We publish a resume of our regular Tuesday “Open seminar” provided by “Polit.ru” and by Institute of national economy model, created for discussing positions and issues of our circle of experts and our community. This time the theme of the seminar is the question of the modern migration policy. In the centre of our discussion is the report by Sergey Gradirovsky, the leader of the programme “The state and anthropostream”. The participants of the discussion (besides Polit.ru) are – Vitaly Naishul, Vyacheslav Shironin, Daniil Alexandrov, Alexey Peskov, Mikhail Arsenin, Tatyana Malkina, Grigory Glazkov, Olga Lobach, Oleg Mudrak, Konstantin Sutyagin.
One of the most serious problems of today’s Russia is the demographical problem. But the most real means against it – migration – is not a minor problem. More exactly, it is a set of problems demanding well-considered policy regarding each of its parts and the problem on the whole.
The country, loosing its population, uses the labour of newly arrived people and proves to be unable, for all that, to formulate a distinct and logical policy in this regard. On the one hand the entire spheres of economy are given to the migrants, because Russian citizens don’t agree to sweep the streets or lay asphalt for next to nothing, on the other hand there are real “Kondopogas” and the acute problem of xenophobia, which can be expressed with one word – “came in large numbers!”
Our migration policy turns out to be uncoordinated multi-layer and multi-compound. There is high politics, on which level both consecutive signals with regard to the necessity of regulated attraction of foreign labour force, assistance in returning of those compatriots who wish, and impulses, connected quite another spheres but having migration projection, go. There is also activity of the departments responsible for migration policy, which are forced to orientate as to the consecutive signals, so to the badly ordered impulses. There are, at last, some practice in some locations which are oriented for receiving administrative rent and where the objectives are not associated with migration policy and other conscious policies.
The formation of adequate migration policy is in many respects a question of self-determination of the country, and absence of a consistent policy is the pledge of the migration processes will not wittingly be related to the projects on which basis the separate elements of this policy are formed.
Sometimes one has an impression that many decisions in the area of migration policy are taken from the personal attitudes of the state’s leaders. The brightest example was Georgia, where migration stream was simply turned upside down, that has lead in some cases to the lethal outcomes, when the Georgian citizens, bluntly speaking, could not endure the conditions of our “migration” institutions.
Similarly, but a less strong case happened in Moldova. As a result the Moldavians are redirecting to the markets of South Europe. In addition one must not forget about the distribution of Rumanian passports to citizens of Moldova – now these people are favoured in roman-speaking European markets. For them it’s a more attractive direction than Russia.
As a result we forfeit our positions in respect to the markets of borrowing of foreign labour force which are partly close to us in terms of everyday and labour culture.
There were cases when for economy’s sake the whole enclave of Russian-speaking people, who wished to return in Russia, was “forgotten” – first of all this is an example with Turkmenia, when from the Russian side they rather calmly reacted upon the unilateral breaking-off by the Turkmenia’s side the regime of dual citizenship.
The basis of another migration policy is a balance of concepts about the necessity to solve the following problems:
- demographical;
- developing and retention of states’ territories;
- supplying the economy with personnel;
- preservation of the definite cultural identity of the country;
- principle of controllability of inner processes.
This policy has been reflected in new federal legislation regulating the migration issues.
The laws regulating the migration sphere were introduced on September 15, 2006. The state has made an attempt to approach the problem solving. Thus, on the one hand, the fine for employers using illegal labour has risen to 800 000 rubles. On the other hand – the informative character of registration was implemented and permission to work has been attached not to an employer, but to a guest worker (gastarbeiter) himself. Now a migrant is attached to the subject of the Federation, where he receives his permission to work, but he can freely change his working place within its limits.
All these changes concern the territories of visa-free areas.
This migration policy in essence enters further into a paradoxical interaction with projection of a big policy to the migration sphere. Thus the government resolution has appeared prohibiting foreigners to sell alcoholic and pharmaceutical production and then to work in the trade at all.
There are also other problems: the compatriot resettlement programme to Russia is basically contradictory – we want to give to the Russians those lands where they don’t want to live. If those, whom we invite, are really our compatriots why should they live where the “indigenous” population doesn’t want to live?
One the most painful issues – acculturation of migrants, mutual adaptation of migrant and receiving party is considered the least carefully. These problems provide movements of extremists, who built on it their mass propaganda facilitated by the lack of considered and realizable solution technologies.
The contradiction and multi-layer character of the migration policy can be interpreted in different ways. One can speak about rational and irrational levels of political decision-makings. If the relations with Georgia can serve an example of irrational policy, the other examples show that the power acts if not always morally, but at least rather pragmatically, more exactly, economically relatively rationally.
There are serious agreements with Turkmenia, confirmed recently at the Russian-Kazakh-Turkmenian summit with Turkmenia, concerning gas, and there is a relatively small group of Russian-speaking people, who have already departed from there. The power stakes are more on business rather than on compatriots, but when an opportunity appears together with new Turkmenian authorities to help compatriots without conflict (the opening of Russian school) – it is being done. Such is a rational approach.
The same thing is with the occupancy of territories – we need somebody who lives on the Russian-Chinese boundary, and we try to solve these questions, but only in such degree, in which we are interested in this straight today. It’s important to understand that Russians or Russian-speaking people can arrive only from Ukraine and North Kazakhstan. And if we try to recruit them from there, they must be offered rather urbanized places and real mortgage programmes. Only few groups of migrants from Middle Asia can be happy to have a bed-place and work at plants in the regions where the outflow of population is very high.
Besides norm- and lawmaking, state programmes etc, a real militia practice of extortion also exists, when legal and illegal migrants are considered by law-enforcement bodies to be a source of earnings. That is to say again from specifically “economic” point of view.
On the whole, there is a hypothesis that except for “irrational” situations, the economy will determine the migration policy in our country in the next 15-20 years, i.e. its projection on the migration policy will be a more powerful factor than a “general political” or proper migratory one.
It’s interesting to have a look at the contradictory migration policy from the point of view of power levels.
We get used to upper level being busy with strategic solutions and its rationality has a planning horizon of 10-15 years, and the lowest level solves the today’s problems. The today’s reality says the reverse: the upper level takes, for the most part, the momentary decisions, but the functionaries of the middle level weave the fabric of papers, creating a sensible policy.
As long as the supreme power takes unsystematic decisions, sometimes forwarding reasonable laws, sometimes intercepting nationalist rhetoric, the functionaries of the middle level feel the real life pressure and create the real migration policy.
As an example, the case with abolition of loose leaf confirmative the citizenship of a child whose parents are Russian citizens, can serve. The concrete functionary sees the problem and in the end pushes the solution that contributes to the invigoration of the situation.
There is a hypothesis that the situation with the migration policy is not unique.
Some rhetoric is being born on the upper level in the course of solving these or those political or economic problems. This rhetoric is not considered as serious on this level and that’s why it doesn’t serve as ideologization at this level. But at the same time it goes down. And in some parts of the middle level it produces ideologization. Further on this middle level tries in the framework of created ideologization to build its rationality. Relying on the different expert elaborations, it is occupied with “rational” norm-making in the frame work of received ideologization. This rationality comes sometimes into collision with new rhetoric above nascent in the course of solving other problems. From that point of view, the characteristic of solvable problems as leading to “personal mutual relations” doesn’t look like principle. It’s significant that relating the ideology born by previous rhetoric they look like unsystematic. And the problems of middle level are born at correlation of the attempt to correlate the rationality comprehended in the frame work of the previous rhetoric and ideologically uncomprehended unsystematecy.
At the same time they don’t apprehend ideologization on the lower level much more seriously than on the upper level – there they solve quite different problems, trying to adapt to the framework set by the norm-making of the middle level and corrected where possible in the upper level actual rhetoric’s favour. From that the definite junction of upper and lower levels originates.
The upper level of the power escapes the ideologization not only in migration policy. About the same thing takes place in education. Thus, the decision about the introduction of the Orthodoxy course is being realized not on the Federal, but on the regional level. The supreme power doesn’t give a direct answer to the ideological question and functionaries of the middle level have to attend to it themselves.
See also:
- Gradirovsky. “The migration policy of historical defeat”
- Vishnevsky. “Demographical alternatives for Russia”
- Gradirovsky. “From collecting lands to collecting people”
- Gradirovsky. “Ethnical factor in nation-building”
- Zaionchkovaskaya. “The migration policy in modern Russia”
Resumes of discussion of the “Open seminar of Polit.ru”
- Spontaneous liberalism and taxpayer’s democracy
- Russian language and coercive socialization
- Adoption: children for billion dollars
- What does “plain man” want?
- How will ideologically uncommitted epoch finish?
- About conflicts’ necessity
- Control for resources and demand for “big ideas”
- Struggle for Russian nationalism
- Belief in the world’ injustice and economic growth
- The third Rome or the second Suslov?
- Russia and the West: translation difficulties
- “Compatriots” abroad: is there the Homeland
- Succession of 2008: the planned catastrophe
- Housing programme and social revolution
- The State, oligarchs and money of civil society
- Corruption, civil society und Russia of substances
- Education: reform and transformation
- The last life of administration market
- The army’s reform in earnest
- Fascists and national projects
- Russia 2006: the situation
The text given contains the traces of polemics, discussion, of different remarks, but no phrase or thesis can be literally correlated with somebody of the participants or with editorial staff’s opinion, if it is not specifically mentioned. Some lines, positions and oppositions will find, perhaps, their reflection in other genres and forms of our work.
