Natives and Migrants in the Population Structure of Russian and Bashkortostan

Abstract

Based on the data of the All-Russian population censuses of 2002 and 2010, as well as the micro-census of 2015, the author examines the dynamics of the structure of the urban and rural population of Russia and Bashkortostan in terms of the representation of two categories of residents – local natives living in a place of permanent residence without leaving, and migrants, that is, those who live in a place since a certain time or are a local native with migration experience. A comparative analysis of the population census data revealed the following trends in the migration mobility of the population of Russia and Bashkortostan in the first decade and a half of this century. The results of the 2002 census showed the dominance of “non-migrants” in the urban and rural population both in the whole country and in Bashkortostan. They were more represented in the republic than in Russia. The intensification of migration processes in the following years led to the reverse ratio of different categories of the population in 2010 – the predominance of migrants and a decrease in the proportion of local natives living without leaving. During this period, migration flows increased not only to cities, but also to rural areas, which also affected the higher representation of rural migrants. Five years later, the 2015 micro-census data brought the population structure closer to the situation in 2002 – the dominance of local natives, which to a certain extent indicates a decrease in the migration mobility of the population. However, the results of the micro-census could also be influenced by organizational and methodological reasons related to different approaches to accounting for the most mobile categories of the population. At the same time, the decline in migration activity of the population in the period between 2010 and 2015 is also indicated by the results of representative sociological studies both in the country as a whole and in the Republic of Bashkortostan. The general trend of changes in the population structure between 2002 and 2015 is characterized by a lower representation of migrants and a greater representation of local natives in Bashkortostan compared to Russia at the beginning of the period under review and the alignment of national and all-Russian indicators by 2015. To a certain extent, this may be due to the fact that the decline in migration mobility of the population in the republic was not as intense as in the whole country. The upcoming population census will provide an opportunity to get a more complete picture of the nature of changes in the genetic structure of the population over the past decade.