Over the past several decades, migration has emerged as one of the most troublesome issues for states. It has also been an exciting field for scholars and researchers as it still has many unexplored lacunas. It is a relatively new area for Russian scholars; the lack of translations of classical sociological works on migration and the lack of qualified specialists have had a negative effect on scientific quality of research on migration in Russia. Nevertheless, this book proved that the gap is being filled. It presents a number of interesting sociological and cross-disciplinary articles in the field of migration, some of which are of a particular interest and high quality.
The starting point of the book is that the end of the Cold War/ fall of the Soviet Union created new phenomena that provided scholars with new areas for research. One of these phenomena is post-soviet migration, that, on the one hand, is a part of and follows all the laws of ‘the universal mechanical movement” of people, but, on the other hand, is specific and unique, not least due to the diversity and complexity of the migratory patterns in the former USSR. Accordingly, the authors applied already elaborated theories and tools to work with the data as well as attempted developing new instruments on the basis of empirical material that could be used for interpretation of migration in general.
Although the book is claimed to focus on “transformation of migration processes on the territory of Eurasia”, its geography is limited to some of the Newly Independent States. The two common to all authors tasks are defined as, firstly, “keeping a balance between the temptation of conceptualization (of the phenomenon of Post-Soviet migration) … and systematic scientific description of migration flows”. The temptation of conceptualization sometimes overweight, but it did give a reader an opportunity to get acquainted with interesting typologies, theories and arguments developed by the authors.
The collection is opened by a rather weak article of Thomas Schwarz ‘Migration Configuration and Regimes’, whose typology of post-soviet migration (“historical migration processes”, “restitution of historical migration-regulating interventions” and “migration in the course of integration of the CIS in the global migration system”) appears to be intriguing but unconvincing. The attempt of describing the process of formation of national migration regimes in the CIS only revealed that migration is a highly politicized issue, and that these regimes are still in the process of formation. An important observation was, however, that building of a ‘ponderous centralized structure’ of national migration regimes is a dominant tendency in these countries, as opposed to the West.
The second article written by Sergei Panarin, ‘Ethnically Based Migration in the Post-Soviet Space’ is a pleasant contrast to the first one. Starting with an observation that numerous theories of migration do not come together in one coherent theory and cannot explain all the complexity of post-soviet migration, Panarin argues that ethnicity has been playing a major role in the latter. He proposes a term and a hole set of tools for research on ‘ethnic migration’ that can be, no doubt, particularly important for scholars working in this field. Apart from that, the author discusses a new definition of ‘human security’ taking a position of humanists L.Chen^[1] and G.Lousher^[2] as well as aspects of the notion of sovereignty in its relations to migration and migrants. Using the newly developed tools for ‘ethnic migration’ and ‘security’, Panarin proposes a strong interpretation of the post-soviet migration.
The article of Hilary Pilkington and Annie Phizacklea presents a short description of some theories of migration (structuralism and neoclassic theory). It could be of interest for beginners in the area of migration studies, since it demonstrates how theories are used for interpretation of empiric material on the example of migration in the former Soviet states.
Nurbulat Masanov’s article on “Migration Transformation: The Case of Kazakhstan” is a thorough historical work that highlights some aspects of ethnic relations and migration in this state. A number of following articles propose case studies of particular ethnic groups (minorities) in respect to migration. These articles make the emphasis on issues of identity: language and culture and on recent developments in Russian ‘diasporas’ in Central Asia.
A particularly interesting article by Natalya Kosmarskaya ‘Conceptualizing Problems of Adaptation Among Forced Migrants in Rural Russia’ deals with the often neglected aspect of migration – adaptation and integration of newcomers. It is a common miscalculation of scholars that as soon as migrants come to live into ethnically close to them society, they will be warmly accepted into the core group. Usually, this issue is placed outside the field of migration as non-relevant. The author revealed the difficulties of identification in the same ethnic group based not only on the argument of ‘newcoming’. She argues that being a minority in a culturally different society changes the identity of people and creates an obstacle to fast and successful integration into the ethnic community. No doubt, this is a new and promising area for research.
In general, the book gives a positive impression, due to the quality of articles of S.Panarin and N.Kosmarskaya and interesting case studies that deserve more attention that we can give in this short review. It is stimulating that the authors speak from such different positions: not only it is a cross-disciplinary study but, also, these articles cover a wide range of leading theories in the field of migration. Arguably, current patterns and trends in migration studies suggest that “a full understanding of contemporary migratory processes will not be achieved by relying on the tools of one discipline alone, or by focusing on a single level of analysis”^[3]. Rather, a variety of theories, assumptions, and perspectives are required for better understanding of sources, patterns and laws of migration.