African Immigrants in Russia

Abstract

While the Russian migration literature captures well social and economic realities of Central Asian labour migrants, it takes only an infrequent notice of other less visible groups of immigrants. One of such groups, African immigrants, is estimated to consist of about 40,000 individuals, mainly from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper looks at the African immigrants in Russia. After identifying the African immigrants, the article focuses on refugees and economic migrants in more detail. Who are the African immigrants in Russia? How do they see Russia and Finland as the countries of immigration? The study is based on scholarly literature of African immigration to Russia and asylum interview documents of the African asylum seekers in Finland. The most prominent group of Africans in Russia are immigrants distributing advertisements at metro stations in large cities such as Moscow. However, these immigrants struggling with their poor status are only part of the Africans in Russia. The highly educated African diaspora and businessmen trained in the Soviet Union, as well as the staff of the delegations, live well- off lives in Russia and there is little interaction between the above-mentioned “new” immigrant groups. In this article, we focus especially on the “new” immigrants who arrived in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union and their stories of everyday insecurity. International crime and human trafficking enable asylum seekers to move around in Europe today. At the same time, it puts several groups of people, such as women, children and the low-skilled, particularly vulnerable to various forms of exploitation during the journey.