Opción, Año 34, Especial No.14 (2018):542-560

ISSN 1012-1587/ISSNe: 2477-9385

Migration flows: management practices of regulation in the local communities*

Anatoly V. Lubsky¹

¹Institute of Sociology and Regional Studies,

Southern Federal University, Russia avlubaky@mail.ru

Andrey V. Bedrik²

²Institute of Sociology and Regional Studies,

Southern Federal University, Russia abedrik@bk.ru

Anton V. Serikov³

³Institute of Sociology and Regional Studies,

Southern Federal University, Russia aserikov@inbox.ru

Darya N. Stukalova⁴

⁴Institute of Sociology and Regional Studies,

Southern Federal University, Russia dar.stukalova@mail.ru

Abstract

The authors analyze the experience of the Federal Republic of Germany in regulating migration flows in local communitieswith use ofcomparative-legal and sociological methodology. As a results, we can notice that the state provides an economic support for some groups to keep the balance of ethnic social structure and, therefore, implements some ideal representations of ethnic groups of the social consciousness using informational media. The authors concluded,the poor professional competence of the specialists of regional and municipal authorities and migration services makes it difficult to exercise the basic principles of value policy in the regulation of migration flows.

Key words: communities, migrants, local, policy, formal.

*The Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation supports the paper, project No 16-33-00030 “Anthropoflows and ethnic diaspora: social practices of cooperation, specific features of collective identities and national security in the countries with a complex ethniccultural structure (Russia and

Germany)”

Recibido: 10-12-2017 Aceptado: 13-02-2018

543 Lubsky et al. Opción, Año 34, Especial No.14(2018):542-560

Flujos de migración: prácticas de gestión de la regulación en las comunidades locales

Resumen

Los autores analizan la experiencia de la República Federal de Alemania en la regulación de los flujos migratorios en las comunidades locales con el uso de una metodología comparativa legal y sociológica. Como resultado, podemos observar que el estado proporciona un apoyo económico para que algunos grupos mantengan el equilibrio de la estructura social étnica y, por lo tanto, implementa algunas representaciones ideales de grupos étnicos de la conciencia social usando medios informativos. Los autores concluyeron que la escasa competencia profesional de los especialistas de las autoridades regionales y municipales y los servicios de migración dificulta el ejercicio de los principios básicos de la política de valores en la regulación de los flujos migratorios.

Palabras clave: comunidades, migrantes, locales, políticas, formales.

1. INTRODUCTION

Migration flows as a global trend of modern world development cause the problems of inter-ethnic cooperation with local communities (Pother, 2014; Otmer, 2014). These problems involve the obstacles to the social integration of ethnic migrants caused by some external and internal factors, which develop mutual alienation between migration flows and a host local community. Russia is an active participant of the international migration in three areas: as a country of immigration,

emigration and migration transit. Internal and external migration flows have a great influence on the inter-ethnic relations in multi-ethnic local communities. In modern Russia, migration flows are enhanced in a climate of ethnic identity reconstruction. Therefore, improving the efficiency of a state policy of inter-ethnic relations and management practices of the regulation of migration flows in local communities becomes a relevant issue. Therefore, migration problems are one of the priorities over the national policy and state management in inter-ethnic relations between the Russian societies.

2. REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE

Nowadays, the interest in the management practices of migration flows regulation in the countries with a complex ethnic cultural structure is supported by extensive foreign research. The research pays much attention to the specific features of these flows in different countries, goals of immigration Meier-Braun and

Weber(2014), migrants’ adaptation and social integration Kretsedemas(2012), the rules that provide the accommodation of settlers in a destination country, and the influence of migration flows on the changes in the ethnic structure of a host community(Geißler, 2014; Fischer-Lescanoand Kocher, 2012; Bedrik et al., 2015).

Scientists’ increased interest in the management practices of migration flows regulation is mostly associated with the problems of inter-ethnic

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cooperation and a national policy of the Russian Federation and some of its regions (Frolova et al., 2015). In recent years, some Russian scientists consider it necessary to use the principles of value policy of the sphere of inter-ethnic relations management based on a dialogue between the representatives of state and municipal authorities, political and civil organizations and ethnic communities on the coordination of public values in inter-ethnic relations.Now, the scientific literature pays special attention to the doctrinal bases of migration policy and formal and informal practices that regulate the relations between migrants and host local communities (Morgunova, 2014). In the context of migration flows management, researchers offer to take into account the degree of ethnic migrants’ marginality and the variety of the reasons of conflicts between local residents and migrants on the one hand and to combine control and accommodation strategies in managing inter-ethnic conflicts on the other hand (Bedrik et al., 2016).

Researchers have dealt with the modern practices of migration flow management in Russia in the context of the administrative policy based on migration legislation. Besides, they highlight that such management practices are forced. Therefore, in recent years, some researchers find it necessary to learn the foreign experience of institutional practices in the cooperation between migrants and local communities to harmonize inter-ethnic relations in Russia.

3. METHODOLOGY

Migration flow is a special type of an Anthropoflows that implies the displacement of migrants from one geographic and sociocultural space to another. However, we should distinguish between natural migrants including labor settlers that have made a conscious and independent decision to relocate and migrants that are internally displaced persons. Besides, we can identify three groups of migrants. The first group encompasses the migrants that have already become completely integrated into the Russian society. The second group comprises the migrants that first intended to earn money and to go back to their homeland, but then decided to stay and adapted to the local community. Temporary labor migrants or political refugees who have problems in the adaptation to a new sociocultural environment (Pyadukhov, 2003) represent the third group.

Migration flows in Russia are regulated by a national policy of the use of management practices for the harmonization of inter-ethnic relations including the cooperation between ethnic migrants and host communities. Management practices related to the regulation of migration flows are actions performed by the state and municipal authorities aimed at providing national security and eliminating factors that increase the level of a conflict potential of these flows at the national and local levels.Besides, we can reveal institutional management practices based on formal and informal regulatory systems and non-institutional practices that imply the symbolic impact

on the consciousness of migrants and local residents. Formal institutional practices of migration flows regulation are mostly based on the legislative acts at the federal and regional level. They take into account various programs aimed at creating favorable economic, political and social conditions for migrants’ adaptation and social integration. Informal institutional practices are management practices based on a dialogue between regional and municipal authorities, national and cultural associations, ethnic migrants and host local communities. Their purpose is to prevent inter-ethnic tension and ethnic conflicts.

There is the dialectics of formal and informal management practices. Formal rules are introduced and controlled by political actors; however, their implementation is conditioned by informal restrictions fixed in the traditional structures (customs, traditions, and behavior patterns created by ethnic cultural specifics). In other words, apart from the legal institution, social cooperation is also regulated by informal systems (morality and traditions) deeply rooted in the history and culture of a society. These systems of regulations have institutional forms too, i.e. they emerge as a response to human needs, develop a positive experience of cooperation, regulation and become fixed in the norms that meet the value representations of a society.The management practices of migration flows regulation have three basic functions:

1) A regulatory function related to the development of a legal framework as a basis for arranging a cross-cultural dialogue.

2) A preventive function focused on the preventive solution of inter-ethnic incidents by attracting the representatives of the diaspora, mediators, the representatives of scientific circles, and the institutions of a civil society.

3) An educational function aimed at the education of migration process participants.

4. RESULTS

Migration flows are often a source of inter-ethnic tension both in a state in general and at the level of ethnic communities. Inter-ethnic tension is manifested, on the one hand, in the cooperation between ethnic migrants and indigenous population and old residents of the region, and on the other hand, in the cooperation between different groups of ethnic migrants. In the first case, the clashes emerge as the contact, cooperation between migrants and local population at both micro- and macro-levels. They are caused by ethnic phobia of a host community related to the demonstrative behavior of ethnic minorities that does not meet the system of behavior norms in host communities. Both the representatives of migration flows and the indigenous population of the region provoked by the migrants’ style of behavior are the initiators of inter-ethnic tension. The specific features of the indigenous population’s culture and anti-migrant stereotypes are the basis of the inter-ethnic tension in local communities. Besides, the reasons for this tension often lie in the economic sphere and are manifested in the growing competition in the labor market and entrepreneurial activity. The inter-ethnic tension between different groups of ethnic migrants is caused by their economic competition and the peculiarities of mental programs of their social behavior(Bazhenova et al., 2015).

Modern migration policy in Russia is developed within a framework of a multi-subject model. It means that migration flows as regulated by state services, local authorities, institutions of civil society represented by national and cultural associations (diaspora) and the associations of migrants themselves (including trade unions), human rights, humanitarian and educational organizations, mass media, education and healthcare establishments, social services, the unions of employers and entrepreneurs etc. The involvement innew participants in the migration policy activities at the level of local communities enables to cope with some challenges more rapidly and efficiently depending on their category and specifics. In the result, management practices associated with the regulation of migration flows in the Russian society are now the field of cooperation between federal, regional and municipal authorities, the representatives of local communities and ethnic migrants. They want to reduce the “tension” of

of regulation in the local communities

migration flows and to find consensus in a non-violent environment.Formally, the decentralization of a migration system guarantees the neutralization of institutional risks and, at the same time, preserves the focus on a nationwide strategy. The national policy focuses on the creation of institutional, legal conditions to maintain favorable inter-ethnic relations, to protect and support migrants and to preserve the ethnic cultural variety of Russia. However, the regulation of migration flows is also forced. Therefore, a migration issue becomes more politicized. It reproduces departmental nationalism and often blocks the perspectives of the successful integration of civil society institutions in the processes of migrants’ adaptation and accommodation and harmonization of relations between migrants and host societies.

The informal management practices, unlike the formal ones, are generated “from below” through the cooperation between the institutions of authority and the institutions of civil society. They are established immediately between migrants and host population. Here, it is especially important to use a management cluster to support, to initiate and to implement informal management. The risk of migrants’ ethniccultural marginalization is an obstacle to the management practices of migration flows regulation, since ethnic migrants cannot break with their previous lifestyle, cultural values and orientations even if they have all the necessary and favorable conditions. This explains the fact that a host community will never accept migrants completely. Therefore, migrants find themselves between the two systems of cultural values and, therefore, have psychological discomfort. An inevitable interpersonal conflict in a migrant, often leads to the development of the external conflict with a host society.Therefore, we should direct our efforts to the informal practices of a host party as migrants’ new social environment to regulate the relations between local population and migrants. The informal practices are mostly used in people’s private activities. They can also be used in the public spheres where it is more profitable and efficient to use these norms than to appeal to the legal forms of regulation. Therefore, we can reveal three basic groups of informal management practices: 1) mediation practices, including away meetings with communities; 2) ethnic cultural and educational practices; 3) institutional practice related to the understanding of ethnic cultural differences and the development of the models of tolerant ethnic behavior.Mediation as an informal management practice of intercultural communication regulation is a facilitationactivity aimed at preventing or regulating conflict situations and providing intercultural understanding between the representatives of migration flows and local communities. Therefore, mediation as facilitation between the parties aimed at reconciling them is quite an efficient management practice of settling minor ethnic conflicts in their infancy. Ethnic cultural and educational practices focus on migrants’ education and adaptation to the linguistic and cultural environment of a host community and a local culture. These practices also imply that the representatives of host communities understand the peculiarities of migrants’ culture and ethnic traditions. We should develop mutual cultural tolerance of migrants and local residents to provide intercultural cooperation as a basis for the prevention of inter-ethnic tension. We assume that the adaptation of migrants within a framework ofethnic,cultural education in case of preserved ethnic identities of migrants is also provided by their acquaintance with the language andthe culture of a host community.Ethnic cultural education, which develops the representations of the historical development and cultural traditions and customs of different ethnic groups, is an instrument for combating xenophobia and ethnic phobia. Therefore, it reduces the conflict potential of migration flows. Besides, it is quite reasonable to use the resource potential of the ethnic culture establishment(Goloborodko et al., 2015).The third important area of informal institutional practices is the work of state authorities on the establishment of the environment for addressing the issues of inter-ethnic relations. Experts report that now, the institutional and resource environment of regions and a country,in general, has some risks conditioned by the contradictions at the level of legislation and in the formal and informal practices of national policy activities. The creation of a tolerant institutional environment is one of the crucial areas of institutional practices related to the understanding of ethnic cultural differences and the development of the models of tolerant ethnic behavior. Second, institutional environment is a condition for migrants’ conscious actions at both individual and group levels. Therefore, these conditions should provide the protection and reproduction of the ethnic culture and native language of migrants who arrive at local communities. Second, ethnic cultural centers and cultural organizations play a substantial role in the projects for developing the representations of spiritual, cultural and linguistic originality of some ethnic groups of migration flows in local residents and migration flows. They contribute to the reduction of inter-ethnic tension caused by enhancing migration processes.

Another important condition is that the practices for the attraction of migrants’ national and cultural associations and the participation of social organizations and reputable representatives of the regional culture and education to provide stable inter-cultural cooperation in the region should be permanent, not episodic. Besides, it is important to note that the efficiency of informal management practices largely depends on the symbolic, financial and status resources of national and cultural autonomies and various social institutions within regional authorities that represent ethnic interests. In recent years, some scientists offer to use the foreign experience of regulating migration flows in the countries with a complex ethnic cultural structure. Thus, the Federal Republic of Germany has accumulated a positive experience in the informal management practices of the regulation of cooperation between migrants and local communities during the transition from the authoritarian model of management practices in inter-ethnic relations to the democratic model. This mostly refers to the development and implementation of programs for providing municipal employees with the professional instruction in the inter-ethnic relations management, the creation of a municipal network of inter-ethnic integration, the establishment of a dialogue between ethnic migrants and a host community about common interests and values, and the application of a transparent system of monitoring inter-ethnic cooperation in local communities. It is also important that Germany adopted some laws for the integration of migrants and stabilization of inter-ethnic cooperation between migrants and host local communities. Thus, an immigration law was adopted in 2005. It prohibited all the forms of migrant discrimination and provided for the establishment of a federal migration agency and appropriate migration services in the states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Besides, the 2005 Immigration Law had some innovations: 1) facilitated entry into the country with a right to permanent residence for some professionals, scientists and highly qualified workers; 2) a quota for immigrants who can arrive at the country using the point system. Besides, the law approves self-employed entrepreneurs that agree to invest minimum 1 million euro and create 10 new jobs(Sadykova, 2013); 3) facilitate entry to some categories of refugees that are victims of non-state and gender harassments and need a shelter. The basic management practices for regulating migration flow in Germany are: 1) ethnic cultural education of migrants; 2) higher education of migrants; 3) activity of ethnic diaspora; 4) state social support for migrants. Nowadays, Germany relies on the partial assimilation of migrants and provides them with programs for studying special courses of German, national culture and history of the state.

This practice was conditioned by immigrants’ low educational level, ethnic cultural isolation and extremely poor knowledge of German (Akimova, 2014). All this creates barriers for the integration of migrants in a host community. In Germany, higher professional education is a key factor that enables immigrants and their successors to become a part of a society. German researchers treat education as a basic resource of society members’ participation in economic, political and cultural life(Pielage et al., 2014). Pursuant to the migration law of the Federal Republic of Germany, foreigners who graduated from

German universities “have an opportunity to prolong their residence in Germany for at least a year to look for a job or to work. Highly qualified university graduates may be given an opportunity to receive the German citizenship”. We should note that, on the other hand, pursuant to the migration legislation, success in obtaining higher education enables a migrant to stay in the country and to find a good job. On the other hand, migrants face informal discrimination practices of class selection as early as at the stage of access to higher education establishments. Besides, the migration legislation is often violated at the stage of migrants’ employment, when employers refuse to hire a person with a high professional level because of his ethnicity.

As for the activities of diaspora related to the management practices of migration flows regulation in Germany, scientists report that they are contradictory. “On the one hand, a strong institution of diaspora represented by organized and coordinated associations can help the state to promote common goals: to raise the level of education, employment and loyalty of the members of a migrant community. Besides, a highly organized diaspora participates more actively in the destiny of compatriots and, therefore, provides a long-term development of the counties of origin and a potential reduction of the migrant outflowof them. On the other hand, the stronger a diaspora is, the more influence it has on the regulation of its members life is and the more frequently it opposes its community to the host society of Germany.”(Chichkovaand Semenov, 2010). Generally, we cannot discuss the efficiency of such management practices as the activity of diaspora now, since diaspora often contributes to the ethnic isolation of migrants and prevent their social integration.

State social support, including social allowances as the management practice of migration flow regulation leads to a high level of parasitical attitudes among migrants. This is accompanied by the growth of unemployment in a migration family and the increase in the number of migrants that prefer to live off the population of host communities. Modern Germany needs new labor resources with high quality. Therefore, the Law “Improving the assessment and acknowledgement of professional qualification obtained abroad” was adopted in 2011. It was designed to make it easier to acknowledge the degrees of foreign specialists by introducing a universal approach and uniform criteria of qualification assessment and creating informational and consultative infrastructure for foreigners (ECRIBerichtueberDeutschland).Besides, the system of selective immigration policy has been functioning in Germany since 2005. It provides a facilitated entry into the country and the possibilities of permanent residence for some specialist, scientists and highly qualified workers, who make intellectual or financial investments in the economy (including the creation of new jobs) and contribute to the long residence of the foreign graduates of German universities in the country. Analyzing this management practice, we can notice that the state provides an economic support for some groups to keep the balance of ethnic social structure and, therefore, implements some ideal representations of ethnic groups of the social consciousness using informational media.

5. SUMMARY

Modern migration flows need innovative approaches to the regulation and stabilization of resulting challenges and risks. Nowadays, the coordination and stabilization in the inter-ethnic cooperation between migrants and host local communities is mostly provided by formal institutional management practices. Sometimes, formal management practices based on legal organization fail to harmonize inter-ethnic relations between local communities. A small distance between migrants, host population, and municipal authorities in local communities enhances the meaning of institutional management practices in the regulation of migration flows. Therefore, there are new potentials for implementing the foreign experience in the regulation of migration flows in Russia taking into account their sociocultural specifics. Cop with the administrative model of the forced management of migration flows implies the transition to the value migration policy in the Russian society. This policy is based on a

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dialogue between a state, a national community and ethnic groups of migrants about the development and implementation of management practices for regulating the relations between migrants and host communities. However, in Russia, this dialogue is struggling to make its way through the statist social consciousness and ethnic distrust caused by the traumatic experience of inter-ethnic relations in the 1990s. Besides, the poor professional competence of the specialists of regional and municipal authorities and migration services makes it difficult to exercise the basic principles of value policy in the regulation of migration flows.

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