Central Asian Immigrants Stayed in Russia During Pandemic, Supported One Another and Obeyed the Rules, New Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 14 – Immigrant workers from Central Asia were far more likely to lose their jobs and be without incomes than local Russians during the pandemic, but despite that, fewer than 10 percent of them have gone home, opting instead to try to wait the recession out by helping one another, according to the Russian Academy of Economics and State Service.

            Its report, The Situation of Immigrants in Russia during the Pandemic (mer-center.ru/_/polozhenie_migrantov_v_rossii_vo_vremja_pandemii_koronavirusa_covid_19_rezultaty_oprosa/1-1-0-169), based on a survey conducted via smartphone apps of more than 2,000 Russian residents and Kyrgyz and Uzbek immigrants.

            (In an interview with the CAA Network, one of the three co-authors, Yevgeny Varshaver, says that that method was chosen because of the impossibility of doing face-to-face interviews during the self-isolation lockdown and because almost all immigrants and most Russians in Moscow have and regularly use smartphones (caa-network.org/archives/20346).

            The study found that 40 percent of the immigrants lost work compared to only 23 percent among local residents, that 35 percent of them were furloughed compared to 25 percent of the locals and that only 12 percent of them were able to work from home compared to 23 percent of the Russians around them, a pattern reflecting their different roles in the economy.

            Only two percent of immigrants had sufficient savings to get through the pandemic unscathed. But they showed “unprecedented” levels of mutual assistance and discipline, sharing with each other and obeying the rules set by the authorities far more consistently than local Russians. 

            According to Varshaver, the study found that “immigrants more than non-immigrants continued to believe in themselves and in the state,” were more disciplined and optimistic that the authorities would see everyone through to an eventual recovery – and they maintained these attitudes even though objectively, their conditions were worse than those of the Russians.

            “Forty-eight percent of the immigrants never went out of their residences compared to 42 percent of local people,” the sociologist continues.  But at the same time, they were far more likely to call for ambulances or doctors if illness appeared, 55 percent to 26 percent for Russia as a whole, and 58 percent to 26 percent in the city of Moscow.

            Crime fell among both immigrants and among local people during the pandemic, but it fell by nearly 50 percent more among the former than the latter, down 10 percent among them from a year earlier as compared to down seven percent among the native Russian population, Varshaver says.

            This suggests that stereotypes notwithstanding, few immigrants turned to crime because of the difficulties they faced during the pandemic. Indeed, Russians remained somewhat more likely to do so.