Международный семинар департамента социологии “Why Control Immigration: Strategic Uses of Migration Management in Russia”

Докладчик: Карес Шенк, доцент Школы гуманитарных и социальных наук  (Назарбаев Университет, Казахстан)
Тема доклада: “Why Control Immigration: Strategic Uses of Migration Management in Russia”

Время:  Вторник  20 февраля, 18:10. 
Место: Москва, Мясницкая 11, Аудитория 423
Рабочий язык: английский.
Для заказа пропуска в НИУ ВШЭ необходимо написать Екатерине Соколовой (ksokolova@hse.ru).







Аннотация доклада:

Migration management in Russia is a window into how public policy, the federal system, and patronage are used to manage conflicting demands. This multi-level balancing act demonstrates the importance of high-level politics, institutional interests and constraints, and the conditions under which government actors at all levels can pursue their own interests. Migration control begins with restrictive policies that induce a scarcity of legal labor. Low numbers of legal migrants are a powerful populist tool that leaders can employ in response social anxieties about the labor market and social stability. Restrictive policies also force the majority of migrant workers into the informal sector where they became a source of cheap labor that can satisfy economic demand. At the same time, a scarcity of legal labor can be used strategically by actors throughout the political system.

Using a multi-method ethnographic approach that relies on elite and migrant interviews in 4 regions of Russia between 2009-2015, I will argue that the scarcity of legal labor acts as a patronage resource for bureaucratic and regional elites. Across different policy eras, the driving logic of federal decision makers is reducing the number of legal labor migrants. So long as regional leaders and bureaucrats follow federal signals, they have significant latitude to manage migration including distributing scarce documents to those that have connections, offering state officials (law enforcement and bureaucrats) increased opportunities to extract bribes from undocumented migrants and their employers, and allowing the widespread use of illegal labor with relative impunity.