The Impact of Migration on the Demographic and Ethnical Development of the Russian Rural Areas

Abstract

Yuri Bychenko — Professor, Saratov State Socio-Economic University. Address: 89, Radizhev St., Saratov, 410003, Russian Federation. E-mail: bychenkoug@gmail.com.

Victor Shabanov — Senior Staff Scientist, Institute of Agricultural Problems (RAS). Address: 94, Moskovskaya St., Saratov, 410012, Russian Federation. E-mail: vic35@inbox.ru.

By drawing on data from three all-Russian censuses in 1989, 2002 and 2010, we analyze the changes in the size of rural settlements against the changes in population and administrative status. We find that there is a strong tendency towards the concentration of people in larger rural settlements at the cost of depopulation in the smaller settlements and the discarding of large rural areas from agriculture. This process also leads to the reshaping of social, ethnic and demographic structures of abandoned rural areas, since there appears to be a higher tendency towards migration to larger settlements among the young, the educated, and mostly female Russian-speaking population.

Parallel to this we also conduct a separate in-depth analysis of two settlements in the Saratov region. We find that unlike the Russian-speaking inhabitants of the rural settlements, ethnic migrants are more adapted to living in rural areas due to their largely pre-urban demographic behavior, traditional values, larger families with strong social support and commitment to self-employed labor.