Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 7 – Russians often
complain that migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus are harming
the Russian Federation, but a new study by the International Organization for
Migration (IOM) that the massive flow of workers from those two regions is
harming in the first instance their native countries.
In a discussion of this report on
Russia’s “Svobodnaya pressa” portal, Vitaly Slovetsky says that the absence for
prolonged periods of young men from their homelands, in this specific case,
Kyrgystan and Tajikistan, represents “a most serious threat to the demographic
situation” of the countries from which they have left (svpressa.ru/society/article/66147/).
Migrants from these countries to
Russia “do not link their future” to their motherlands. Marriages dissolve,
early marriages become more common, and polygamy appears with migrants often
having one wife at home and another in Russia, according to the IOM. All this has a negative impact on these countries.
Moreover, the experience of
migration changes the men involved. It breaks their ties with their traditional
cultures. And it is also affecting their
wives, many of whom follow their husbands to Russia in the hopes of saving
their marriages but at the cost of leaving their children in the care of
grandparents or others.
That pattern too, the IOM study
concludes, “also has “catastrophic consequences,” with ever more people from
these countries fleeing or ready to flee their native places, leaving rural
villages vacant and even reducing the population of smaller cities.
Karomat Sharipov, the president of
the All-Russian Tajikistan Labor Migrants Movement, says that “the overwhelming
part of young Tajiks aged 17 to 27” are coming to Russia. Indeed, “more than one generation” has done
so, and if there are a few more, Tajikistan “will die.”
In Kyrgyzstan, the situation is
similar, with an increasingly aging rural population and a deterioration of the
nation’s “gene fund,” which will reduce still further the human resources of
the population. Some 300,000 Kyrgyz residents have taken Russian citizenship
over the last few years and won’t be back. And along the border, whole regions
are now vacant because of the departures, and this creates a serious security
problem for that Central Asian republic.
The impact of migration on Central
Asia and the Caucasus seldom gets much attention from Russians who are upset by
the growth of migrant populations in their country. But there is a growing appreciation of the
extent to which these problems are inter-related and must be addressed at one
and the same time.
Igor Romanov, a sociologist who
works at the Russian Institute of Strategic Research, says that massive
migration flows harm “both the countries of exit and those of arrival.” Because migrants only come to make money,” he
notes, they do not increase their education and qualifications” and thus do not
become motors for progress either in Russia or at home.
Worse, Romanov says, they are
“marginalized” and “lose their traditions” because they are interested only in
finding work. As a result, they are open to the work of “various destructive
organizations, in particular, Islamist.”
That is a real threat for Russia, but it is also a threat for their
homelands if and when those who have been radicalized return.
The impact of the experience of migration may
be even more destructive for women than for men, he continues. Central Asian
and Caucasian women, finding themselves in Russia without the cultural constraints
they were subject to at home, often begin to smoke and curse and do not care
for their children, even if the latter are with them.
Moscow should work to protect the
Russian nation by severely limiting immigration, Romanov says, but to be
effective in that regard, it must be concerned not only about the impact of
migrants on Russian life but also on the negative consequences of migration for
neighboring countries, however large the transfer payments of the migrants to
these countries may be.
No comments:
Post a Comment