Join PONARS Eurasia for a talk with Caress Schenk, an assistant professor of political science at Nazarbaev University, as she discusses the weaknesses in Russia's immigration control regime. The talk is part of PONARS Eurasia's New Voices on Russia speaker series.

Draconian immigration control mechanisms such as entry bans, migrant raids and deportation have recently dominated the discourse on Central Asian migrants in Russia. Many argue that these control mechanisms have reduced migrants’ ability to come to Russia, inadvertently showing that the state has a great deal of capacity for migration control. Large numbers of migrants on blacklists and in deportation statistics demonstrate to the public that the government is both serious about and capable of controlling immigration. However, these efforts are merely a continuation of selective, yet publicly visible, control in order to ensure a steady portion of the immigrant population will be located in the informal labor market.

Migration management in Russia is a window into how public policy, the federal system and patronage are used to manage conflicting demands. This multi-level balancing act demonstrates the importance of high-level politics, institutional interests and constraints and the conditions under which government actors at all levels can pursue their own interests as the state seeks political equilibrium. A scarcity of legal labor and the ensuing growth of illegal immigration can act as a patronage resource for bureaucratic and regional elites. Nevertheless, the government must always keep any eye toward public opinion, which creates a strategic role for anti-immigrant populism as political leaders seek to guide and manage public opinion in Russia.