Impact of social divisions on perception of migrants among the population of Russia (The Case-Study of Moscow)

Abstract

According to the «contact hypothesis» tested many times in the global academia, contact with migrants and how the host population evaluates this interaction are among the most important factors influencing the level of xenophobia. Based on the results of a combined study of Muscovites (a survey and semi-structured interviews) carried out in 2021, the article looks at how and why one of the most popular and socially significant form of communication — professional interaction — becomes an arena of struggle between negativism towards migrants and positive-neutral attitudes.

In response to a projective question during a survey of 452 Muscovites, the respondents indicated a high degree of unwillingness to work together with the newcomers from three countries of Central Asia, three countries of the South Caucasus, and two autonomous republics of the North Caucasus. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of survey participants who had the experience of working with newcomers from the above regions assessed quality of their activity in neutral categories, free from ethnic prejudice. Interaction in the labor sphere proved to be an important channel for «positivizing» perception of migrants, but the beneficial role of work contacts makes them not only a resource, but also a kind of barrier, since it is unlikely that they would spread everywhere. Are there any other reasons for not wanting to work with migrants besides the lack of experience of direct work contacts? Does the social context surrounding the use of migrant workers in Russia/Moscow affect respondents' attitudes? The survey also showed that for all territories of origin, with the exception of Armenia and Georgia, the differences in the degree of denial were close to the statistical margin of error. Does this mean there is little sensitivity to the ethnic characteristics of this or that group of labor migrants? Or is this sensitivity pushed aside by stronger rejection factors with social overtones?

An analysis of interviews with Muscovites helps to clarify these questions. The cross-cutting themes steadily present in informants’ narratives were, firstly, shadow practices of migrant labor use, aimed at preserving special niches of employment that exist at the expense of low-status migrants; secondly, descriptions of an alternative and more preferable, in relation to the observed, image of a migrant who could fit into a cosmopolitan urban cultural environment. These results draw attention to the socio-economic and cultural causes of migrant-phobia, in the form of social/status divisions between the host population and the «ethnic others» in the city.