Migration and Changing Criteria for Belonging

While some temporary labor migrants returned home, many arrived in Moscow with the hope of becoming permanent resident Muscovites. Gaining a permanent domicile registration in Moscow was simple enough; it only required workers to remain at the same place of employment for 4 years. However, that was only one of many markers of becoming a Muscovite. Temporary labor migrants turned Muscovites often lived in the dormitories for 10 to 15 years before receiving an apartment of their own.

Living in one’s own apartment (as opposed to a communal apartment) was often the symbol to the migrants themselves that they had made it. When I collected several interviews for my dissertation, temporary labor migrants often considered receiving an apartment as the end of their migrant life. Dormitory life had some positives, such as the collective nature of child care for single women, but for families, dormitories often tore them apart. Family dormitories were few and far between, and instead, dormitories were almost always divided by sex, leaving women and children separate from fathers. While some migrants recalled their times in the dormitory with nostalgia, they always asserted that their apartment marked them as Muscovites.

Soviet authorities implemented a complex system for determining the order of waiting lists for housing, often balancing elite privilege and protection of the most vulnerable. Veterans of labor, participants in the Great Patriotic War, and party members received higher priority for their contributions to building socialism, but single mothers and families with many children also were able to move to the top of the waiting lists due to their social vulnerability. Where one worked also played an important role in when one would receive housing. Factories such as the Likhachev and Lenin Komsomol Automobile factories built their own housing, allowing for more workers to receive housing quickly, whereas other factories received apartments from the city, which were often limited in numbers.

Enterprise directors and factory committees understood the importance of housing to workers and often used it as the carrot to lure workers to jobs in Moscow. Some migrants signed contracts before beginning their jobs, in which they were promised an apartment of their own within two years. At times, these promises were nothing more than sweet words that failed to materialize. Muscovites often accused migrants of marrying permanent residents to receive a permanent domicile registration and apartment. While this may have occurred in some cases, marriages to Muscovites usually did not provide grandiose benefits. In many cases, marriages meant grandparents, multiple young couples and their children all living together. By the 1980s, the housing shortage in the capital had reached crisis levels, and in multiple cases, existing housing fell into disarray, slowing the allocation of housing.

Even though the Moscow Soviet prevented the arrival of temporary labor migrants, effective January 1, 1986, the ban was short lived. The Moscow Soviet enacted this policy in conjunction with another that requested the Academy of Sciences identify inefficient enterprises to streamline or close. However, Muscovites were reluctant to take on positions that they considered dangerous and physically demanding, considering such positions “migrant labor.” Managers and white-collar workers wound up working on assembly lines before the Moscow Soviet reversed its decision. The reversal of the decision coincided with the rise of glasnost, permitting public discussions on the effects of temporary labor migration. Limitchiki, the word for temporary labor migrants in the Soviet Union, became a catchall for discussing social problems. Muscovites blamed the overtaxed public transportation system, lack of housing, and practically any and all social ills. On the eve of the breakup of the Soviet Union, liberalization and moves for efficiency created high rates of unemployment, and migrants began to leave Moscow.

In the immediate post-Soviet period, policy makers complained about unemployment, the lack of labor migration, and the influx of refugees. While seemingly paradoxical on the surface, these problems coexisted. Those most affected by unemployment were women, youth, and pensioners, who could not or would not fill unskilled and physically demanding positions. However, would-be temporary labor migrants engaged in seasonal migration or continued to test their luck outside of Moscow. Ethnic and national conflicts in the former Soviet Union led to an influx of refugees in Moscow, but the city officials resented their presence. Since international law regulated the guarantees provided to refugees and internally displaced people, the Moscow City Council was obliged to provide such migrants with specific material benefits, including housing. The City Council struggled to find sufficient funds and often failed to properly register refugees.

By 1997, temporary labor migration to Moscow began again, adding 17,000 additional people to the city’s population. How city officials conceived of migration and the actual migration patterns changed. Those governing migration concerned themselves less with internal migration – that is to say migration within Russia – than with international migration. Many labor migrants arrived from the other republics of the former Soviet Union, but compared to the Soviet period, they lacked shared citizenship and therefore the same rights as their Russian hosts. Moreover, ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences made migrants a visible other. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, migrants from Africa and Asia also arrived in Moscow in large numbers, but they were less likely to stay for an extended period of time.

The chart above shows the makeup of the population of Moscow in 1972. Russians were the clear majority, accounting for over 90% of the population. Jews, Ukrainians, and Tatars registered over 1% each of the total population, but other national groups were relatively small.

By 1989, the national makeup of Moscow had changed little. The Jewish population decreased in part due to emigration, thus contributing to other national groups taking up a larger percentage of the population.

This graph compares the change in population of non-Russian national groups in 1972 and 1989. All groups did increase in absolute numbers, except Jews, who experienced a decrease of 75,000.

In the post-Soviet period, the City of Moscow became preoccupied with international migration. The graph above compares total migration related population growth in 1995 and 1999. The first two sections group the republics of the former Soviet Union and then the rest of the countries in the world. The remaining categories show individual countries. Keep in mind, more migrants arrived in Moscow in 1999 than in 1995, but return migration was also on the rise.