INTRODUCTION

On one extreme, a body of scholarship with radical anti-Western perspectives warns of China as Russia’s single largest threat. Projections of up to 10 million Chinese immigrants are posited as ready to swarm into Russia. According to this view, Chinese emigration would be a demographic catastrophe by making the Chinese the dominant ethnic group in the region, undermining traditional societal norms and customs, contributing to crime and corruption, unbalancing an already precarious labor market, and leading inevitably to increased tensions and likely interstate conflict.^[1] China is presumed to be nursing territorial claims on the region and for Russia’s Far Eastern residents, the future is supposedly as fairly grim. As they look ahead, the majority of residents can allegedly anticipate of hostile actions by China as military conflict seems assured.^[2]
On the opposite extreme, a body of scholarship based on empirical evidence conducted over recent years suggests otherwise. This newer research indicates that not only are predictions of tens of thousands of potential immigrants entering the region wildly exaggerated, but that in fact more than 40% of the population of the region see Chinese migrants as posing little or no threat to Russia as a whole, only a moderate threat to the region, and of little threat to themselves personally.^[3] The important perception that emerges from this research is that there is a window of opportunity to be capitalized upon in the immediate future. According to this view, promoting cooperative interethnic relations, developing governmental and non-governmental organizations to develop cross-cultural education opportunities and designing public and private institutions, to which both sides can take grievances and mediate them successfully, offering the most likely remedies to ameliorating existing tensions. Among these remedies, questions of membership, including dual citizenship, naturalization processes, and the fundamental challenge of developing a morally defensible and inclusive form of citizenship loom large.^[4]
Further complicating this already difficult situation, is the extant body of literature on immigration, citizenship, globalization, and policy development, largely Western in orientation and perspective, to which experts and advocates largely turn for assistance. This literature, intended for audiences and circumstances of a decidedly non-Russian, non-Asian ilk, attempts to offer guidance (from dubious orientations and with mostly inapplicable suggestions) to scholars and experts wrestling with an uncommonly complex set of peculiarly parochial circumstances. In this literature, traditional remedies, including pluralistic political solutions, assimilative social and economic solutions, and differential exclusion of migrant groups are offered as possible near term solutions. What advocates who argue for the implementation of the policy prescriptions derived from this “Western-oriented” literature fail to appreciate, however, is the near impossibility of these solutions as plausible policy positions given the Russian Far East’s unique circumstances.
This paper explores contemporary research from all three perspectives, the hard-line anti-Western solution perspective, the more contemporary empirical literature that challenges the crisis mentality of the hard-liners, and the body of literature from Western experts which offers guidance, based on models of immigration and assimilation under circumstances quite unlike those existing in the Russian Far East. This examination will evolve into a larger exploration of possible alternative perspectives that promise to assist the region and that clarifies some of the most salient issues and challenges to which scholars must turn their attention.

PERSPECTIVES IN THE LITERATURE

The situation in the Russian regions bordering on China is among the most complicated. Russia has an extensive border with China; Primorski and Khabarovski krais, the Jewish autonomous oblast’ and Amurskaia oblast’ all border China directly. The Russian government’s decision to put an “open border” policy into effect in 1992 has driven subsequent events in the region. According to some estimates, the current situation in the Russian Far East already is one of Chinese immigrants exceeding the numbers of local indigenous Russian citizens. In Primorski krai, one estimate insists that the number of Chinese immigrants exceeds the number of Russian citizens by 1.5-2 times.^[5] Continuous out-migration of Russians from the region, structural changes in employment opportunities, and Chinese strategic policies aimed at increasing labor exports have all led to devastating consequences in the receiving Russian Far East regions. Illegal immigration, visa violations, trafficking in women and children, increased crime rates, health hazards, environmental degradation, smuggling and poaching, and labor displacements are typical charges presented as direct consequences of the influx of immigrants. From the early 1990’s until recently, this perspective held prominence in the literature on immigration to the Russian Far East, and certainly drove much of world interest and reaction to the situation.
More recently, a series of conferences, new scholarship, and significant new empirical research has conscientiously questioned the assumptions of the previous research paradigm. Pal Nyiri, Vilya Gelbras, Irina Malakha, and Mikhail Alexseev have all contributed substantially to the emergence of this more sophisticated understanding of circumstances in the Russian Far East. Alexseev^[6], most recently conducted significant survey research in the region, primarily in the Primorye krai, and has presented intriguing new data that illuminate the current circumstances in a very sophisticated manner. Although the scope of this project precludes an in-depth presentation, brief recapitulation of Alexseev’s research is important at this point.
Data from the passport and visa registration services of Primorye krai, memos from the Pacific Regional Directorate of the Russian Federal Border service, and data collected from interviews with chief migration service officials from 1999 to 2001 suggest that the number of Chinese immigrants in Primorye is, at most, 1-1.5% of the local Russian population on any given day. Moreover, the actual number of migrants is unlikely to be any higher. The percentage of PRC visitors in Primorye who remain there illegally has dropped from 34% in 1994 to approximately 0.4% in 1998. The number of illegal border crossings, attempted entries on forged passports, visa violations, and deportations also declined over the same period. The flow of registered Chinese migrant workers has remained steady at approximately 7-8 thousand annually during the same period. As Alexseev notes, in putting Russian statistical data to the test, systematic visual observations find no evidence that the Chinese presence in the region would be even remotely similar to the Chinese presence in New York, San Francisco, or even Moscow.^[7]
Malakha similarly notes that, in perspective, Primorye’s immigration problem is not the most significant one faced by Russian krais. In Krasnodarski krai, for example, more than 1 million people a year (for the past ten years) have immigrated, and every fourth resident is a migrant. There is no situation to compare to it in any other region of the Russian Federation. In terns of sheer numbers, Orenburgskaia oblast’, which borders on Kazakstan, receives the largest number of migrants annually (16,000 in 1994 alone and more than 60,000 migrants and refugees are officially registered.)^[8] Thus, the Far Eastern region, apparently, faces less emigration than many of its counterparts across the nation.
Given the existing level of confusion, the clearly divergent perspectives, and the appearance, at least, that the circumstances in the Russian Far East regarding immigration may or may not be as bad as first reported, the question becomes “now, what?” If the perspectives so completely undermine each other, stymie scholarly comprehension, and lead to mischaracterizations of the circumstances and to policy prescriptions totally inapplicable in the reality of the situation, what could serious and concerned scholars contribute – and from what sources can they reliably draw information from which to generate policy alternatives? More to the point, might it be reasonable to ask why bother?
Importantly, one of the few details on which scholars can agree with any regularity is that Far Eastern Russia occupies strategic territory significant to the entire Pacific Rim and vital to Russian domestic interests. Located at the junction of China, North Korea and Russia, the region is poised at the intersection of significant international security priorities. Moreover, the region contains the site of the only Russian all-weather port, the eastern terminus of Siberian Railway, it holds great potential as an international shipping hub and is rich in natural resources, including minerals and timber. In short, the Far East is of incalculable value to the Russian economy and to strategic stability in the region. To the extent that these independently verifiable characteristics do, in fact, define the region, it becomes incumbent upon migration scholars, international and strategic affairs scholars, strategists of all kinds, and those otherwise genuinely concerned on humanitarian grounds to carefully assess their own and other scholarship. As much is at stake, proceeding cautiously in proffering solutions and carefully testing assumptions about accepted remedies is of critical importance. An example or two will be useful here in illuminating this problem.
Much of the contemporary literature considering citizenship, migration, ethnic diversity, nationality policies, membership, new communities, etc. has been developed to capture the experience and results of nations experiencing high immigration activity based on the effects of globalization, responses to the development of the European Union, as a result of the break-up of the former Soviet Union, and as a manifestation of the Middle East conflict. In this literature (see Castles, Feldblum, and Bryant, for example)^[9]several consistent assumptions “frame” the message intended for the audience. First, there is a presumption that migratory flows are to receiving countries with at least some greater capacity for assimilating the influx than the sending country. Second, there is a presumption that economic circumstances are better, if only marginally, in the receiving country than in the sending region. Based on this fundamental assumption, the following similarities are said to routinely emerge during periods of large scale immigration: a) the dynamics of migratory processes transform temporary entrants into permanent settlers with the formation of ethic enclaves; b) labor market segmentation and residential segregation occur as a result of immigrants weak economic position and lack of local social networks; c) ethnic groups increasingly develop their own economic, social, and cultural infrastructure and political mobilization; increasing interactions between local populations and immigrant groups vary from peaceful co-existence to hostility and violence; and finally, there is an imperative for the state to react through policies concerned with employment, education, housing, citizenship and public order.^[10]
The reactions available to receiving countries, in conceptual terms, fall into four categories: total exclusion (preventing entry of immigrants), differential exclusion (immigrants are incorporated into certain specific areas of society – like low-wage labor – but are denied access to others such as welfare systems, citizenship, and political participation); assimilation (incorporating migrants into society through a one-sided process through which immigrants are expected to give up their distinctive linguistic, cultural and social characteristics and become indistinguishable from the majority population); or pluralist models that accept immigrant populations as separate ethnic communities and grant equal rights in all social spheres. Two variants of pluralism may emerge, a laissez-faire version where difference is tolerated, but not seen as something the state is obliged to support and explicit multiculturalism wherein government policies imply the willingness of the majority group to accept difference and to change social behavior and institutional structures accordingly.^[11]
This clarity of typologies and model building is explanatory, valuable, and may be of significant use in the countries from which the research is developed. In predictable, economically developed, liberal democracies with historically stable civil societies and a pre-existing ethic of rights-based citizenship, accommodation of large influxes of immigrants is painfully difficult. It is not, however, impossible, as the last fifty years have demonstrated. In the Russian Federation, however, these fundamental conditions and essential assumptions do not exist. Historical, social, cultural, economic, and regime differences make the reaction to large-scale immigration much different among the local populations and challenge all institutions (including governmental and civil society institutions) well past their capacity to respond no matter whether the responses require legal, policy, economic, or social adjustments.

THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST: PARADOXES AND IMPONDERABLES

There are numerous reasons that make the Russian Far East essentially unlike any other region. Research conducted by the Center for the Study of Public Opinion at the Vladivostok Institute of History, Ethnography and Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences provides an instructive view into prevailing public opinions in the region^[12]. Research shows that local Russians routinely and significantly overestimate the scale of Chinese presence in Primorye. Survey research reveals a strong perception among majority residents that Chinese migration in Russia’s southernmost Pacific province is much more likely to increase in the next 20 years. Almost 82% of Russian citizens polled say that they think the Chinese see Primorye as historically belonging to China, and 74% of residents report feeling that China will, in the long run, annex Primorye. One compelling statistic is that, most native Russians feel it is unlikely that the annexation of Primorye by China would occur by the use of force. Rather, they believe that Moscow is likely to simply negotiate Primorye away. This perception is consistent with that of the former provincial Governor Nazdratenko’s, who persistently accused Moscow of neglecting Russian interests in the Far East throughout the 1990s.
Ethnic stereotypes play a large part in perceptions of security in the region. When surveyed about potential governmental responses to Chinese immigration, it becomes clear that a prevailing perception of a “yellow peril” is very salient among the majority of the population in the region. Russians surveyed reported believing that Chinese migrants were undesirable, protective of their cultural values, and distant. Responses to questions that asked about stereotypical differences between Russians and Chinese migrants are more telling. Russian respondents overwhelmingly saw the Chinese as more hardworking, entrepreneurial, and greedy, sly and less generous than ethic Russians! Insecurity also arises out of perceptions of economic uncertainty and relative economic deprivation. Most survey respondents reported that they associate the Chinese presence with more harm than good when job availability, crime, and the environment are concerned and respondents similarly see the Chinese as the ones receiving the net benefits of the present immigration situation.
When survey respondents were asked to evaluate potential policy responses to Chinese migration, most reported preferring hostile political and military measures to counter Chinese migration. More than 65% of respondents favored total closure of the border with China. 57% of respondents favored having the Cossacks or other paramilitary groups ensure order in the face of Chinese migrants, and 89% of respondents came out in favor of deportation of illegal Chinese migrants (which, in reality means most of the migrant workers and traders). More than 78% of those interviewed advocated denial of permanent resident status.
While Primorye residents are a bit less anxious when it comes to economic responses to Chinese migration, hostility quickly reappears if economic activity is associated with the migrant’s proclivity to settle in the area. 96% of respondents indicated that they were against land ownership by migrants, half the respondents wanted Chinese language media permanently banned, and 76% want Chinatowns banned in Primorye krai.
As Alexseev notes, these responses show how few Chinese migrants locating in the region are required to trigger powerful latent hostilities. The interethnic tolerance threshold among the local Russian population appears to be precariously low. These attitudes point to the potential for violent conflict given existing demographic trends that project large-scale Chinese immigration into the Russian Far East in the future. Chinese migration, coupled with unemployment pressures in the region, sets the stage for job competition. From 1995 to 1997, the number of job seekers per vacancy increased in 14 of 20 Far Eastern cities and border districts.^[13] After 1998, employment pressures improved, but when unemployment rates rise, predictably, hostility against migrant workers increases.^[14]
Arguably, these types of ethnic tensions are intrinsic in any region where demographic trends are shifting based on migration patterns. There is nothing particularly novel in a majority population exhibiting visceral reactions to in-migrating groups. Yet, important factors differentiate the Russian Far East from other areas experiencing large scale-migration and the underlying factors combined with ethnic prejudices probably threaten long-term relations with the migrants and undermine the likelihood of long-range strategic stability in the region. A few examples will prove useful at this point.
Migration and assimilation has been characterized as an essential element of economies in development. In this model, the development of new economic capacity and advanced technology depends, in large part, upon an available, compliant, and numerous labor supply, available to entrepreneurs at low wage rates. An assumption that wages, living conditions, and opportunities in the receiving state are greater than in the sending state (even if only marginally so) is key. Changes in education levels, urbanization, industrial production, and the structure of social benefits are tied directly to this labor market development. This conception, the historical development model of most of the industrially developed Western world has been the hegemonic model of migration policy development and adaptation for more than a century. It is, however, hard to argue that the Russian Far East fits the predominant development model in any important way.
Both Russia and China have the shared experience of historical restrictions on free labor movement. Thus, the migration process can usefully be compared to the phenomenon of a Bonsai tree. Labor has been restricted, tied-up, and trained in such a way that even after it is officially released, labor continues to follow non-market directions. Patterns formed under historical restriction policies leave deep imprints and continue to affect the dynamics of evolution processes in both countries.
While the Russian Far East exhibits some tendencies characteristic of transition economies, it is indicative that the largest proportion of employment is still based in agriculture and industry compared with other industrially and technologically developed countries. In the Russian Far East, small- and medium-sized businesses are under-developed. While it is clear that the service industry, the construction industry, and business will require additional labor resources in the future, such circumstances are as yet unrealized. As Ginsburgs notes, Russian officials are quite candid about the circumstances. Even where members of the Russian diaspora are concerned, Russian officials stress that they should not rush to repatriate as “the Motherland is not yet in shape to receive them properly.”^[15] If Russian officials are not yet prepared to receive returning Russians who are arguable native citizens and part of the majority ethnic population, it is not hard to imagine that their receptiveness for other large in-migrating groups is quite muted. The Far Eastern economy is additionally characterized by structural peculiarities that exacerbate problems in relationships between Russian populations and the migrating Chinese. While there is a documentable deficit of highly trained, technologically advanced workers – a traditional deficiency in the Far East – Chinese migrants are typically unskilled and cut-off (under present policy conditions) from opportunities by which they might acquire higher skill levels. The existing regional labor structure is a product of its earlier formation – one of industrial structures requiring great quantities of workers, with an inflexibility and heaviness that creates substantial lag in adjusting to all innovative changes. Moreover, until now there has been virtually no development of the characteristic institutionalized regimes of collective bargaining, wage and work condition regulations, and key provisions for safety nets to compensate for risk of accident, illness, loss of employment, old-age pensions, etc.^[16]
A second structural issue peculiar to the Russian Far East is its particular incapacity for the assimilation of migrants. Traditional assimilation models hold that during significant migrations, migrant groups assimilate into the majority culture to the point of invisibility and over time become part of the dominant group. As Alexseev observed, Chinese assimilation will be nearly impossible in the Russian Far East given the intensity of resistance among local majority populations to even simple interactions with Chinese migrants. Less than 50% of survey respondents contacted during his research reported believing that Chinese migrants can be assimilated. Only 4.7% of responders approve of Chinese-Russian marriages, 56% disapprove of their relatives marrying a Chinese migrant, and more than 80% believe that if Chinese migrants settle down in the area they will not play by Russian rules, but will gradually impose their own way of life and will ask for autonomy and protection from across the Chinese border. Opposition to one’s relatives marrying Chinese citizens and support for complete closure of the Russian Chinese border are closely related variables.^[17]
A related impediment to assimilation (and implementation of pluralistic models as well) is the virtual absence of civil society institutions in the region. The position of migrants in host countries is often crucially affected by the available options for involvement in the host country’s civic community. Although Russians surveyed in the Alexseev research reported a general acceptance of and tolerance for the development of organizations to foster cultural exchanges (56% approve) and language instruction centers (62% approve), the kinds of NGO, community-based service providers that are so intrinsic to facilitating either assimilation or pluralism have not yet emerged in the Russian Far East. Partially, this absence can be explained as a function of ethnic hostility and partially as a function of perceived relative economic deprivation. Where civil society institutions exist, they are singularly focused on the needs of and services for the majority population, but because the emergence of a viable civil society sector has been delayed, even those organizations struggle against long odds and difficult circumstances. The constitution of citizenries – or the civil societies of civic nation states – raises questions about the principles of inclusion and exclusion, assimilation, “fit,” and identities within which the accommodation of difference can begin.
Pluralism, on the other hand, refers to both plural societies and pluralistic politics. Plural societies display varying degrees of segmentation, differentiation based on race, ethnicity, language or religion and horizontal differentiations of class or stratum. Pluralist politics refers more to the articulation of political differences and legitimate opposition in the political system – and in this system multiple group pressures are said to promote a plurality of public end. Importantly, all groups are presumed to have enough resources – votes, money, leaders, organizational and presentational skills, and access to the system to affect outcomes^[18]. This description does not describe circumstances in contemporary Far Eastern Russia.
In fact, as Ginsburgs attests, the situation in Far Eastern Russia is awash in paradox.^[19] While the Russian government has been testing model after model and then reforming the test-models of citizenship status, Russian law is motivated to limit the incidences of dual citizenship, ration the potential for citizenship, and trim the available opportunities for migrants to formally enroll in the civic community. The pool of Chinese migrants increasingly contains a growing assortment of adults and their progeny whose status under Russian law and treatment at the hands of local authorities are shaped by both their current citizenship (or lack of it) and by their ability and willingness to acquire Russian citizenship through circumstances of birth, naturalization, or other standard means of conscription or enlistment. While the numbers may fluctuate from year to year, they can be counted upon to remain a fixture on the Russian Far East’s scene for years to come.^[20] Yet, there is little evidence to suggest that Russian federal government policy, regional government policy, local majority populations, or the structural conditions that could facilitate the development of more pluralistic accommodations of Chinese migrants are likely to emerge anytime in the foreseeable future. Given this reality, we can expect to observe a higher degree of marginalization of migrants, separation between them and the rest of the population and high incidences of racial violence, extreme right anti-immigrant mobilizations and high degrees of ethnic mobilization outside the political structure. Separatism is likely to increase as communities continue to polarize. The paradox here is that countries with more pluralistic policies tend to actually achieve a much higher degree of economic, social and political integration than do countries which set out to differentially exclude or assimilate migrants. Castles notes that the distinction can be summed up by saying that pluralist models lead to the emergence of ethnic communities, officially accepted as integral parts of a changing nation while other, more exclusionary models lead to ethnic minorities which will never be seen as a legitimate part of a society unwilling to accept change^[21]. The unattached observer is constantly confronted with the impression that exclusion will remain the predominate model in the Russian Far East well into the new century.

CONCLUSIONS

For generations we have conceived of the world as divided into states, each of which exercises sovereignty over a specific territory and population. The population of a state consists primarily of its “citizens.” In an increasingly mobile, globalizing world, however, many persons – sometimes millions – are not citizens of the state in which they reside. In everyday life, little may separate citizens from aliens, but status has important political and affiliational implications. Citizenship is generally understood to connote “full membership” in a state and society with citizens being accorded full political rights. The state is understood to act on their behalf and they are asked to demonstrate a degree of loyalty and commitment not expected of non-citizens.^[22]
Today’s reality in most states in the contemporary world, and specifically in the Russian Far East, is that the configuration of rights and responsibilities attached to citizenship (however defined) now attempt to reconcile two antagonizing forms – one between the forces of democracy and capitalism, and the other between diversity and homogeneity. A range of statutes characteristic of modern citizenship schemes retain only the vestiges of the central notion of differential rights and obligations. Emergent forms of “gradational citizenship,” which now characterize the status of millions.^[23] The mission of this paper was to consider conflicting perspectives in the literature and to assess the extent to which typically Western-oriented literature on migration might be useful in understanding circumstances in the Russian Far East.
Scholars, however, do agree on a few cogent points that may be instructive as experts attempt to mitigate the migration challenges presently facing the Russian Far East. First, as Castles observes, there is the reality that in countries where policies of temporary labor recruitment exist, they typically lead to permanent settlement and the eventual formation of ethnic groups that may never achieve an equitable status in the receiving society. It is a phenomenon with long-term consequences which Russian and Chinese officials need to recognize. Secondly, the character of the ethnic groups will, to a large measure, be determined by what the state does in the very early stages of migration. Policies which even tacitly encourage illegal movements lead to social marginalization and racism. Policies which try to maintain sharp distinctions between foreign residents and nationals by denying basic rights to immigrants lead to a divided society. The best possible chance for successful settlement and good community relations lies in policies which accept permanent settlement and family reunification.
Most importantly, successful settlement has, historically, required pro-active state policy. Social policy should be guided by the principle that its long-term aim NOT be to establish separate systems of service provision, but rather to adapt mainstream systems to respond to the needs of culturally diverse populations. (This guidance becomes more than something of a challenge in a state such as Russia where every resource is over committed, but it is a reasonable approach given the resources to distribute). The best way, ultimately, to prevent marginalization and social conflicts is to move, however slowly and incrementally, toward full rights for migrants in all social spheres^[24]. Put simply, this means making citizenship easily available – even if it leads to dual, gradational, or some other form of citizenship we have yet to imagine. This would be challenging enough under perfect conditions, but Russia will need the support and assistance of the world community – and particularly leadership and resources from the developed West if it is ever to accomplish such a laudable task.