Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 10 – Women now form an estimated one in four of all immigrant workers in Russia, approximately one million in all. Most are from Central Asia. And while they are not at risk of being impressed into the Russian military as their male counterparts are, they are subject to increasingly harsh restrictions.
According to Anna Azyalova, a PosleMedia journalist, these include the fact that most work in sectors where registration is less frequent and so are subject to kinds of harassment and mistreatment that men who are registered by their employers are not (posle.media/article/migrant-women-and-the-war-new-discriminatory-laws)..
But their mistreatment is not limited to that alone. Many Russian officials want to prevent women from coming lest they and their husbands and children remain in Russia for lengthy periods of time. Immigrant women also suffer when immigrant children are forced out of school for one reason or another, and that continues even when they return home.
There is a shortage of school places in most Central Asian countries from which immigrants come; and as a result, when they and their mothers are forced to leave Russia and return to their homelands, both are left in difficult straits, something few talk about but that affects thousands.
For various reasons, including a desire for Russian officials not to appear as heartless as they often are, the Moscow media focuses on male immigrants rather than women and children. And as of yet, there are relatively few institutions that specifically defend these groups, leaving them more at risk of mistreatment than otherwise.
Indeed, Azyalova suggests, the best way for such groups to gain even minimal protection is for independent media outlets to report on their problems, something that is beginning to happen as the number of women and children among immigrants to the Russian Federation continues to rise.
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