Contours of the Migration Crisis of 2020–2022 in Russia

Abstract

The migration situation in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic has a number of signs of a migration crisis. The understanding of this phenomenon, which has developed under the influence of the migration crisis of 2014-2015 in the EU countries, is usually associated with the influx of large masses of migrants to a limited territory for a short period of time. In Russia, the crisis phenomena in the migration sphere during 2020 – early 2022 were caused by the closure of borders and the difficult socio-economic situation in which labor migrants from Asian CIS countries who were in the Russian Federation found themselves. However, the prerequisites for this crisis were formed during at least the second half of the 2010s. In many ways, they were associated with a noticeable increase in the volume and change in the ethnic structure of migration flows in favor of immigrants from Central Asian countries. At the same time, there was a decrease in the number of labor migrants from the European CIS countries – Ukraine and Moldova, who received the opportunity to work legally in the EU countries after signing Euroassociation agreements in the mid-2010s. Due to the vast territory of Russia and the unevenness of its economic development, the features of the migration crisis were mainly local in nature and were most clearly manifested in the most attractive regions for migrants – Moscow, St. Petersburg and adjacent areas. Its manifestations were mass protests, riots and conflicts involving migrants, as well as a noticeable aggravation of their relations with employers, authorities and the local population.