Eurasian migration system: regional areas of functioning (on the example of the South Urals)

Abstract

After the collapse of the USSR, the regions of Russia and the former Soviet republics were intensively integrated into the new global processes of population mobility. Using the example of the South Urals, the authors of the manuscript show how the Russian region became a part of large-scale migration exchanges in the post-Soviet period. The article describes the main ethnic groups that took part in migration processes, shows the reasons and factors of population movement, reveals the degree of their influence on the socio-economic situation in the Chelyabinsk region, identifies the reasons for xenophobic sentiments of the host country. The source base was made up of archival documents, the results of field research by the authors, as well as materials from sociological surveys that took place in recent years. The study showed that the basis of Central Asian migration to the Chelyabinsk region was made up of Russian-speaking residents of Kazakhstan and, at later stages, Tajiks. The peculiarities of the development of urban space by them, the difficulties of incorporating migrants of other ethnicities into the host community give rise to more and more obvious social tension today. The South Ural was integrated into the processes of large-scale cross-border movements mainly from Central Asia, which for a long period of time determined the trajectories of the movement of foreign ethnic migrants.