Politics
What is Driving the Intensifying Anti-Migration Campaign in Russia?
December 19, 2024
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Alexander Verkhovsky
Director of SOVA Research Center
SOVA Center Director Alexander Verkhovsky says fearmongering about labor migrants has become Russian officialdom’s default rhetoric. He argues that recent anti-migration efforts presage a transformation of the official ideology.
Mentions of ‘Bastrykin’ and ‘migrants’ in national media. Source: Integrum
A sharp rise of anti-migration rhetoric
After a six-month pause at the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Russian government’s anti-migration campaign started to pick up. A recent Verstka report shows that 2023 “was a record year over the past five years for the number of posts about migrants in pro-government and far-right media and public [Telegram] channels.”
Those Telegram posts highlight migrants’ supposed high and rising criminality. The chair of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, is especially active in this respect; he has even suggested that Russia should stop using migrant labor altogether.
After a six-month pause at the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Russian government’s anti-migration campaign started to pick up. A recent Verstka report shows that 2023 “was a record year over the past five years for the number of posts about migrants in pro-government and far-right media and public [Telegram] channels.”
Those Telegram posts highlight migrants’ supposed high and rising criminality. The chair of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, is especially active in this respect; he has even suggested that Russia should stop using migrant labor altogether.
“According to official data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, however, migrant crime has not changed significantly for years, and in 2023-24 it has even gone down.”
Some media, including Kommersant, have repeatedly pointed this out.
Based on official criminal record data, criminologists have noted that the share of crimes committed by noncitizens, including the most serious crimes, is stable and definitely somewhat lower than the share of noncitizens in the total population. These facts, however, failed to counter aggressive anti-migration voices.
Protecting Russian national identity?
Bastrykin, with his anti-migration rhetoric, has found support on the Presidential Council for Human Rights. For several years now, Kirill Kabanov, a member of the council, has spoken out on these issues, asserting that “migrants with a different civilizational code” cannot be integrated. He believes that most of them do not wish to live based on Russian laws, that many are Russophobes and any proposals in favor of integrating migrants constitute “strategic sabotage.”
With Valery Fadeev’s appointment as chair of the council in 2019, “protection from migrants” gradually became one of the recurring themes in statements made on behalf of the council as a whole.
Another complaint about migrants – they mean unwanted competition in the labor market – was fairly common previously, but it is no longer a winning one, as Russia currently has almost-zero unemployment and is suffering from an acute shortage of workers across almost all sectors of its economy.
Migrants are commonly accused of “disrespecting” the culture and norms of Russian society. This claim is more difficult to formalize and support with quantitative data, yet it is often voiced, including by the president himself. Just recently, at the session of the Presidential Council for Human Rights in early December, Vladimir Putin talked about the need to maintain “ethno-cultural balance” and expressed concern that migrants do not know “our traditions.”
Such statements, in essence, are about protecting Russian national identity, but, interestingly enough, almost no one frames it that way.
Russian politicians do not want to frame it that way – which is popular among their Western counterparts, who link concerns about migration to the protection of national identity and the protection of “one’s own civilization.”
In the current Russian rhetoric, the national identity and civilization need to be protected first and foremost from the West.
Mentions of migrants as a threat to Russian identity occur only at the middle level of the power vertical. For example, in the words of a prosecutor of the Department for Security, Interethnic Relations and Countering Extremism and Terrorism in the Prosecutor General’s Office, “many [labor migrants] do not want to comply with local laws and norms of behavior, demonstratively bring in their own culture and disrespect the local population”; “we are losing our identity.”
Banning migrant children from schools
Another common anti-migration complaint is the supposed large number of children with poor Russian language skills in schools. It is a real problem for schools, and it has long been a source of frustration. Yet the government has taken no efforts, either at the federal or the regional level, to provide Russian-language education to these children, either inside or outside of school.
In December, a swift decision was reached and implemented. The Duma passed an amendment to the law on education in its first reading and then unanimously the very next day in its second and third readings. This amendment sets out two mandatory conditions for access to education, starting from primary school: a foreign citizen must prove they legally reside in Russia and pass a special Russian language exam.
This amendment will bar from school education not only children with poor Russian language skills, but also those whose parents, for various reasons, failed to secure proper documents in Russia – a situation that, according to human rights advocates, is quite common.
Based on official criminal record data, criminologists have noted that the share of crimes committed by noncitizens, including the most serious crimes, is stable and definitely somewhat lower than the share of noncitizens in the total population. These facts, however, failed to counter aggressive anti-migration voices.
Protecting Russian national identity?
Bastrykin, with his anti-migration rhetoric, has found support on the Presidential Council for Human Rights. For several years now, Kirill Kabanov, a member of the council, has spoken out on these issues, asserting that “migrants with a different civilizational code” cannot be integrated. He believes that most of them do not wish to live based on Russian laws, that many are Russophobes and any proposals in favor of integrating migrants constitute “strategic sabotage.”
With Valery Fadeev’s appointment as chair of the council in 2019, “protection from migrants” gradually became one of the recurring themes in statements made on behalf of the council as a whole.
Another complaint about migrants – they mean unwanted competition in the labor market – was fairly common previously, but it is no longer a winning one, as Russia currently has almost-zero unemployment and is suffering from an acute shortage of workers across almost all sectors of its economy.
Migrants are commonly accused of “disrespecting” the culture and norms of Russian society. This claim is more difficult to formalize and support with quantitative data, yet it is often voiced, including by the president himself. Just recently, at the session of the Presidential Council for Human Rights in early December, Vladimir Putin talked about the need to maintain “ethno-cultural balance” and expressed concern that migrants do not know “our traditions.”
Such statements, in essence, are about protecting Russian national identity, but, interestingly enough, almost no one frames it that way.
Russian politicians do not want to frame it that way – which is popular among their Western counterparts, who link concerns about migration to the protection of national identity and the protection of “one’s own civilization.”
In the current Russian rhetoric, the national identity and civilization need to be protected first and foremost from the West.
Mentions of migrants as a threat to Russian identity occur only at the middle level of the power vertical. For example, in the words of a prosecutor of the Department for Security, Interethnic Relations and Countering Extremism and Terrorism in the Prosecutor General’s Office, “many [labor migrants] do not want to comply with local laws and norms of behavior, demonstratively bring in their own culture and disrespect the local population”; “we are losing our identity.”
Banning migrant children from schools
Another common anti-migration complaint is the supposed large number of children with poor Russian language skills in schools. It is a real problem for schools, and it has long been a source of frustration. Yet the government has taken no efforts, either at the federal or the regional level, to provide Russian-language education to these children, either inside or outside of school.
In December, a swift decision was reached and implemented. The Duma passed an amendment to the law on education in its first reading and then unanimously the very next day in its second and third readings. This amendment sets out two mandatory conditions for access to education, starting from primary school: a foreign citizen must prove they legally reside in Russia and pass a special Russian language exam.
This amendment will bar from school education not only children with poor Russian language skills, but also those whose parents, for various reasons, failed to secure proper documents in Russia – a situation that, according to human rights advocates, is quite common.
“Yet the amendment does not provide any Russian language courses for the children deprived of their constitutionally guaranteed right to education.”
One of the bill’s main proponents, Valery Fadeev, also pointed this out, noting that excluding children from school is hardly a path toward integration. Indeed, back in 2023, the Human Rights Council recommended that the ban should be accompanied by the provision of Russian language courses for migrant children, and the president generally agreed with this recommendation.
However, though nothing has been done to establish such courses, Fadeev has still supported what appears to be an effective ban on education for many migrant children.
The scale of the anti-migration campaign
Migration policy itself is not the subject of this article, but we cannot fail to note the stream of legislative and regulatory initiatives on [limiting] migration, especially this year. In spring, Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy chair of the Duma from the United Russia party, proposed barring migrants from the free labor market and having them bound to their employers.
Tolstoy also suggested that the employers bear responsibility for the departure of migrants from the country if a decision to expel them has been made by the government authorities or their contract has been terminated for whatever reason. In October, the minister of labor, expressed tentative support for this idea.
In this high-pressure environment, mid-ranking lawmakers have put forward a variety of new penalties, such as extending deportation orders to the family members of a deported foreigner. Some officials are adopting openly racist language: the head of Moscow Region police, for example, has publicly expressed his intent to “lighten up” his region.
Members of the political class commonly pick up the theme of the “migrant threat.” For instance, the (very mildly) oppositionist New People party, while avoiding openly anti-migration rhetoric, has pushed for a ban on wearing the niqab in public places, initiated by the above-mentioned Fadeev, as well as on conducting religious services in residential buildings.
In 2024, migration as a threat has become a default theme that is inserted into a large variety of seemingly unrelated discussions. For example, it was mentioned even in the final report of the Parliamentary Commission on Investigation of the Crimes Committed by the Kyiv regime Against Minors.
The “threat of migration” is sometimes viewed as an instrument of the West’s hybrid warfare against Russia, akin to the mass transit of Middle Eastern migrants from Belarus to Poland in spring 2021, but on a much larger scale. For example, this is precisely how the most popular “voenkor” Telegram channel, Rybar, explained the UK’s support for a veteran Russian NGO, the Civic Assistance Committee, that helps refugees and other noncitizens inside Russia.
However, though nothing has been done to establish such courses, Fadeev has still supported what appears to be an effective ban on education for many migrant children.
The scale of the anti-migration campaign
Migration policy itself is not the subject of this article, but we cannot fail to note the stream of legislative and regulatory initiatives on [limiting] migration, especially this year. In spring, Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy chair of the Duma from the United Russia party, proposed barring migrants from the free labor market and having them bound to their employers.
Tolstoy also suggested that the employers bear responsibility for the departure of migrants from the country if a decision to expel them has been made by the government authorities or their contract has been terminated for whatever reason. In October, the minister of labor, expressed tentative support for this idea.
In this high-pressure environment, mid-ranking lawmakers have put forward a variety of new penalties, such as extending deportation orders to the family members of a deported foreigner. Some officials are adopting openly racist language: the head of Moscow Region police, for example, has publicly expressed his intent to “lighten up” his region.
Members of the political class commonly pick up the theme of the “migrant threat.” For instance, the (very mildly) oppositionist New People party, while avoiding openly anti-migration rhetoric, has pushed for a ban on wearing the niqab in public places, initiated by the above-mentioned Fadeev, as well as on conducting religious services in residential buildings.
In 2024, migration as a threat has become a default theme that is inserted into a large variety of seemingly unrelated discussions. For example, it was mentioned even in the final report of the Parliamentary Commission on Investigation of the Crimes Committed by the Kyiv regime Against Minors.
The “threat of migration” is sometimes viewed as an instrument of the West’s hybrid warfare against Russia, akin to the mass transit of Middle Eastern migrants from Belarus to Poland in spring 2021, but on a much larger scale. For example, this is precisely how the most popular “voenkor” Telegram channel, Rybar, explained the UK’s support for a veteran Russian NGO, the Civic Assistance Committee, that helps refugees and other noncitizens inside Russia.
Mentions of migration-related terms by national media. Source: Integrum
On December 10, when the Duma was voting for the abovementioned amendments to the law on education, MP Andrei Lugovoi made a speech claiming that support for migration in Russia is a project of the US and the UK aimed at destabilizing Russia.
Migrants in the mass media
The frequency of the words “migrants” and “illegals” in the mass media indicates a growing usage of these words since the beginning of the war in Ukraine and especially since the summer of 2023.
Migrants in the mass media
The frequency of the words “migrants” and “illegals” in the mass media indicates a growing usage of these words since the beginning of the war in Ukraine and especially since the summer of 2023.
Mentions of ‘migrants’ in 10 most-cited Telegram news channels. October 2023-September 2024.
As we are talking mainly about citizens of the Central Asian countries, I added the word “Eurasian” to the scope of the study. The frequency of “Eurasian” has declined over the past year, which suggests that the theme of Eurasian integration has become less relevant.
Meanwhile, the ethnonyms for the main migrant groups representing the major Eurasian nations do not show any clear growth. This should not be surprising, as the level of interaction of Russia and Russians with these countries and representatives of these ethnic groups remains stable.
Meanwhile, the ethnonyms for the main migrant groups representing the major Eurasian nations do not show any clear growth. This should not be surprising, as the level of interaction of Russia and Russians with these countries and representatives of these ethnic groups remains stable.
Mentions of ‘migrant’ and ‘Eurasian’ in RIA, RT and TASS Telegram channels. October 2023-September 2024
Looking at how the word “migrant” is represented in the 10 most-cited Telegram news channels, one can see that the unapologetically nationalist channel Readovka stands out, but some growth is evident across the other nine channels as well.
In the Telegram channels of the most important government media, migrants have become a more prominent theme, though mentions of Eurasian cooperation has not declined. In other words, the authorities are still trying to balance the difficult situation they have created.
What the general public thinks
In 2021, the level of xenophobia toward Central Asians, according to the Levada Center, reached fever pitch in 2018, but by 2021 the attitude toward them had become less hostile.
In the Telegram channels of the most important government media, migrants have become a more prominent theme, though mentions of Eurasian cooperation has not declined. In other words, the authorities are still trying to balance the difficult situation they have created.
What the general public thinks
In 2021, the level of xenophobia toward Central Asians, according to the Levada Center, reached fever pitch in 2018, but by 2021 the attitude toward them had become less hostile.
“This suggests that it was not pressure from below that provoked the start of the anti-migration campaign.”
Attitude toward people from Central Asia. Source: Levada Center, %
The attitude toward Central Asians improved even further in 2022.
Yet the 2024 polling shows a slight uptick in xenophobic attitudes even versus 2018. Keep in mind that survey was carried out in April, i.e., shortly after the horrible Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. Perhaps we may tentatively suggest that the anti-migration campaign has deepened xenophobia against Central Asians but not so dramatically.
The August poll by the Levada Center delivered more alarming results.
Yet the 2024 polling shows a slight uptick in xenophobic attitudes even versus 2018. Keep in mind that survey was carried out in April, i.e., shortly after the horrible Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. Perhaps we may tentatively suggest that the anti-migration campaign has deepened xenophobia against Central Asians but not so dramatically.
The August poll by the Levada Center delivered more alarming results.
What are your most pressing concerns? Source: Levada Center, %
Note: SVO stands for “special military operation [in Ukraine].”
Note: SVO stands for “special military operation [in Ukraine].”
Migration is reported as the second most pressing public concern, alongside corruption and the conflict with the West, which includes the war in Ukraine (the top concern was rising prices).
Half as many respondents are concerned about a “crisis of morality and culture,” including the LGBT and child-free “movements,” for example, that have been trumped up by government propaganda. Concern about migration is 6% higher than the previous “record” of 2013, spiking in the last year or two.
The heightened concern about migration is attributable to the government’s campaign, since the number of migrants is actually dropping, and the same is true of migrant crime level. Moreover, competition in the labor market is less of an issue nowadays.
Half as many respondents are concerned about a “crisis of morality and culture,” including the LGBT and child-free “movements,” for example, that have been trumped up by government propaganda. Concern about migration is 6% higher than the previous “record” of 2013, spiking in the last year or two.
The heightened concern about migration is attributable to the government’s campaign, since the number of migrants is actually dropping, and the same is true of migrant crime level. Moreover, competition in the labor market is less of an issue nowadays.
Worried about migration. Source: Levada Center, %
What is driving the anti-migration campaign?
There are two plausible explanations for the intensification of anti-migration rhetoric.
The first is pragmatic. Of course, from a broad economic perspective, an anti-migration campaign seems irrational. However, it benefits large corporations that heavily rely on migrant labor but are unwilling and unable to significantly increase their wages.
Large construction firms, for example, would find themselves in an advantaged position if proposals like those made by Pyotr Tolstoy are passed.
Large corporations would expect to have preferential access to labor outside of Russia. Moreover, if the state bars migrants from the free labor market, these corporations will be able to bind foreign workers to their jobs.
Still, it is unclear how this “bondage” can be practically implemented, since many citizens of Tajikistan hold Russian passports and Kyrgyzstan is a member state of the Eurasian Economic Union, meaning its citizens enjoy the same labor market rights as Russian citizens.
The second explanation for the intensification of anti-migration rhetoric is ideological.
We may be witnessing a gradual transformation of the official nationalism proclaimed in the documents and statements of 2011-13. Since then and until the late 2010s, Russia as a “state-civilization” was conceived as having an Orthodox and ethnically Russian core, around which revolved other traditional peoples and religions of the country, the more or less allied nations of the former USSR, the broader “Russian World” (though, since 2014, the last two groups have dramatically intersected in Ukraine) and finally a wide alliance of defenders of “traditional values.” This whole “matryoshka” was positioned to oppose the West (though there were allies there as well).
The beginning of the transformation may have come with the 2020 constitutional amendments. One of them mentions “the Russian language as the language of the state-forming people, which is part of the multinational union of equal peoples of Russia.”
This formula which stresses the Russian language rather than Russian ethnicity embraces all the ethnic minorities that make up the Russian multinational nation since almost all of them are fluent in Russian and thus “our people.” The us-versus-them opposition is, therefore, about foreigners who are considered “aliens.” This includes, first and foremost, labor migrants, mostly from Central Asia and partly from the South Caucasus (and not Moldova or Ukraine).
The duration and scope of the ongoing anti-migration campaign suggests that we are dealing with a strategic change of policy.
Whereas the earlier formula of “Russia as a state-civilization” implied that Russia was to form (if not to lead) an alliance with other “traditional” civilizations against the West, today this task has been enlarged to include protecting “civilization Russia” itself from harmful influences from the West and “the South.”
Even though this is not (or not yet) explicitly stated, this appears to be precisely the point of the current anti-migration measures.
I would add a hypothesis in support of such an interpretation. I believe that the set of ideas that Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill has gradually developed over a quarter of a century gives us an idea of where the ideology of the Russian political regime is going.
This is not to say that Patriarch Kirill can claim the role of “Putin’s favorite philosopher,” previously considered by some to be Ivan Ilyin or Alexander Dugin. But what Kirill said and wrote at the turn of the century has been gradually adopted, albeit with certain changes, by the Russian political leadership 15 or 20 years later. This suggests that we had better pay close attention to the recent changes in the patriarch’s rhetoric.
He made clear his stance on migration and civilizational issues in his traditional annual speech in December 2023: “there is growing evidence of migrants forming criminal communities and extremist organizations, not to mention related conflicts that threaten interfaith and interethnic peace and harmony... If this trend continues, we will lose ourselves, we will lose Russia – a multiethnic state whose core is the Russian Orthodox people.”
The World Russian People’s Council, the “political wing” of the Church, expanded on the patriarch’s ideas in March this year. In particular, the council’s final document (Nakaz) proposes tightening migration policy to “protect the Russian civilizational identity and the unity of the country’s legal, cultural and linguistic space.”
The council’s proposals can be easily recognized in the measures adopted since then by the Duma and the government.
If my hypothesis about the patriarch’s ideological foresight is correct, in the foreseeable future we will see the recent anti-migration measures acquire a clearer ideological justification at the highest government level.
There are two plausible explanations for the intensification of anti-migration rhetoric.
The first is pragmatic. Of course, from a broad economic perspective, an anti-migration campaign seems irrational. However, it benefits large corporations that heavily rely on migrant labor but are unwilling and unable to significantly increase their wages.
Large construction firms, for example, would find themselves in an advantaged position if proposals like those made by Pyotr Tolstoy are passed.
Large corporations would expect to have preferential access to labor outside of Russia. Moreover, if the state bars migrants from the free labor market, these corporations will be able to bind foreign workers to their jobs.
Still, it is unclear how this “bondage” can be practically implemented, since many citizens of Tajikistan hold Russian passports and Kyrgyzstan is a member state of the Eurasian Economic Union, meaning its citizens enjoy the same labor market rights as Russian citizens.
The second explanation for the intensification of anti-migration rhetoric is ideological.
We may be witnessing a gradual transformation of the official nationalism proclaimed in the documents and statements of 2011-13. Since then and until the late 2010s, Russia as a “state-civilization” was conceived as having an Orthodox and ethnically Russian core, around which revolved other traditional peoples and religions of the country, the more or less allied nations of the former USSR, the broader “Russian World” (though, since 2014, the last two groups have dramatically intersected in Ukraine) and finally a wide alliance of defenders of “traditional values.” This whole “matryoshka” was positioned to oppose the West (though there were allies there as well).
The beginning of the transformation may have come with the 2020 constitutional amendments. One of them mentions “the Russian language as the language of the state-forming people, which is part of the multinational union of equal peoples of Russia.”
This formula which stresses the Russian language rather than Russian ethnicity embraces all the ethnic minorities that make up the Russian multinational nation since almost all of them are fluent in Russian and thus “our people.” The us-versus-them opposition is, therefore, about foreigners who are considered “aliens.” This includes, first and foremost, labor migrants, mostly from Central Asia and partly from the South Caucasus (and not Moldova or Ukraine).
The duration and scope of the ongoing anti-migration campaign suggests that we are dealing with a strategic change of policy.
Whereas the earlier formula of “Russia as a state-civilization” implied that Russia was to form (if not to lead) an alliance with other “traditional” civilizations against the West, today this task has been enlarged to include protecting “civilization Russia” itself from harmful influences from the West and “the South.”
Even though this is not (or not yet) explicitly stated, this appears to be precisely the point of the current anti-migration measures.
I would add a hypothesis in support of such an interpretation. I believe that the set of ideas that Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill has gradually developed over a quarter of a century gives us an idea of where the ideology of the Russian political regime is going.
This is not to say that Patriarch Kirill can claim the role of “Putin’s favorite philosopher,” previously considered by some to be Ivan Ilyin or Alexander Dugin. But what Kirill said and wrote at the turn of the century has been gradually adopted, albeit with certain changes, by the Russian political leadership 15 or 20 years later. This suggests that we had better pay close attention to the recent changes in the patriarch’s rhetoric.
He made clear his stance on migration and civilizational issues in his traditional annual speech in December 2023: “there is growing evidence of migrants forming criminal communities and extremist organizations, not to mention related conflicts that threaten interfaith and interethnic peace and harmony... If this trend continues, we will lose ourselves, we will lose Russia – a multiethnic state whose core is the Russian Orthodox people.”
The World Russian People’s Council, the “political wing” of the Church, expanded on the patriarch’s ideas in March this year. In particular, the council’s final document (Nakaz) proposes tightening migration policy to “protect the Russian civilizational identity and the unity of the country’s legal, cultural and linguistic space.”
The council’s proposals can be easily recognized in the measures adopted since then by the Duma and the government.
If my hypothesis about the patriarch’s ideological foresight is correct, in the foreseeable future we will see the recent anti-migration measures acquire a clearer ideological justification at the highest government level.
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