Migrant Workers in Russia Rely on Family and Friends to Find Work and Housing, Russian Government’s Migration Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – Migrant workers in Russia rely on family and friends to help them find work and housing because they do not trust either government or other private sources of information about such things, according to RosMigratsiya, the Russian government’s portal about migration.

            That was just one of the characteristics of migrants in Russia today that the portal released in the course of preparing a portrait of the average worker migrant there (https://росмиграция.рф/опросы/кто-он-сегодня-трудовой-мигрант-в-россии-актуальный-портрет-по-данным-опроса).

            Other key findings include the following: the average migrant from Central Asia is 32, is not accompanied by members of his immediate family, has a secondary education and is employed almost exclusively to perform physical labor in construction and other related branches.

            In addition to a lack of trust in Russian sources of information, migrants said that they faced problems with the language barrier, bureaucratic procedures, preparing documents, and frequent failures of employers to pay them their wages on a timely basis, especially in cases where they had not signed any official agreement.