Authoritarian Dysfunction: Why the Russian authorities hunt migrants

Following the terror attack at Crocus City Hall, an unprecedented campaign against labour migrants from Central Asia has unfolded in Russia. Thousands of people have been expelled or refused entry, and Russian regions have implemented a mass ban on the employment of migrants in various fields. Authorities in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have recommended that their citizens temporarily refrain from travelling to Russia. This campaign seems irrational: the Russian economy needs an influx of workers more than ever, and the anti-terrorist effect of mass round-ups and preventing migrant workers from entering the country is practically nil. According to some estimates, both temporary and settled migrant workers may account for up to 10% of the total labour force in the country, which does not cover its needs, and the problem will only worsen in the near future. Meanwhile, the competition for the labour force conventionally supplied to Russia by Central Asia is gradually intensifying, and residents of Central Asian states are increasingly considering moving to other countries with a more predictable migration climate. The Russian authorities' anti-migrant campaign can be explained as a manifestation of authoritarian dysfunction. Having failed to respond to specific warnings from the US and Iranian security services about a terrorist attack and to prevent such an attack, the authorities and law enforcement agencies have now been forced to imitate the rigidity of their security control with ex post facto actions designed for informational effect: this involves demonstrative cruelty to suspects and mass round-ups and bans on migrants. Thus, instead of investing in the effectiveness of intelligence services, authoritarian regimes prefer to invest in low-impact and costly technologies of total control and ignore the collateral damage they cause to the economy.

‘Anti-terrorist’ campaign

The Russian authorities have responded to the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, which Tajik citizens have been accused of committing, with an anti-migrant campaign. Vladimir Putin called illegal migration ‘a breeding ground for extremist detail and just outright criminality.’ And, now, former Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev has identified the prerequisites ‘for the disintegration of the country’ within the ‘man-made crises provoked by migrant flows’.

In the week after the terror attack, raids against illegal migrants took place in 68 regions, according to the Agency publication. As a result, at least 161 criminal cases have been opened, more than 1700 foreigners expelled from the country, and several hundred individuals have received military summonses. A number of regions have restricted the hiring of foreign workers. As it stands, various restrictions are in force in more than 30 regions, according to RTVi. Most often foreigners are banned from working in trade, passenger and freight transport (a ban on working in taxis has been introduced in 29 regions), food production, as well as catering and the hotel business. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has drafted a bill tightening a number of provisions on migration legislation. In particular, it limits the period that foreigners may stay in Russia to 90 days per calendar year. The State Duma has also tightened the regulations for the legalisation of foreigners by marriage.

As a result, the foreign ministries of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have recommended that their citizens refrain from travelling to Russia unless there is an urgent need. Tajik authorities have recorded an outflow of migrants, mass refusals to enter Russia and harassment of migrants at the ‘domestic level’. The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry has stated that it has not observed an increase in the number of refusals of entry, but has suggested waiting for the removal of ‘additional security measures and the regime of enhanced control of passage through the state border’.

The behaviour of the Russian authorities and law enforcement seems rather irrational. Russia is experiencing an unprecedented demand for labour, which, among other things, is leading to increased inflationary pressures in the economy. Besides the fact that Russia is experiencing declining birth rates and a shrinking number of entrants to the labour market, over the course of two years of war its labour market has apparently lost about 1 million people (1.5% of those employed) as a result of a war-related wave of relocation, mobilisation and the widespread recruitment of contract workers (→ Re:Russia: Record Underemployment). At the same time, the galvanisation of the defence industry and the ‘structural transformation’ of the economy has created additional demand for labour. Therefore, the need for labour migration appears to be more acute than ever and will only increase in the coming years.

The scale of the problem

In the first two years of the war, the inflow of labour migrants, contrary to expectations, remained stable. In 2023, 4.5 million foreigners crossed the Russian border to work, according to data from the FSB border service cited by Vedomosti (it is necessary to record ‘work’ as the purpose of the trip in order to then obtain an official work permit). This is even higher than the pre-pandemic level recorded in 2019, when 4.1 million potential workers crossed the border. Uzbekistan (2 million), Tajikistan (1.2 million) and Kyrgyzstan (0.7 million) had the largest number of entrants last year. For all three countries, the inflow exceeded the pre-pandemic level.

The FSB data, however, gives only some idea of the dynamics of entry, but it does not allow us to judge the total size of foreign labour force in Russia. The FSB records every border crossing, while many migrants may leave and return several times a year. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 2.3 million new work permits were issued to foreign citizens in 2023, this was 3.6% more than in 2022, and 99,100 new work permits (+23.6%). But this data, too, can only serve as a benchmark. First, citizens of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan can get a job without any papers or permits as their countries are members of the Eurasian Economic Union. Second, papers are issued for work in a particular region, and if you move, you have to get new ones issued. There are discussions about cancelling this restriction.

Due to the confusion and volatility of accounting rules, we have to rely on expert estimates of the relative total number of labour migrants in Russia. At the beginning of 2024, there may have been just under 8 million temporary and settled labour migrants in Russia, according to experts interviewed by Vedomosti. A recent report by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) estimates the number of labour migrants at 9-11 million people. Putin recently cited approximately the same estimate of 10 million people. But these estimates do not take into account illegal migrants, and according to the assumption of Kares Schenk, an associate professor at Kazakhstan's Nazarbayev University, quoted in the ORF report, there may be quite a few of these. Thus, migrant workers (temporary and settled) may account for about 10-12% of Russia’s labour force. Moreover, the need for them is growing. Due to the declining birth rate, the labour shortage will continue to grow and, by 2030, according to expert estimates, will amount to between 2 and 4 million people.

An exhaustible resource

The Russian authorities believe that the labour force from Central Asia and some other former Soviet countries has no alternative but to seek employment in the Russian labour market. This is partly true, but the full picture is much more complex.

First, the potential inflow of labour migrants from these countries has probably already reached its limit, and the need for workers continues to grow. Second, in the long term, the attractiveness of the Russian labour market will decrease due to the gradual weakening of the ruble, ORF expert Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash predicts. As a result of the devaluation that began last year, the ruble has fallen in value by 22% against the Kyrgyz som, by 18% against the Uzbek som, by 25% against the Armenian dram and by the same amount (25%) against the Kazakh tenge. Ruble incomes of migrants did, however, increase, but not by as much. According to surveys of migrants conducted by the Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, in 2022, the median monthly income in the Moscow region, where about 40% of all foreign migrants work, was 50,000 rubles, in 2023 it was 60,000 rubles. This is an increase of 20%, which almost compensates for the loss occurred as a result of devaluation. However, in other regions, this wage growth was lower.

Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash predicts that citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan will gradually switch to other markets where the economic situation is more stable and people are more tolerant. He notes that the Central Asian authorities are striving to do the same. For example, Uzbekistan, the main supplier of labour to Russia, is negotiating easier employment conditions for its citizens in Germany and a number of other EU countries, as well as in the United Kingdom. These negotiations are based on the EU's Central Asia strategy adopted in 2019, which includes the attraction of labour migrants from the region. Uzbekistan is also developing cooperation for labour migration with Israel and Saudi Arabia. So far, few labour migrants are travelling to developed countries. With the mediation of the Uzbek Agency for External Labour Migration, some 70,000 people have gone to work in developed countries over the past two years, with a total of 2-3 million Uzbek citizens working abroad. More obvious alternatives to Russia are Turkey and Kazakhstan, to which, like Russia, Uzbek citizens can travel without visas. The former, Jayaprakash notes, is increasingly chosen by women because of the similarity of the two cultures.

Data from a survey conducted by the Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration suggests that the majority of labour migrants are still optimistic about their prospects in Russia. In 2022 63% of such migrants felt this way, and in 2023 this rose to 71%. At the same time, the number of those wishing to stay in Russia for good is decreasing, which is an important indicator of absorption. In 2022, 31% of respondents shared such plans, in 2023 this fell to 25%. Accordingly, there are fewer people who want to obtain long-term status in Russia (temporary residence permit, residence permit or citizenship). In the survey conducted in 2023, 46% of those surveyed said they wanted to stay for the long term, compared to 58% a year earlier. The number of those who definitely do not want to do this increased from 28% to 40%. This is apparently due to the fear of going to war as the Russian authorities dream of filling the gaps not only in the labour market, but also the lack of manpower at the front at the expense of migrant workers. However, in the conditions of voluntary labour migration, these goals are incompatible.

Autocratic dysfunction: why persecute labour migrants?

The behaviour of the Russian authorities does indeed appear to be irrational. First, they did not pay any attention to the warnings of the American and Iranian special services about the terrorist attack being planned and did not ‘work through it’ despite fairly precise instructions. Then they accused Ukrainian and Western intelligence services of being the masterminds behind the attack and simultaneously launched a campaign against labour migrants from Central Asia. At the same time, mass document checks and staged raids, sometimes with the participation of special forces and film crews, on places where migrants congregate and live, of course, are unlikely to have an effect for the purposes of combating terrorism.

Paradoxically, the cause of such behaviour by the authorities is not only the rise of xenophobia and hostility towards migrants among the population after the terrorist attack. As demonstrated by a survey conducted two weeks after the attack by ExtremeScan, the anxiety and hostility towards migrants after Crocus did not increase, but remained at approximately the same level (→ Vladimir Zvonovsky, Alexander Khodykin: Between Moderate Xenophobia and Low Tolerance). When asked directly by sociologists whether the attitude of respondents' relatives and close ones towards migrants from Central Asia would change due to the fact that the perpetrators turned out to be from Tajikistan, only 10% stated that it would change significantly for the worse, 21% speculated that it would change but insignificantly, and 62% said that their attitude would not change. This shows that, in reality, citizens do not see the ethnic background of the attackers as the source of the terror threat.

The large-scale and senseless campaign by the authorities and law enforcement agencies against labour migrants in the initial weeks after the terrorist attack can only be explained by the desire to demonstrate to the population signs of ‘safety’ and reliability of threat control after the fact, thus ‘erasing’ the impression of their inaction and incompetence during the terrorist attack. Initially, scenes of evident cruelty in the detention of alleged terrorists served this function of confirming the capabilities of the intelligence services. In the next stage, the totality and large scale of control over migrants were intended to finally discredit the notion of the weakness and inefficiency of the state's power potential. Indeed, as sociological surveys show, participants did not perceive such actions by law enforcement agencies in that way. 59% of those surveyed by ExtremeScan stated that Russia's fight against terrorism is going well, with nearly equal proportions of respondents feeling as though law enforcement agencies either ‘completely failed’ (21%) or ‘coped well’ (23%) with the situation during the terror attack at Crocus City Hall. In a Levada Centre poll, responsibility for the fact that the attack was not prevented was attributed to foreign special services (48%), the management of the concert hall (26%) and a combination of circumstances. Only 22% placed the responsibility on the Russian security services.

The paradoxical dysfunction of autocracy is that it prefers to invest in total control by the security apparatus, which is designed to impress ordinary citizens rather than to effectively counter any terrorist threat. In doing so, it not only inflates the scale and cost of the security apparatus and control measures, but also sacrifices economic interests — in this case the migrants which are so essential to the economy — to create a false impression of its effectiveness.