne Merry, and Madeleine Reeves for helpful comments.

Notes

1. The first three countries are the United States, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. As of 2013 Russia was second only to the United States. Even now, Russia may, in fact, rank higher than fourth, because the United Nations figures do not take into account unregistered immigrants and those without proper legal documents, of whom there are probably greater numbers in Russia than in Saudi Arabia and Germany.

2. As Chudinovskikh and Denisenko (2017) note, the Russian government loosened the definition of an immigrant in 2011, which explains the apparent sharp increase in the inflow number starting in that year.

3. Chudinovskikh and Denisenko (2017, 6) state: “The number of migrant workers shrank by at least one-third between 2014 and 2015, with countries such as Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova experiencing a more than 50 percent drop in their nationals in Russia.” They do not indicate, however, what evidence they base this claim on. It is possible, of course, that the exodus of prior immigrants from these countries led to steep declines in immigrant stocks, but they would have had to have been massive in magnitude, given the evident stability (and even, in the case of Ukraine, increase) in the rates of immigration during these years. But it seems doubtful that there are accurate measures of the size of various foreign-born populations in Russia in non-census years.

4. Because our main goal in this article is to present our empirical findings, here we limit ourselves to highly condensed summaries of these theories, which perforce fail to do justice to their complexity and the richness of the research traditions that they spawned. See Massey et al. (1998, chapter, 2) for more detailed expositions, as well as citations to the studies that originally formulated and develop. See also Castles, De Haas, and Miller (2013) for a somewhat different review of migration theories.

5. For more information on the larger study, see Gerber and Zavisca (2016).

6. Here and below, we report our translations of direct quotations from the Russian-language transcripts, identifying the speaker by first name and the specific group.

7. A toi is a huge feast that Kyrgyz traditionally provide for wedding guests, as Reeves (2012) describes at length.

8. We identify the two return migrant groups in Bishkek by their gender composition: Women vs. Men.

9. The story might have been made up. However, apparently 155 Tajik migrants died in Russia in 2012, “the victims of racist attacks, police brutality, dangerous working conditions and unsafe housing” (Keevil 2013). So an incident may have taken place, though it could have been an accident, embellished by Aleksandr into a deliberate murder.

10. “Bandera” is a reference to a Ukrainian nationalist insurgent against the Soviet Union, whom Russians often associate with fascism. Khokhol is a mildly derogatory term Russians use for Ukrainians.

11. Squatter settlements on the outskirts of Bishkek.

12. A recent quantitative study (Berlinschi 2019) is consistent with our argument that migration experiences can impact views of the host country: migration to Russia increases support among Moldovans for closer ties to Russia, while migration to Western countries increases their support for integration in the European Union.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported in part by the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Army Research Office via the Minerva Research Initiative program under grant number W911NF1310303. The views reported here do not represent those of the US Army or the US government.