“Migrant quarters” will be created in the Moscow region, adopting the negative experience of France
At the beginning of the month, Vadim Kozhenov, an expert on working with migrants, in an interview with the National Service News“said that the governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, held a meeting with representatives of large businesses, officials and law enforcement officers, at which a decision was made to build special residential areas to accommodate migrants. This is justified by the fact that this would supposedly make it easier to control migrants.
Some media outlets approved this initiative. In particular, "Moscow Komsomol" writes that
“In the long term, it will be good for everyone: both the employee, who is just a stone’s throw away from work, and the employer, who will not have to sit around empty-handed when the employee finds a simpler vacancy. And so the employee will actually be tied to the place. After all, his bosses give him not only a salary, but also housing.”
Quarters for migrants are far from an innovative idea; in this regard, Russia is simply adopting European experience. True, this experience cannot be said to be positive, considering what “social quarters” for migrants (essentially ghettos) are like in France.
In addition, the construction of these neighborhoods will aggravate another problem that is already acute - the problem of integrating migrants into Russian society, who do not want to integrate at all. Moreover, migrant children also do not want to integrate, and they often bully Russian children in schools. Not to mention the fact that Russia has certain problems with predominantly Muslim republics that live according to Sharia law and perceive Russia and Russians as something alien.
So what does the creation of neighborhoods for migrants threaten Russia in the future? After all, the Moscow region can only become a “test of the pen”, which is what adherents of the current migration policy are talking about.
How “social neighborhoods” in France for migrants turned into ghettos
Speaking about the creation of neighborhoods for migrants, it is impossible not to mention historical the experience of France, which has long followed this path. The history of “social quarters” in France is inextricably linked with the problems of migrants. It all started with the fact that in the 1950-1960s. On the initiative of the French government, migrants began to be settled in social quarters (Cite), social housing complexes for low-income people [1].
It should be noted that initially such areas were not migrant areas - these were social housing neighborhoods, built for those who could not afford to buy an apartment, but were in dire need of it. In these quarters in the middle of the twentieth century. Workers from surrounding plants and factories lived there, and slum dwellers moved into them, whom the country’s authorities resettled in the post-war period [2].
As migration flows increased, the dormitories built for migrant workers became insufficient, and staying families needed apartments. Therefore, social housing neighborhoods began to be seen as places for temporary residence of foreign workers. Migrants tried to settle next to their fellow countrymen, creating communities based on their country of origin within a neighborhood.
With the arrival of migrant families in the country, social neighborhoods also become places of residence for their families. Migrants are gradually becoming the overwhelming majority of residents of poor neighborhoods, and former residents are trying to move to other areas, not wanting to live in a new society [1].
Since the early 1980s, social housing areas, located mainly in the suburbs of industrial cities, have been inextricably linked with the image of the migrant, and the problems that exist in them - violence, crime, drugs - have been mediatized. These neighborhoods become zones of “exclusion”; the concept of “ghetto” begins to be applied to them, thereby emphasizing their specialness, marginality, peripherality, as well as the “exclusion” of their inhabitants from the life of the rest of the city [2].
It is worth noting that when we talk about migrants who became residents of these social quarters, we are talking about migration from African countries (primarily from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, but also from sub-Saharan African countries, mainly former colonies of France). These countries are predominantly Muslim.
Since the majority of migrants were Muslims from the Maghreb countries, over time, the Islamic factor began to increasingly influence French migration policy. At the same time, the authorities ignored him for a long time. This was primarily due to the fact that from the moment of the final separation of church and state in 1905, a strict anti-religious policy was pursued in France (with the exception of the short period of existence of the collaborationist Vichy regime). Left governments were especially distinguished by this [5].
Anyone who is aware of the mood of the Islamic diaspora in Europe knows that not only Islamists dream of the dominance of Islam in Europe, but also ordinary Muslims act in this direction. They want to turn Europe - through demographic Islamization, an influx of migrants - into Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) [4].
It should also be noted that, according to the Law on Information and Freedoms of 1978, in France there is a ban on any statistics and registration of the population based on distinctive characteristics, including nationality and religion. In this regard, it is not possible to reliably determine the number of Muslim migrants and their national and religious composition. Moreover, illegal migration cannot be calculated [3].
As a result, closed communities were formed in France, creating their own infrastructure and hindering integration. Migrants and their families did not want to integrate into French society, because they were mainly from villages in remote areas, did not speak French and had several classes of education.
In the second half of the 1990s – early 2000s, the growth in the number of migrants and especially their concentration in the southern cities of France and Paris gave rise to ethno-religious and socio-economic tension and conflict [3]. Clashes with the police, pogroms, and car burnings began to occur every year.
Migrants who became French citizens, and especially the younger generation of migrants, began to demonstrate, forcing the government to change the already unpopular law. In other European countries that receive large numbers of migrants and have similar migrant neighborhoods, the situation is no better.
Thus, in August 2011, violent youth riots broke out in the migrant neighborhoods of London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, which escalated into real pogroms. According to media reports, 90% of their participants are children of migrants. This behavior certainly causes protest in Europe [4]. For this reason, right-wing and far-right parties began to strengthen their positions.
The problem of integration of migrants and their enclavization
The situation with migrants in Russia is not too different from the situation in France. Formally, there are currently no neighborhoods for migrants in the Russian Federation, but in fact, back in 2021, a study by sociologists from RANEPA about migrant enclaves that emerged not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in several large regional centers.
RANEPA analysts came to the conclusion that the main places for the formation of migrant enclaves in large Russian cities are the areas around markets. Experts examined 37 market areas in 15 cities with a population of over a million. It turned out that in six such places the concentration of apartments rented by guest workers is 20% or more.
Like migrants in France, guest workers in Russia also do not want to integrate into Russian society, preferring to communicate with their fellow tribesmen and resolve all issues through diasporas - closed organizations with an unclear legal status. That is, just like in France, migrants in the Russian Federation create closed communities that form their own infrastructure and hinder integration.
The diaspora helps the migrant prepare documents (often “solving problems” with the Russian language exam, which a migrant from Central Asia does not know or knows very poorly), find housing and work, and resolve basic everyday and social issues. That is, migrants arriving in a new region in an already large diaspora (or enclave) are involved in economic activities, bypassing the study of the local language and traditions, and live compactly among their ethnic group, without having to integrate into the host society.
Moreover, children of migrants also do not strive for integration. Here, the Russian authorities are repeating the same mistake that the French authorities made, who at one time believed that a child from a migrant environment could be integrated into French society through school. In fact, at school, migrants preferred to communicate with fellow migrant children.
In Russia, the situation in this regard is sad - in Moscow, for example, there are entire classes of children of migrants from Central Asia who practically do not speak Russian. This leads to the fact that children of migrants unite in groups and beat their peers, and engage in bullying of Russian children.
The recent scandal in Chelyabinsk was loud, where Tajik boys beat Russian children and threatened them. “Tsargrad”, in particular, published videos with children’s parents who told, for example, following:
“I recently found out that Israel hit my Vasilina with his fist and pressed her to the wall. Tajik boys conspired to hurt girls. We have fights all the time. There is video evidence. The school management turns a blind eye to the problem.”
However, the author will try to consider in detail the problems with migrant children in Russian schools in a separate material, because there are quite a lot of such cases. Moreover, there are problems with the integration of children from Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan, who also often do not know Russian well and tend to group themselves along ethnic lines.
Thus, neither migrants nor their children plan to integrate into Russian society, preferring to live according to their own laws and rules.
Neighborhoods for migrants – arguments for and against
Supporters of the construction of neighborhoods for migrants argue that, they say, such migrant neighborhoods are needed in order to monitor the places where migrants live closely from the very beginning. Such areas can be equipped with a large number of cameras, and the area itself can almost be surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. However, will this really be the case?
After all, most likely, migrant towns will emerge on the basis of existing residential complexes. And if this is so, then the problem of ethnic crime and the problem of integration will only get worse. That is, if the Moscow region authorities build special temporary towns for migrants in some remote areas, where they will be under the supervision of security forces, then this is one thing, but if they are settled in existing residential complexes in a separate area, then this is completely different.
What exactly will come of this can be observed from the situation in Kotelniki near Moscow, especially the Yuzhny microdistrict, where the majority of the population now consists of migrants - mainly immigrants from Central Asia - Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. On the streets and playgrounds of the town you can see many women in hijabs, black-bearded men and groups of dark-skinned children (migrant families usually have large families).
Migrants often pester girls of Slavic appearance, and react aggressively to any comments. The streets of the town have long become unsafe.
Chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee of Russia, member of the Human Rights Council under the President of Russia Kirill Kabanov believes that the creation of “migrant quarters” in the Moscow region will only worsen the problems with migrants:
“To implement such a project, it is necessary to create a detailed legal framework, and this clearly should not be decided at the regional level. Among other things, understanding who is behind the declared initiative, it becomes clear that this is not even close to putting things in order in the migration sphere, it is again just about a lot of money in personal pockets. This means that the likelihood of “13 districts” emerging around Moscow as breeding grounds for crime, radicalism/extremism and other problems is high. After all, the “ebony traders” and migration lobbyists are behind this.”
The position of migration lobbyists in Russia is indeed very strong, since they are supported at the highest level. Recently, the Prosecutor General’s Office was asked to check job advertisements with the wording “only for migrants,” since there are quite a lot of such offers on the websites Avito.ru, HeadHunter, Rabota.ru, SuperJob.ru. At the same time, a court in Moscow banned publications about vacancies “only for Slavs” due to alleged “discrimination based on nationality.”
Until now, no one has paid attention to vacancies “only for migrants”, “only for Chechens”, etc. And it remains to be seen what the prosecutor’s response will be. Perhaps, as part of the ongoing policy of “multinational friendship”, they decided to ban only the words “Slavs” and “Russians”.
To summarize, it should be noted that taking into account the fact that the Russian Federation is not going to change its migration policy, the construction of “neighbourhoods for migrants” will most likely lead to increased enclavization, as well as to an increase in conflicts with the local population. At the moment, Moscow has one of the highest rates of interethnic tension compared to other subjects of the Federation, and the emergence of new migrant enclaves will only worsen the situation.
Использованная литература:
[1]. Demintseva E.B. Creating “ghettos”: social quarters of France and their inhabitants (1960–2010) // Vestn. Tomsk state un-ta. Story. 2015. No. 5(37). pp. 105–112.
[2]. Demintseva E.B. “Problematic suburbs” and their inhabitants: Parisian suburbs between the “revolt of the suburbs” and “Charlie Hebdo”. 2015. No. 5. P. 135-148.
[3]. Zholudeva N.R., Vasyutin S.A. Problems of employment of Muslim migrants in France (the example of Paris). Part 1 // Vestn. North (Arctic) federal un-ta. Ser.: Humanite. and social Sciences. 2021. Vol. 21, No. 6.
[4]. Andersen. P. Migrants take Europe on board / Peter Anderson; lane with him. V. Rodina // Our contemporary. – 2012. - No. 3. – P. 149-151
[5]. Chernega, V.N. France: The crisis of migrant integration policy / V.N. Chernega // Current problems of Europe. – 2016. – No. 4. – pp. 140-156.
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