Migration Scholarship in Post-Soviet Russia: Between Western Approaches and Eurasian Geographies

Abstract

This review explores Russian academic debates around migration, highlighting theoretical, empirical and policy issues which are specific to the Former Soviet Union (FSU). In global terms, FSU migration volumes are high: the Ukraine-Russia migration corridors are second only to those straddling the border between Mexico and the United States. Russia’s wealthiest regions are the primary destinations of both internal and FSU migrants. In line with global trends, the response by host countries’ populations and authorities is one of hostility informed by media-fuelled xenophobia. The chaotic and disruptive nature of post-socialist transformations has buffered the effects and lessened the perception of the multiple crises which have enveloped the European Union in the last decade. Eurasian integration and the rift with the West have produced different economic and political conjunctures, whose defining moments are the Ukrainian conflict, Western sanctions and worsening terms of trade for key exports. In Russia, migration debates have focused on FSU-specific emergencies including demographic unbalances, the repatriation of the Russian diaspora and the prospects of large scale Central Asian migration. Migration processes, their subjective understanding as well as Russian policies directed at them, have been informed by the long history of mobility across the Eurasian space. FSU migrants who make up the vast majority of Russia’s migrant population still view the latter as ‘a common house’, a transnational space open to all FSU citizens irrespective of current nationality.