Identifying Gaps in Migrant Integration Policies in Russia

Russia’s newfound immigrant destination status has caught both citizens and policymakers by surprise. As the country struggles to adapt to the new reality, immigration politics is dominated by regulations of legal employment while policies that help migrant integration lag behind. This paper discusses the results of field work in Russia which aimed at identifying gaps in services to migrants. We focus our discussion on problems of integration of families of migrants with children. We pose that the inclusion of migrant children into the public education system socializes the family into local communities through such mechanisms as interaction with teachers, school officials, classmates’ parents, participation in extracurricular activities, and more. Yet, schools are ill-prepared to accommodate the needs of a growing number of immigrant children. The paper concludes with policy suggestions that could alleviate the gap in services and contribute to a more successful integration of migrants with families.