Two Very Different Vectors of Migration Collide in Moscow

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 18 – The number of immigrant workers in the Russian capital is now so large that they amount to one in seven of working-age Muscovites, but at the same time, a senior city deputy says, today is the first time in 150 to 200 years that a majority of the residents of the Russian capital were born there.

            The first of these two vectors has attracted enormous attention, but the second, which was raised by Yury Moskovsky, head of the Commission of the Council for Nationalities Affairs in the capital’s government, only at a recent session devoted to migration affairs (nazaccent.ru/content/37388-migranty-v-rossii.html).

            But both the latter statistic by itself and the combination of the two have profound consequences. The fist means that after decades in which the majority of the population of the Russian capital came from elsewhere, the city now has a population dominated by those who were born there and naturally view themselves as native Muscovites.

            That contributes to more NIMBY attitudes, but it also means that when sizeable numbers of immigrants do arrive, they come into a situation in which they are confronted not by others who have gone through an immigrant experience themselves but who view themselves as the indigenous population and the new immigrants as even more unwelcome.

            The full range of consequences of the rise of a large native Muscovite population at the very time when immigration especially from culturally and linguistically distinct places in Central Asia and the Caucasus has not yet attracted much scholarly investigation, but Moskovsky’s remarks are likely to attract just that.