Migrant workers are temporary foreigners. The word itself came from the German language and literally translates as “guest-worker”. In Russia, it is jargon and is often perceived by people as having a negative connotation. In our country, the concept of “migrant workers” has become widespread since the late 1990s, first in the media, and then in colloquial speech.
Term history
In German, this word was introduced into everyday life to replace the concept of “fredarbeiter”, which in Nazi times was used to refer to people brought to Germany for forced labor. The new term was devoid of the negative coloring inherent in the old one, and had a slightly different meaning. In the understanding of the Germans, migrant workers are workers who voluntarily came to the country at the invitation of the German government to carry out labor activities.
In Russian, at first the word was used with emphasis on the second syllable (in the German manner), but subsequently the emphasis shifted one syllable closer to the end. In the CIS, the flow of migrants was not, as in Germany, caused by the invitations of the government, so the term is perceived ironically. Often in electronic media you can see videos and photos making fun of visiting workers. Migrant workers in the CIS consider it abusive to apply this concept to them.
Migrant Suppliers
In a general sense, migrant workers are people from countries that are the poorest in the economic sense. They are cheap, but at the same time most often unskilled labor. Previously, suppliers of foreign workers in Europe were Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Russia, Italy, Poland, the countries of the former Yugoslavia (excluding Slovenia), Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.
Currently, the largest share of the total number of migrants in the CIS is made up of Tajik, Ukrainian, Chinese, Uzbek migrant workers, as well as immigrants from Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Moldova, and India. In Europe, the CIS is the leader in the absolute number of labor migrants, and in the world it is second only to the United States, where migrant workers are mainly Mexicans and other representatives of Latin America. The third place in the number of foreign workers is occupied by Germany, where the Turks go in large numbers, although Spain can soon squeeze it out of this position, where the predominant part of labor migrants are Arabs and Latinos.
Guest workers in Russia
Back in the 1970-1980s, Vietnamese citizens began to be massively involved in the USSR to work at the Moscow ZIL and AZLK plants. They concluded four- and six-year contracts with them, which could not be terminated on the initiative of employees. The Vietnamese worked conscientiously, almost did not drink alcohol, and actively bought up Soviet consumer goods, which had no demand from the local population. When the USSR collapsed and the factories went bankrupt, many workers left for the CIS and began to work illegally. But then no one has ever called them guest workers. Such a term appeared much later, when after 2003-2004. in Russia, the phenomenon of labor migration flows from Central Asia has become a reality.
Russian migrant workers felt especially free in connection with the adoption of new legislative standards in 2007, which greatly simplified the procedure for temporary registration in the country of foreigners who arrived for the purpose of labor activity. Such innovations mainly affected migrants from countries with which the Russian Federation has a visa-free regime. As a result of such events, the number of legally working foreigners in Russia, according to the FMS, has increased by two to three times.
How many migrant workers in Russia
As of December 2014, according to information available to the Federal Migration Service, there were 11.07 million foreign citizens in our country. Each year, about 1.3 million migrant workers arrive in Russia for legal work, and somewhere around 2.5 million people work illegally. About 450 thousand foreigners receive a residence permit or a temporary residence permit annually. Now you can imagine how many migrant workers in Russia! The main suppliers of labor to our country are Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Moldova.
Core professions
Migrant workers in Russia formed a kind of caste according to the type of work performed. So, at the lowest level are migrants engaged in unskilled heavy physical labor: digging trenches, digging holes, unloading and loading operations. Masons, painters, plasterers, tilers are considered more skilled workers. And the highest paid migrant workers are welders and electricians.
In general, the work of labor migrants is low paid, dirty and hard. Often, foreigners who came to work in their families are the only breadwinners, and in their homeland their salaries are many times lower than in Russia. The vacancies held by guest workers are not of interest to the local population due to the low income level and difficult working conditions. In Moscow alone, according to the Federal Migration Service for 2013, there are 800 thousand labor migrants, although independent experts say that this figure is greatly underestimated, and there are about 2 million migrant workers in the capital.
Society attitude
Regarding foreign workers, several different ideas are widespread in Russia. The prevailing opinion is that migrant workers are destitute and unhappy people, whom life circumstances forced them to earn money with dirty, hard, prestigious labor. They live like homeless people, in inhuman conditions, suffer from a hostile social environment that does not accept them, suffer humiliation and an aggressive attitude towards themselves. The Russians believe that labor migrants are people of a low intellectual and cultural level and therefore can endure harsh living and working conditions. Russian citizens are repelled by poor knowledge of the Russian language by foreign workers, which complicates the process of communication, external untidiness and an open demonstration of a lack of culture. At the same time, some Russians note the positive communicative qualities of migrant workers. As for the issues of obtaining Russian citizenship by migrants, opinions differ greatly here.
