Migration And Region (Based On The Example Of The Volga Federal Region)

Abstract

The article deals with the migration situation in the Volga federal region (VFR). The intraregional migration and its influence on the dynamics of the population is studied in three regions – Nizhni Novgorod and Orenburg areas and Udmurt Republic. VFR is inferior to Southern and Central regions by the relative size of the balance of external migration, and by the internal migration it is inferior only to the Central region, but its relative advantage against the background of other regions is quickly decreasing. The migration processes testify to the stagnation of region’s development, amorphism of its social and economic landscape, lack of dynamic poles of growth. As a result the region looses its attraction, it is turning into the transit territory on the path of western drift of the population of Russia. There are two centers of migrants’ gravitation: 1) Nizhni Novgorod area in the north, which attracts migrants from Kirov, Perm areas, Mordovia and Mari El republics; 2.) Samara area, which gathers the population from the southern part of the region: Ulyanovsk, Orenburg and Penza areas. Many parts of the region are nowadays under double migration pressure: the region as a whole and each of its areas give the population to the Center (mainly to Moscow and Moscow area), the rest of mobile contingent leave for above-named regional centers. In the conditions of the reduction of migration from the countries of CIS and the weakening of migration from eastern regions of the country, some of VFR constituents are becoming donor territories. There are two perspectives: either a fast reduction of the population, or gradual change of its ethnic structure owing to migrants. Federal and local authorities and local population must be ready for these challenges.