In May of this year, Western media reported that 40-45% of relocants who left the country in 2022 will return to Russia. In light of these estimates, the question of interest is what the overall migration results for Russia in 2023 will be, especially against the backdrop of the previous year 2022, in which it faced a massive outflow of relocants.
This question is not easy due to the fact that migration itself is an extremely difficult object to study. People can move several times throughout the year and, as a result, come to the attention of various government bodies, which often count them in their statistics again. Different government institutions that record migration take into account different categories of migration, which is why their data does not converge and often even contradicts each other. Migration itself is very often not a “complete” process. Having once changed their place of residence, people can subsequently return to their homeland or even move to another place, which makes it difficult to assess the final results of relocation.
Of the available sources that make it possible to estimate migration for the entire year 2023, today you can use the data of Rosstat, which records only “permanent” migration (that is, those who withdrew or were registered with migration authorities at their place of residence, as well as at their place of residence). stay for 9 months or more), as well as information from the FSB Border Service for border crossings. The first of these sources records only “long-term” migrants who have bothered to prepare the necessary documents, and the second records the number of border crossings, which can be multiple times during the year. There is also various “indirect” information - the number of resumes of applicants in the countries where the relocants went, data from cellular operators on the number of SIM cards, etc.
In 2023, according to Rosstat, there was a decrease in the number of both those arriving from foreign countries in Russia (from 730.3 to 560.4 thousand) and those leaving abroad (from 668.4 to 450.4 thousand). The reduction in the volume of emigration by almost one and a half times is an indicator of the decline in the wave of relocants who were actively leaving the country after the start of the North American War, although it was observed on a reduced scale last year. As a result, the positive balance of migration exchange with foreign countries for Russia almost doubled compared to 2022 - from 61.9 thousand to 110.1 thousand people.
Moreover, migration growth in Russia was observed both in the CIS countries, where it was positive in the previous year, and in non-CIS countries. In 2022, the migration decline in the Russian Federation due to the outflow of population to countries outside the CIS, according to Rosstat, amounted to 16.5 thousand, and in 2023 it was replaced by an increase of 10 thousand people.
At the same time, the “country-specific” structure of migration flows between Russia and its neighboring countries still looks quite alarming. In 2022, there was an outflow of population from Russia to seven out of 10 CIS countries, and there was a positive balance of migration exchange with only three of them - Tajikistan (+87.3 thousand), Ukraine (+27.3 thousand) and Moldova ( +2.4 thousand). It was Tajikistan that in 2022 provided Russia with a migration increase in population at the expense of neighboring countries, more than blocking its outflow to the Transcaucasus and other countries of Central Asia. The result of this was the rapid growth of the Tajik diaspora in Russia, the consequences of which in recent years have become increasingly felt both in the outback and in large cities, where the formation of Central Asian enclaves has begun.
In 2023, Russia lost population in migration exchanges with only two CIS countries – Belarus (-258 people) and Ukraine (-29.6 thousand). Moreover, the outflow of migrants to Ukraine more than blocked their influx in the previous year. In all other CIS countries, the outflow of population was replaced by an influx. As before, the largest one was from Tajikistan (+81.7 thousand), which in terms of net emigration to the Russian Federation was several times ahead of all other CIS countries combined. Kazakhstan took second place in terms of population influx to the Russian Federation at the end of last year (+11.4 thousand), only slightly ahead of Armenia (+11.2 thousand). In terms of the scale of the net influx of population to the Russian Federation, Tajikistan is ahead of Kazakhstan seven (!) times, despite the fact that most of the Kazakh emigration is represented by ethnic Russians, while only the Tajik and Uzbek population travels from the Republic of Tajikistan to Russia.
The reason for the mass Tajik immigration lies in the uncontrolled, and often illegal, distribution of Russian citizenship to immigrants from this republic, the conditions for which are created by the agreement on dual citizenship between Russia and Tajikistan in 1995. In 2022, Tajiks received 173.6 thousand Russian passports, which became an absolute record in the entire history of their naturalization in Russia, and in the first half of 2023 - 87 thousand. At the same time, the number of arrivals in the Russian Federation from this republic in 2022 (+186.5 thousand) practically coincided with the number of cases of granting them citizenship.
In 2023, “permanent” immigration from Tajikistan to Russia remained at almost the same level (+171.2 thousand), and the number of passports issued to citizens of the republic in January-June was about half of this figure. If the same pace of naturalization of citizens of Tajikistan is maintained, its scale in 2023 may be the same as in 2022.
Last year, Russia had a positive balance of migration exchange with the vast majority of non-CIS countries, where a year earlier there had been an outflow of population. At the end of 2022, the only country outside the CIS with which Russia had a positive migration balance was Abkhazia. In 2023, Rosstat recorded a small negative balance of migration exchange with only seven non-CIS countries – the USA, Serbia, Finland, Israel, Canada, North Korea and Afghanistan. The net migration loss of population in exchange with these countries amounted to 1.2 thousand people. With all other non-CIS countries represented in Rosstat data, the migration balance was positive. The leaders in this indicator were China (+3.9 thousand) and India (+3.1 thousand). At the same time, an influx of population was also observed from such typical countries of origin for Russian relocants as Germany, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Turkey.
The reduction in emigration to most Western countries is also confirmed by the data of the FSB Border Service on the departure of Russian citizens abroad. In some EU countries, travel from Russia has stopped altogether. Thus, 9 thousand people left the Russian Federation for the Czech Republic in 2022, and not a single one in 2023. There were no recorded departures of Russian citizens to Slovakia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Canada. 17.1 thousand people left for Switzerland in 2022, and only two in 2023. In Germany, which is one of the main countries of attraction for relocants, departures decreased by more than 40 times (from 63.1 to 1.5 thousand).
A similar situation is observed in most other Western countries. Thus, departures from Russia to the United States decreased by 45 times (from 18.1 to 0.4 thousand), to Spain - by 17 times (from 23.6 to 1.4 thousand), to France - by 16 times ( from 20.2 to 1.3 thousand), etc. The group of non-CIS countries where the departure of Russian citizens continued to grow included Israel, Poland, Norway, Serbia and Lithuania. It is curious that the most significant increase in the number of trips last year was to Serbia (by 41.3%, from 100 to 141.3 thousand) and Poland (by 29.6%, from 133.7 to 173.3 thousand). .
Despite the outbreak of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, travel to Israel also increased last year (by 13.6%, from 100.4 to 114 thousand). At the same time, in the fourth quarter, the number of those who left Russia for this country, compared to the same period in 2022, decreased by more than one and a half times (from 33.8 to 20.3 thousand people), which indicated that a noticeable compression of the migration flow.
In general, migration results in 2023 for Russia turned out to be more favorable than in 2022, when the country, due to a sharp escalation of the military conflict in Ukraine, faced a massive outflow of relocants for the first time in a long time. Last year, these processes mostly turned in the opposite direction, and the Russian Federation developed a positive migration balance with most CIS and non-CIS countries. According to Rosstat, this made it possible to compensate for the natural population decline by 41.3%, smoothing out the consequences of the demographic crisis.
At the same time, the structure of the migration influx to the Russian Federation is still dominated by immigrants from Central Asian countries, and Tajikistan again took first place in the number of “permanent” migrants last year. This composition of immigrants leads to a change in the ethnic structure of the most “migrant-dependent” regions, the formation of ethnic enclaves and the aggravation of interethnic contradictions, which in recent years is noticeable to the naked eye.
https://www-ritmeurasia-ru.translate.goog/news--2024-06-19--ne-relokantami-edinymi-migracionnye-itogi-2023-g.-v-rossii-73998?utm_source=finobzor.ru&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en
Home
Latest images
Register
Log in
