Researching informal labour migration: Russian realities

Modern Russian society is affected by 'non-resident informal employment': a regular productive activity that is not firmly and officially registered in accordance with Russian foreign labour regulations. A specific characteristic of this phenomenon in Russia is that the multimillion flow of CIS marking age citizens enters Russia absolutely legally, but with the intention of working in the so-called shadow or semi-legal economy. The authors' main aim is to present a complex and balanced evaluation of the situation. On one hand they argue that this labour migration was of some use to Russia, i.e. in the early 1990's large groups of 'informal' foreign workers filled an economic niche, unpopular among local labour force (construction and repair, small sized retail trade etc.) and thus enabled to solve the deficit in many services and satisfy needs for basic products. On the other hand, a negative reflection of such shadow employment exceeded all of its conjuncture benefits from post-soviet 'gast-arbeiter' labour. The permanency of these migration contingents undermines the Russian labour market, not only from the point of wages and working conditions. It provides and maintains not only unfair labour practices, but also the deterioration of common morals and ethics: the devaluation of positive values, the predominance of cynic pragmatism in Russian people and legislative nihilism. Reprinted by permission of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb