Migrant integration models in modern Russia

Abstract

The work here is of both a theoretical and an applied character. The authors pay particular attention to understanding what the integration of migrants means and how it corresponds to the terms assimilation and adaptation. They also offer a classification of complete and partial integration. For Russia, the paper retraces how the disregard of migrant integration in the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s was gradually replaced – after a delay – by an understanding that these were closely interrelated spheres of State activities. This was particularly true for a country like Russia, which annually receives millions of migrants, both for permanent and temporary stays. The experience of Russia clearly demonstrates that the dissociation of the State from this important sphere of internal policy leads to ethnic tension, erosion of tolerance in society, alienation of migrants from Russian society, self-isolation, and open conflicts between migrants and local residents. Therefore, now that the integration of migrants has been understood to be an important issue in Russia, the elaboration and realization of the policy of integration of migrants is complicated by an extremely unfavorable atmosphere of xenophobia and a politically-loaded perception of migration. The Russian policy of migrant integration is evaluated in respect of the most privileged category of immigrants: Russian “compatriots”. The adaptation policy of temporary labour migrants is analyzed in the context of the Russian State’s 2012 initiatives. The authors also argue out the integration and the anti-integration potential of ethnic diasporas when – as in present-day Russia – the infrastructure for the admission and integration of migrants has not been properly developed.