As already mentioned, since June of 1992 the main governmental body in the field of migration policy is the FMS. On the other hand, although migration is a relatively new phenomenon in Russia, in a few years a complex web of public and private institutions and organisations directly or indirectly concerned with migration has developed:

• bodies (i.e. the Security Council), committees and commissions of the presidential apparatus;
• several ministries and governmental bureaucracies;
• parliamentary commissions;
• quasi-public associations and funds;
• truly independent NGOs and migrants associations;
• major international organisations such as the UNHCR.

The FMS has territorial branches in all parts of the Federation, responsible, in principle, for the implementation of the Federal Migration Program approved in Moscow and for regional migration programmes. In actual fact, regional FMS officials have dual loyalties: to the FMS in Moscow, but also to the head of the regional administration (Pilkington 1998: 61–62). This is another factor explaining the relative autonomy from directives set in Moscow of migration policy in the regions.

The FMS is both a consultative and an executive body of the government, which helps to draft migration policy and legislation, and is then responsible for the implementation of the policies and legislative acts after they have been agreed upon by the government and parliament. Since 1994, the FMS has drafted a Federal Migration Programme on an annual basis. The document is submitted to both the government and the president for approval; the first was approved by presidential decree No. 1668 of 9 August 1994.²⁷

More precisely, the main tasks of the FMS are spelled out by a regulation established with governmental decree No. 173 of 1 March 1993, significantly amended and supplemented on 29 March 1994 by a second governmental decree (No. 252). According to this document, the FMS must:

• prepare proposals for federal and inter-regional migration programmes and ensure their implementation;
• distribute the financial means assigned by the federal budget to solve problems related to migration, and control their use;
• organise the primary reception of refugees and forced migrants and their temporary accommodation in the territory of the Russian Federation, and provide them with help and assistance in the process of settlement in the new place of residence;
• elaborate and implement measures in the field of temporary labour emigration of Russian citizens;
• elaborate and implement measures in the field of foreign workers arriving in Russia under contract-labour agreements;
• defend the rights guaranteed to migrants by the legislation;
• prepare proposals for the improvement of migration legislation;
• organise control over migration processes and the migration situation in the country;
• grant, according to the legislation, the legal status to the individuals entering or planning to enter the territory of the Russian Federation;
• establish co-operation with international and foreign organisations concerning migration issues.

Originally the FMS was established to respond to and deal with the inflow of individuals arriving in Russia from the new abroad as a result of ethnic instability and open conflicts. Its primary tasks were to grant refugee and forced migrant status, and assist individuals who had been granted such status. The first version of the law on forced migrants spoke of the obligations of state authorities (read: the FMS) towards individuals granted such status (Art. 7), which included a once-off payment upon arrival, provision of temporary and possibly permanent housing, help in finding employment, etc. The amended version of the law no longer contains the concept of obligation and defines the duty of the FMS as conditional to its powers (Art. 10), that is, of its resources.

However, as can be seen from the list of tasks given above (which was substantially modified in 1994), the assistance to forced migrants and refugee appears to be only one of the many aspects of the migratory phenomena entrusted to the FMS. Increasingly since 1994, the FMS has successfully tried to redefine its practical institutional profile, distancing itself from the task of reception and assistance (a social problem left to NGOs) and becoming primarily a body for monitoring and control of migration and for the elaboration of migration programmes and legislation. Since 1994, the FMS is in charge of organising and controlling the entry of foreign workers through contract-labour. In 1995, the FMS granted about 6,000 permits to Russian and foreign organisations for the importation of foreign workers (FMS 1996: 3). The FMS is also responsible for supervision of the organisations that export Russian workers to fill temporary labour requirements in Western Europe (mostly Germany).

In 1995, for instance, the FMS wrote that the first priority in the realisation of the Federal Migration Program approved in 1994, was the ‘… regulation of migration flows, and the overcoming of the negative consequences of uncontrolled migration processes’ (1995: 3). The proceedings of an internal meeting in March 1996 reveal the importance given by the FMS to the activity of drafting legislation proposals (FMS 1996). The FMS’s success in redefining its profile at a higher level is indirectly confirmed by a recent and very critical normative essay by some migration scholars on what Russian migration policy should be like, when it stated that, unlike what is currently the case, the FMS should not be the only institution to implement policy and, above all, should not draft either policy or legislation (Lebedeva et al. 1997: 134). According to these authors, the FMS should limit itself to its original tasks, namely determining and granting legal status to immigrants, controlling that their rights are respected; registering and analysing migration data; providing information and advice concerning the settlement process (Lebedeva et al. 1997: 135).

As anticipated above, besides the FMS there is a host of other bureaucracies and commissions which take migration within their sphere of responsibility. Appendix 5 of the 1994 Federal Migration Program lists a number of migration-related issue where FMS share responsibility and power with: a) federal organs of executive power; b) regional organs of executive power; c) associations²⁸ and charity funds.²⁹ In a governmental decree on the ‘Realisation of the Federal Migration Program’ (No. 64 of 18 January 1995) it is clearly stated that the FMS must ensure the co-ordination of all organs of executive power (federal and regional) which share responsibility in migration issues.³⁰

The above mentioned appendix reveals that the four ministries most directly involved are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the Ministry of Nationalities (MNAT) and the Ministry for Co-operation with the CIS (MCC). The involvement of the first two ministries is in line with the experience of most other states, while that of the other two is more specific to the Russian situation. But migration within the post-Soviet space is by far the most important flow, hence the need for intergovernmental co-operation with former Soviet republics and the role of the MCC. The national composition of the migration inflows to Russia (they do not include only ethnic Russians) and especially their concentration in certain regions (for instance, Krasnodar and Stavropol) have created inter-ethnic tensions at times resulting in open ethnic clashes, an issue which falls within the purview of the MNAT. Another body which, as will be shown later, has recently assertively voiced its interests and concerns over migration flows is the Federal Border Service (FBS). Together with the point of migration control created by the FMS, the FBS is in charge of patrolling Russia’s huge frontiers.

The Ministry of Finance is in charge of providing the funds annually allocated by the federal budget for the realisation of the Federal Migration Program and, in collaboration with the FMS, must monitor that the funds are correctly employed. As the FMS has so far never received the total amount allocated from the budget, its relationship with the Ministry of Finance tends to be more tense than collaborative.

In helping forced migrants with employment, housing and socioeconomic integration, the FMS must co-ordinate its activities with the Ministry of Economics, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Social Services and the Federal Employment Service. It is in this area and in that of broadly defined assistance that the Appendix also mentions associations and charity funds.

Though their competence on migration issues and relations with the activity of the FMS are not defined in any legislative act or policy document, there are several bodies that form part of the presidential apparatus that are directly or indirectly concerned with such issues. First of all, there is the Security Council, which has increasingly tried to make migration a matter of security and national interests. A relevant role has also been played by defence and foreign policy ‘think tank’ organisations with direct access to the president. Probably with less influence than the previous two, although also with access to the president, are other bodies more concerned with rights rather than with security and national interests, such as the ‘Commission on Human Rights’, the ‘Commission on Citizenship’ and the ‘Commission on Social Security’.

The Russian parliament has also been very active in the migration field, particularly as concerns the question of Russians in the near abroad. The parliamentary bodies concerned with the problem of Russians in the near abroad and indirectly with migration are the ‘Committee for CIS Affairs’ of the Federation Council (the upper house of the parliament), the ‘Committee on CIS Affairs and Relations with Compatriots’ and the ‘Commission For Refugees and Forced Migrants Affairs’ both of the Duma (the lower house of the parliament). In November 1996, the Duma also established the ‘Council of Compatriots’ as a permanently operating consultative organ composed of the representatives of associations of compatriots living abroad.

The movement of associations engaged in assisting forced migrants and refugees as well as in representing their interests and defending their rights in the political arena has developed very rapidly in Russia.³¹ This movement is concerned mainly with the problems of returns to Russia from the new abroad, and only marginally with the situation of asylum seekers coming from the old abroad.

On 22–23 April 1996, the representatives of several migrant associations organised a ‘Forum of Migrant Organisations’ in Moscow in collaboration with the three parliamentary bodies mentioned above, the Russian Fund Sootechestvenniki (Compatriots), the Moscow NGO Koordinatsionyi Sovet Pomoshchi Bezhentsam i Vynuzhdennym Pereselentsam (Co-ordinating Council for Aid to Refugees and Forced Migrants, henceforth KOSO) and with the participation of the UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). On that occasion, the leaders of migrant organisations decided to join and establish the social movement ‘Forum of Migrant Organisations’ which was registered as a social association by the Ministry of Justice on 9 August 1996 (KOSO 1997a: 2). At the end of 1996, the Forum included 34 member organisations covering 25 of the 89 federal subjects (KOSO 1997a: 38–40). One year later, membership had risen to 83, with 42 federal subjects covered (Sokolov 1998: 203–13). The Forum held its second meeting in Moscow on 22–23 April 1998 and adopted a resolution asking for more power in the drafting of migration policy and migration-related legislation.³² The well known journalist and activist Lidya Grafova, chairman of KOSO and head of the executive committee of the Forum, called upon the government to change the structure of the FMS so as to incorporate the representatives of NGOs in the top levels of the government agency. On this occasion also, harsh criticism was voiced against the FMS and many NGO leaders called for the resignation of FMS director Tatyana Regent, also present.

In reality, a number of different types of organisations are included under the general label of migrant associations and NGO. The major distinction that can be made is between Moscow-based organisations, formally NGOs in the true sense of the term, and born of the initiative of the liberal intelligentsia coming from the experience of informal groups of the perestroika period, and local organisations established by the forced migrants themselves. The latter are not always NGOs or associations; in some cases they are just self-help groups, in others, they are commercial legal entities (shareholder companies or limited partnerships) actually engaged in commercial or industrial activities but also concerned with the question of migrants’ right and socioeconomic integration as all their members are forced migrants. Some of these commercial entities have promoted the experience of compact settlements of forced migrants in rural areas and small towns of Russia (Filippova 1997a; Grafova 1998).³³

These two components, the Moscow NGOs and the local migrant organisations started to emerge at the same time – though independently of one another – in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as soon as the first ethnic tensions and conflicts forced families to leave their place of residence (Grafova 1998: 109). In the capital of Tajikistan, for instance, ethnic Russians established the association Migratsiya as early as 1990 to help those who had decided to return to Russia. In 1992, its leaders moved to the Kaluzhsky region where they established the limited partnership Novosel, which is also the name of a compact settlement of about 300 forced migrants (Filippova 1997a:77–9).³⁴

Among the Moscow-based NGOs, KOSO, headed by Lidya Grafova, is certainly the most active, well organised and influential. Originating from the still existing Grazhdanskoe sodeistvie headed by Svetlana Gannushkina (founded in 1987 in response to the first refugee crisis caused by the Nagorno–Karabakh conflict and related inter-ethnic tensions in Baku), KOSO was established in 1993 by 29 organisations (KOSO 1996). It plays a dual role: a) as a pressure group which tries to influence migration policy and legislation; b) as a co-ordinator and facilitator for the activity of local level migrant organisations.

In lobbying, KOSO and its leader Lidya Grafova have been very active, participating in various committees and commissions, organising seminars and other public initiatives, and attending parliamentary auditions to present their proposals for changes in legislation. KOSO’s office is hosted by the newspaper Literaturnaya gazeta (the major newspaper voicing the view of what remains of Moscow’s liberal intelligentsia), where Grafova works as a journalist and in which she has published numerous articles in the last years, all on the issue of forced migrants and refugees. This fact has helped KOSO to publicise its approach to the question of Russian in the near abroad, an approach which is clearly alternative to that adopted by the government (see next section). Despite this activism, KOSO has not been very successful so far in its attempt to change the government’s attitude and especially in its fight against the FMS.

The international organisations most active in Russia and, more generally, in the post-Soviet space are UNHCR and IOM, both of which have offices in Moscow as well as in the capitals of several other newly independent states.³⁶ Both organisations offer consultation to state bodies and NGOs, but they have a stronger relationship with the latter. For example, KOSO sees both the UNHCR and the IOM as its major supporters and allies in its effort to pressure the government and its fight against the FMS. IOM has launched several regional projects supporting local migrant organisations. The UNHCR has been particularly involved in the assistance of refugees from the old abroad.