Emigration from Russia has changed significantly over the last decade. The potential for ethnic repatriation has almost been exhausted, but other factors have become stronger in the population outflow, such as reunion with families and trips for education. Such emigration is largely determined by differences in the quality of life and policies in host countries, which welcome young, educated, qualified people with a certain level of income, said Mikhail Denisenko, Deputy Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, in his presentation at the XVI April International Academic Conference at HSE.
Migrants from Central Asia in Moscow are often involved in hard physical work and live in bad conditions, both of which affect their health. But the access to medical aid is complicated for them due to their social isolation. As a result, foreign labourers use alternative strategies of therapy: from self-treatment, which is fraught with exacerbating the condition, to going to private ‘ethnic’ clinics. Daniil Kashnitsky, Assistant Researcher at the HSE Institute for Social Development Studies (ISDS), analyzed the medical aid for migrants in the Russian capital.
International companies engage in social responsibility in order to to improve their reputation, be more competitive, and to gain political benefits and some degree of control over society. In Russia, however, businesses convert social investment into informal privileges granted to them by government, according to a paper by Olga Kuzina, Professor of the HSE Department of Economic Sociology, and Marina Chernysheva, postgraduate student at the same department.
Young Russians are in no hurry to start living on their own. The age of moving out from the parental home has increased from 18-20 for previous generations to 23-25 for today's youth. Instead, young people are spending more time in search of themselves and taking longer to get an education and choose a partner, according to a study by Ekaterina Mitrofanova, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Demography, and Alina Dolgova, student at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences.
On April 16-19, O. B. Khoreva, who is an Associate Professor and the Deputy Head of the School of Public Administration’s Department for Spatial Development and Regional Studies, along with V. I. Smorchkova, a Professor at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration and the head of the programme for preparing management personnel for the North and Arctic, took a trip to the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District as part of our Macarthur Foundation Grant ‘Governance, Community and Ecology: Responding to Challenges of Resource Development in the Circumpolar North.’
These results were obtained in a nationwide survey of 1,500 Russians over 18 years of age as part of a Monitoring the Status of Civil Society study conducted by the HSE Centre for Studies of Civil Society and Nonprofit Sector.
In choosing a field for further studies, high school students are influenced by their peers, among other factors. For example, a high school student interested in technology among a class of peers who are not so good at physics may perceive it as a competitive advantage, increasing the likelihood of their choice of a technical field for a career, according to Andrey Zakharov, Deputy Head of the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis at the HSE's Graduate School of Education, and Elizaveta Chernenko, Research Fellow of the same laboratory.
Eastern European history shows that in the majority of post-Soviet countries, where lustration was carried out in one form or another, the situation with corruption is now considerably better than in those countries where lustration was not carried out. But what we see in Slovenia is, in fact, an clear deviation from this pattern. Lustration was not carried out in Slovenia. Nonetheless, the country is among the best performers in terms of anti-corruption measures and can be compared with Estonia, where lustration did take place. The Slovenia phenomenon has been analysed in the article ‘Fighting Corruption: The Slovenian Phenomenon’ by Yuliy Nisnevich, Professor at the School of Political Science, Academic Supervisor of the Laboratory for Anti-Corruption and Heather Stetten, independent researcher (USA).
Even today, ages-old folk culture can serve as a basis for collective identity by bringing together people who share this interest and underlying values, as evidenced by Russia's folk heritage movement. According to Rostislav Kononenko, Senior Lecturer at the HSE's Department of General Sociology, and Evgenia Karpova, Master's student at the HSE, the folk heritage movement in Russia is driven by urban intellectuals working to preserve and promote authentic folk culture.
These results were obtained during a nationwide survey of 2,000 Russians over 18 years of age as part of a Monitoring the Status of Civil Society study conducted by the HSE Centre for Studies of Civil Society and Nonprofit Sector.