From the “Influx of the Yellow Race” to “Migrant Workers”: Dynamics of the Languages for Describing Cross-Border Migrations in Russia

Abstract

The phenomenon of mass cross-border labour migrations to Russia of the late imperial and post-Soviet periods was in an urgent need of comprehension in order to build relationships (for the population) and to “manage the process” (for the authorities). The novelty of the phenomenon required the formation of a corpus of migration terminology, both ordinary and official, public one. The importance of studying the issue lies in the fact that both the understanding of the phenomenon and the relation to it are implied in the terms, and a discourse is formed with their help. In the late imperial era, the familiar terminology of citizenship and social class was used, and ethnic categories started being applied. However, the key metaphor was the term “the influx of the yellow race”. It implied the idea of migration as a natural spontaneous process and of migrants as a part of racially alien persons. The Soviet era preserved the dominance of primordialist ethnic discourse, which prevailed at the first stage of the post-Soviet era migration process. However, it was soon supplemented and then replaced by social and, particularly, migration terminology. A “Chinese” becomes a “Chinese migrant”, and then simply a “migrant”, followed by a “migrant worker”. These dynamics did not mean a complete replacement of one system of representations and the description language with another; the hierarchy of discourses changed. However, it clearly demonstrates a change in the attitude of the host Russian society towards migrants and the migration situation in general