As the Federal Migration Service prepares to draw up new legislation on migrant workers, the Kremlin’s policy on both migration and the rise of xenophobia remain contradictory. The Russian authorities’ reluctance to take a clear position on these issues reinforces the tensions in Russia itself and worsens Moscow’s image in the emigration countries, particularly in Central Asia. The failure to find a solution to this question could open the door to harmful forces of destabilization both domestically and in the emigration countries.

BACKGROUND: In 2005, the Russian authorities finally began considering a long-term migration policy, observing that the Russian economy was starting to suffer a shortfall of labor power: the country’s drastic demographical downturn has in fact been accompanied by an increase in living standards, permitting Russian citizens to be more demanding as regards working conditions. Millions of precarious jobs have therefore gradually been taken up by migrants from the Caucasus and, above all, Central Asia. Today, the latter occupy relatively circumscribed professional niches: construction site workers, sellers at the bazaars, but also, and increasingly, refuse collectors, waiters, cooks, supermarket checkout assistants, janitors, minibus drivers, domestic workers, baby-sitters, minders of aged persons, etc.

The absence of adequate legislation has made the working conditions particularly difficult for millions of migrants living in Russia. A bill passed in 2006 prohibiting foreigners from undertaking retail trade at markets in Russia has increased the illegality in which some of them work and reinforced the corruption of the administrative departments responsible for issuing or verifying work permits. This has created a whole new range of profitable economic activities enabling Central Asian and Caucasian traders to be present, albeit more discretely, at Russian markets.

In addition, the proliferation of xenophobic discourses is growing. Migrants are accused of being directly involved in the rise of criminality, while a discourse relating to ‘ethnic business’ continues to prevail among the press and the security organs. The Russian justice system remains ambiguous in its handling of xenophobia: while more and more skinhead groups are being sentenced, numerous other less radical movements or establishment personalities are never troubled for their racist remarks. Thus, the leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, Alexander Belov, was recently sentenced to one and a half year of prison after his entry into the ranks of the opposition to the Kremlin, but prior to this had spent many easy years free of legal complications.

If racist attacks seem to have increased only relatively little in 2008 compared to 2007, as estimated by associations such as SOVA, the anti-migrant operations organized by, for example, the Young Guard (the youth movement of United Russia)—which orchestrated a campaign accusing migrants of refusing legalization—have reinforced the prevalent feeling that the authorities indirectly support anti-migration policies. In addition, supermarkets chains, in direct competition with the markets, whose products are better priced, weigh on the public authorities to close down the bazaars in the name of sanitary security or real estate pressures. The economic crisis currently weakening Russia is thus aggravating xenophobic sensibilities by focusing them on the theme of migrants stealing work.

IMPLICATIONS: In the legislation being drafted, the Federal Service wants to privilege migrants with a professional qualification and the invitation of an employer, to allow them to get their work permit rapidly and benefit from certain social rights. Such cases are, however, in a small minority. The status for those neither arriving with qualification, nor guaranteed employment is currently obscure and will probably remain very precarious. Associations that defend the rights of migrants are concerned that this legislation will result in a situation of work without rights for the majority of migrants who, on the pretext that they have no diploma or invitation from an employer, will have no rights to health insurance or paid holiday leave, nor be able to bring their employers before the courts in case of the absence, or violation, of a work contract.

The Russian authorities’ refusal to implement a comprehensive migration policy can be explained in part by the population’s reticence, but also by the state’s inability to implement the social policies required to manage the inflow of migrants serenely: the opening of Russian courses for non-Russian-speaking adults began only belatedly and they remain accessible to a small minority; the schooling of the children of migrants is not guaranteed; housing conditions are not combined in such a way that they provide these populations with normal living conditions and avoid processes of ghettoization. In addition, the massive corruption on which the security organs thrive in conjunction with migrants needs to be combated with a will which the Kremlin has never shown.

Lastly, the biggest bazaars, such as, for example, that of Cherkizov in Moscow – probably Russia’s and Europe’s largest open-air market – are managed by businessmen with close associates in decision-making circles. Telman Ismailov and Zarakh Iliev, both originally from Azerbaijan, own many markets and shopping centers in the capital and rank among Russia’s top 100 wealthiest people. Today Cherkizov functions as a state within a state: the thousands of Caucasians and Central Asians that live in it have all the services they need on site (food, hair-dressers, Mosques, etc.) and are discouraged from leaving the grounds to avoid racist attacks and police controls. The networks that run Cherkizov thus control all the processes, from the transport of migrants from their place of origin to all aspects of their daily life at the workplace. This enables these networks to guarantee a certain security for individuals (guaranteed work, physical protection against attacks) but it accentuates the migrants’ ghettoization, such that the latter’s integration into Russian society is hampered by the very system that assists their arrival.

The large profitability of these type of activities thus can indirectly explain the difficulties of the Russian state in promoting a migrant bill since its diverse administrations all have an interest in the illegality of the workforce from the Caucasus and Central Asia.

CONCLUSIONS: The question of migration and, with it, that of xenophobia, constitutes a major test for Russia. On this issue the ruling elites will have to demonstrate their ability to conceive of their country pragmatically, i.e. in a way which is devoid of the ideological sensibilities linked to nationalism. The Kremlin must in fact prove that Russia can accept the profound societal transformations resulting from globalization, of which massive migrations are only one of the most visible elements. The failure to find a solution to this question could open the door to harmful forces of destabilization both domestically and in the emigration countries.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Marlène Laruelle is a Senior Research Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center. She is the author of Russian Eurasianism. An Ideology of Empire (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) and editor of Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia (Routledge, 2009).