Public Discourse on Labour Migration to Russia: A Potential Threat to Russia's Soft Security?

Abstract

"Russia as a receiving country gains both costs and benefits of international labour migration. Costs of migration to Russia are tangible and may be threatening to the state, however, the central question of the paper is if they are considered to pose a danger to Russian national security in the public discourse of Russia. Although in none of official acts legal labour migration is fixed as a risk to integrity of a state, i.e. it is excluded from commonly accepted soft security threats, Russian and European experience suggests that there has been a number of cases and examples when regular labour migration has constituted a threat to national security in accordance with the criteria of “soft security threat” given by R.Ullman (interethnic conflict in Kondopoga, Russia in 2006; migrant riots in France in 2005). Moreover, globalization puts additional pressure on the nation state contributing to emergence of racist and ultranationalist sentiments in the informal everyday life and in the political agenda." [author's abstract]