Part 1: New Migration in the 1990s: a Critical Overview

A preliminary overview of the balance between immigration and emigration is obtained by considering the component change in the Russian population (Table 1). In the 1990–1996 period, deaths exceeded births by 3,015,900, but the total population decreased only by 538,300. This is because the natural decrease was offset by a net migration of 2,477,600. With all the caution required when using official statistics, a general line of argumentation still seems reasonable: if in the 1990–1996 period emigration from Russia had reached the huge numbers forecast by some in the West, then in order to offset the natural decrease in the population almost completely, immigration into Russia would have had to be 2,477,600, plus the millions who emigrated. Since, as I show later, this scenario is unrealistic, the data presented in Table 1 suggests that in the 1990–1996 period immigration to Russia was considerable and much larger than emigration.⁷

1.1 Data

The usual warning about the limitations of official migration statistics applies to the data presented in this paper. Yet, while the specific numbers used are certainly problematic, their size relative to the pool of potential emigrants or repatriates and the trend they suggest are good starting points for assessing the actual validity of the forecasts advanced on both emigration to the West and repatriation of Russians.

The statistics on migration flows between Russia and the old abroad (the expression used to indicate all countries external to the former Soviet borders) come from the Interior Ministry’s records of individuals who received entry visas for permanent residence in Russia (immigration) and exit visas for permanent residence abroad and actually left the country (emigration); those who received exit visas but did not leave Russia are not included.⁸ These statistics obviously do not account for those who exited with a tourist visa and a personal invitation and eventually decided to settle abroad

The statistics on migration flows between Russia and the new abroad have been obtained through combined elaboration of first, the arrival and departures records compiled by local militia bodies at border posts, and second, the tabulations kept by local internal affairs bodies of registration (propiska) and de-registration (vypiska) of permanent residence. Although it has repeatedly been declared unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court, regional authorities still use the Soviet institution of the propiska, the discretionary registration of residence . Since immigrants can in principle be excluded from certain social services without it, it is reasonable to expect that most of them will try to get it. As a result of this system, the data on immigration from the new abroad, especially for Russians, can be considered reliable enough. On the other hand, both the press and reports drafted by human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs) indicate that local authorities tend to refuse the registration of immigrants of other nationalities (especially Transcaucasians), thus their immigration into Russia is likely to be markedly underestimated by official statistics. Emigration from Russia to the new abroad is also underestimated as the incentives to de-register are clearly not as strong as those to register. Finally, the statistics on the number of ‘forced migrants’ and ‘refugees’ come from the records of the FMS of all the persons formally granted these two legal statuses. The limits of these data will be discussed in more details later, here I simply warn that they cannot be put in relation with data on immigration in any way, namely they should not be added to the latter in which they are already included.

1.2 A Typology of Migration Flows

A difficulty of a more conceptual nature arises in analysing migration generally and it concerns the analytical distinction between different ‘migration types’. In the concrete situation in which one has to decide to leave his/her place of residence, so many elements enter and affect the decision that any analytical distinction between different types of flows is problematic and bound to bear a certain level of arbitrariness.

Administratively defined types abound in both official documents and statistics, and in the academic literature; discounting terminological differences across countries, they include: ‘labour migrant’, ‘refugee’, ‘asylum seeker’, ‘undocumented migrant’, and the like. One major distinction implied both in such administrative types and in common usage in the migration studies literature is a broad one between ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ migration. As pointed out by Pilkington, despite the fact that sophisticated typologies recognising the grey areas between voluntary and involuntary migration exist in academic studies, such a distinction persists and is reinforced precisely by the ‘migration regime of recipient countries and thus remains the dominant discourse’ (1998: 12).

The problem of distinguishing clearly between voluntary and involuntary migration is exacerbated with respect to flows between Russia and the new abroad by the coincidence of widespread socioeconomic crisis, the outbreak of ethnic and civil wars, and the simultaneous processes of empire break-up and the birth of new ‘nationalising states’,⁹ in which national minorities find themselves disadvantaged. In this context any distinction between economic migrants, ethnic repatriates and refugees is inevitably blurred. For the purpose of lending coherence to the structure of this part, a broadly geographical typology of migration has been adopted:

• migration between Russia and the old abroad.

• migration between Russia and the new abroad.

• migration within Russia.

Although it is a simple division of flows according to areas of origin and destination, this typology broadly corresponds to different migration profiles which are further distinguished in the next paragraphs. Forced migration and post-empire repatriation are peculiar of the flows between Russia and the new abroad, although such flows are also influenced by socioeconomic factors. On the other hand, emigration from Russia to the old abroad can reasonably be considered as consisting of economic migrants, though for certain categories economic motivations overlap with the desire and the opportunities to repatriate to the historical homeland (i.e. ethnic Germans to Germany). Similarly, Russian internal migration is of a broadly socioeconomic nature, although it can be distinguished from economic migrations to the old abroad in that it stems from the specific history of Soviet population redistribution among different areas of Russia. A final qualification is that, for the purposes of this part, internally displaced persons moving from areas of open conflict or widespread tension in the ethnically autonomous North Caucasian republics (for example, North Ossetia and Chechnya) to other areas of Russia, although formally inside Russian borders, are grouped together with refugees from the new abroad.

1.3 Migration between Russia and the Old Abroad

The flows between Russia and the old abroad can be divided into emigration to Western countries (including Israel) and immigration from Asian and African countries.

1.3.1 Emigration to the Old Abroad

The history of emigration from Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has mainly been that of politically forced exits: first, the anti-tsarist revolutionary emigration, later the so-called ‘white’ anti-Bolshevik emigration, and then post-World War II escape from Soviet rule (Pushkareva 1992; Vichnevskiy and Zayontchkovskaya 1991).

As summarised by Vichnevskiy and Zayontchkovskaya (1991), specialists divide emigration from the USSR in the twentieth century into three distinct waves, the first two forced, the third more spontaneous. The first wave followed World War I and the Russian Revolution, the second occurred during and in the aftermath of World War II, while the third began in the 1950s and mainly consisted of exits of Jews, ethnic Germans, ethnic Poles, ethnic Greeks, and later political dissidents. This third wave was limited because, before the full liberalisation of emigration in 1988, under the Soviet regime exits were in principle restricted to no more than 3,000 yearly (Voynova and Ushkalov 1994). In practice, however, exceptions were made to this rule and between 1973 and 1980, under Western diplomatic pressure, the regime allowed some 340,000 people to emigrate (Fassman and Münz 1994: 531).

As shown in Table 2, in the 1960s the Soviet Union had net inflows consisting of immigration from communist countries of Eastern Europe, the return of Armenians to their historical homeland, refugees from the Xinjang-Uighur region of China (Uighur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz), and students from Asian and African countries in the Soviet sphere of influence. In the 1970s and up to the mid-1980s, the trend was reversed (but only moderately), while in the period 1986–1990 net outmigration from the Soviet Union reached about 670,000.

The term ‘ethnic migration’ with respect to emigration during Soviet times is commonly used to refer to the outmigration of Jews, ethnic Germans, ethnic Greeks and ethnic Poles (henceforth simply Germans, Greeks, etc.), and of other groups to their ‘historic homelands’ (see, for example, Brubaker 1992; Fassman and Münz 1994; Vichnevsky and Zayontchkovskaya 1991). But especially since the mid-1980s, these ‘ethnic’ migrations have also been largely of an economic nature, even though they can be distinguished from simple economic migration by the advantages (pull factors) deriving from the absence of barrier to entry and entitlement to citizenship in the destination countries. Such ethnic migrations, which predominated during the 1970s, continued to do so after the emigration regime was liberalised in the late 1980s (Brubaker 1992; Fassman and Münz 1994; Manfrass 1992; Pushkareva 1992; Shevtsova 1992; Vichnevskiy and Zayontchkovskaya 1991; Voynova and Ushkalov 1994). Table 3 presents the data on emigration from Russia to the old abroad for the period 1988–1996, showing that about 790,000 persons emigrated toward the old abroad, with the annual average between 1990 and 1996 standing at just over 100,000 departures. Though the statistics do not report the nationality of emigrants, the fact that Germany, Greece, and Israel alone accounted for 86.3 percent of all destinations chosen can be assumed as an indirect indicator that ‘ethnic’ migrations of Germans, Greeks and Jews continued to prevail.

The other major destination is the US, while EU countries are only marginally touched by emigration originating in Russia. Certainly, as anticipated, the official statistics reported in the table underestimate the actual dimensions of emigration from Russia, but it is unlikely that unreported emigration could reach such a level as to match the gloomy predictions mentioned earlier. Moreover, some statistics on immigration from Russia and other former Soviet republics compiled from data registered in EU countries by Thränhardt (1996: 228–9) confirm that immigration into the EU from Russia has been fairly limited.

The predictions about massive emigration from the post-Soviet space were based on the assumption that worsening economic conditions and rising unemployment would be followed by waves of economic migrants. It is enough to leaf through any of the most recent volumes of the Russian statistical yearbook to have a general confirmation of the magnitude of socioeconomic crisis in Russia, with increasing open and hidden unemployment, declining real wages since 1991, poor health conditions, rising crime, and so on.¹⁰ The level of socioeconomic crisis in other post-Soviet states, with the possible exception of the Baltic republics, is even worse, especially in the underdeveloped and overpopulated Central Asian states. Then why has, if not massive, at least more considerable outmigration from Russia and the other republics not occurred so far? This fact presents a challenge to the standard assumptions of migration theory and suggests that economic deprivation alone does not determine mobility decisions.

1.3.2 Immigration from the Old Abroad

A new phenomenon of the 1990s, apparently of important dimensions, is the presence in Russia of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers from Asian and African countries – a phenomenon also affecting Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. Since no reliable and exhaustive data exist on these flows, they have increasingly emerged as an issue as a result mainly of newspaper articles and, above all, of their inclusion in policy documents (see Federal'naya Migratsionnaya Programma – FMS 1994) and public statements by government authorities. In the absence of any basis for assessing the actual empirical size of this migration flow, the main reason for analysing it is the relevance it has assumed for migration policy and politics. Therefore, only a very brief and necessarily tentative overview will be given here, while the issue will be further analysed in Part 2 on migration policy and politics.

Several estimates are circulating about the presence of undocumented migrants in Russia and it is difficult to assess their validity. While the first to come out at the end of 1993 put the total number of undocumented migrants present in Russia at 100,000 (Slater 1994: 40), the head of FMS, Tatyana Regent, estimated them to be 500,000 at the end of 1995 and forecast that they would increase by 100,000 yearly (1995: 70). The same figure of 500,000 foreigners or stateless persons present in Russia without any determined legal status is also proposed by Yagodin, who claims that between 100 and 300 undocumented migrants enter Russia daily (1997: 142–3). The latest estimate given by Regent at an international conference on undocumented migration in Prague (15–16 October 1997) was 700,000 undocumented migrants, most of whom have come and are coming to Russia via the former Soviet republics, mainly in Central Asia, because of the visa-free travel regime within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).¹¹

The only data objectively confirming this new phenomenon is the number of individuals arriving from countries outside former Soviet borders who have approached the office of the UNHCR in Moscow for assistance, many of whom have been registered by the agency as ‘in need of asylum’. According to the data presented in the UNHCR’s The State of World Refugees 1997–1998, A Humanitarian Agenda.¹² since its opening in 1992, around 40,000 asylum seekers from the old abroad have approached the UNHCR Moscow office for advice and assistance. Sixty-five percent are from Afghanistan, while the rest come from countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Iraq, Rwanda, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Zaire. Few intend to stay in Russia for any length of time, but would rather move on to Western Europe or North America. The new barriers erected for legal entry to the West, mainly the clause of the ‘safe third country’ which applies to Russia after its adhesion to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and the related 1967 Protocol, force those who cannot afford the service of a trafficker to stay in Russia.

These are probably just part of a broader inflow of undocumented transit migrants who first enter at the periphery of the former Soviet Union, then proceed to Russia from where they plan to continue on toward Western destinations (IOM 1994a). This is facilitated by the fact that, as suggested by Smith quoting US intelligence sources (1994: 64), Moscow is increasingly becoming one of the main centres for criminal groups organising illegal international migration. Transit migration originating at the periphery of the post-Soviet space inevitably ends up affecting, besides Russia, those former Soviet republics closer to Western and Northern Europe, namely Ukraine (IOM 1994b; Markus 1994a), Belarus (Markus 1994b), and the Baltic republics (USCFR 1996: 141, 153–55).

According to Russian sources, however, the presence of undocumented migrants in Russia is due not only to transit migrants held up on their way to the West (see for instance Regent 1995, Komarova and Tishkov 1996: 40–42; Yagodin 1997: 152–55). Yagodin lists several other sources, such as trade-based immigration of Chinese and Vietnamese petty traders through the Sino-Russian borders or via Tajikistan; Chinese, North Koreans and Vietnamese labourers who arrived under contract-labour agreements and have overstayed their contract (see infra); students from African and Asian satellites of the USSR and the arrival in Russia of those who were present in other former Soviet republics.

Of the undocumented migration allegedly not of a transit nature, it is the petty traders and contract labourers from China that are raising serious concerns in Russia. Estimates of the number of undocumented Chinese migrants in Moscow alone range from 50,000 (Komarova and Tishkov 1996: 42) to 100,000 (FMS estimate reported in Yagodin 1997: 154). Above all, however, there is concern in Russia about the fact that the majority of undocumented Chinese migrants apparently enter and operate in the border areas of the sparsely populated Russian Far East which, as will be shown later (see 1.3.5), is also characterised by a trend of outmigration of the Russian population. According to the Itar-Tass news agency, Interior Ministry officials claim that the number of Chinese in the Far East has increased from 300,000 in early 1994 to 2 million in the spring of 1997. This dubious figure is an indirect indicator of the geopolitical preoccupations and speculations that are being raised by Chinese immigration into Russia's Far East. This issue is further analysed in Part 2.

Another migration flow from the old abroad, formally sanctioned and regulated, is that of foreign workers under contract-labour agreements. This practice, which for Chinese labourers started in the late 1980s at the level of ad hoc bilateral agreements (Nosov 1996: 23), was regulated in Russia by the presidential decree of 16 December 1993 ‘On the import and use of foreign labour force in the Russian Federation’ which assigned the FMS the responsibility of regulating contract-labour agreements (Portyakov 1996: 52–53). A large part of this labour force comes from China: according to Chinese scholars' estimates reported by Portyakov (1996: 53), between 1988 and 1993 about 80,000 labourers were sent from China to Russia, predominantly to the regions of the Russian Far East, Eastern and Western Siberia, and the Urals. As of 1994, FMS approval is necessary for any contract signed by a Russian organisation and the foreign agency exporting labour, and thus there are reliable data on the number of contract labourers legally imported into Russia. As can be seen from Table 4, Ukraine and China are the two major exporters of contract labour to Russia.

Notes

⁵ ‘Seven Millions May leave the Soviet Union’ (Financial Times, 26 January 1991). Such forecasts were not the prerogative of policy-makers and journalists; indeed some scholars, on the basis of random sample surveys on those who expressed a generic intention to emigrate, also estimated future emigration to lie in the order of millions of individuals (see for instance Brym 1991, 1992; Heitman 1991).

⁶ RFE\RL Daily Reports, No. 123, 5 April 1994

⁷ For an explanation in English of how the data presented in Table 1 have been constructed see Goskomstat Rossii (1997: 13–14). Here suffice it to say that they follow rigorous and standard procedures of population estimates (complemented by census data) and that for the natural increase they rely on the actual vital record for each year. It must be noted that the net migration reported in Table 1 differs slightly from that reported in following tables (based on official records of entries and exits, see next paragraph) since it is corrected for cases of residence change which presumably have not been included in migration statistics

⁸ For an explanation in English of how all the data presented in this paper and taken from various volumes of the Russian demographic yearbook are constructed see Goskomstat Rossii (1997: 485).

⁹ For a discussion of the concept of ‘nationalizing state’ applied to the post-Soviet context, see Brubaker (1996).

¹⁰ See, for instance, Goskomstat Rossii (1995b, 70–73 for unemployment; 77–105 for living standards; 111–90 for social conditions).

¹¹ Reported by Rfe/Rl (http://www.rferl.org/nca/news/1997/10/N.RU.9710616150727.html)

¹² The data reported here are taken from an extract of this volume available online (http://www.unhcr.ch/unhcr/sowr97/box5_3.htm).

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