Policy Streams and Immigration to Russia: Competing and Complementary Interests at the Federal and Local Levels

Abstract

This article uses Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework to explain forms of national- and region-level governance used in the Russian Federation to manage unprecedented levels of international immigration. First, we identify the ways that the Russian federal government has legislated and governed international migration from 1991 through 2010. We then compare the federal level to the case of the Krasnodar region, an ethnically diverse region in the North Caucasus. We find that that migration policy adoption in Russia at the federal level is relatively immune to economic trends or labour needs but more sensitive to foreign and domestic political objectives. At the regional level, local socio-political and economic concerns predominate and political objectives are secondary. Finally, we argue that migration policy changes or adopted policy at the regional level may be explained by an interaction effect between changes in political leadership, federal level policy adoption, and regional level context.