ABSTRACT
Within the framework of Russia’s national identity politics, this chapter examines the political usage and public discussion of migration with regard to two cases situated on the opposite sides of the change that occurred in Russia between 2013 and 2014. First we examine how the opposition’s new frontman, Alexei Navalny, used the Muscovites’ emphasised anti-immigration moods in his campaign during the Moscow mayoral election in 2013. Navalny’s campaign resulted in an extraordinary success when against all expectations he came second in the race and nearly took the election into the second round. Navalny’s ultimate breakthrough into federal-level politics coincided with the year in which Russia’s anti-immigration mood reached a hitherto unseen peak. Moreover, Navalny’s success was accompanied by an even more worrisome trend from the Kremlin’s viewpoint: a consistent decrease in President Putin’s public support. However, by March 2014, Putin’s ratings had dramatically recovered and avenues for oppositional politics had been radically curtailed. The second case of the chapter focuses on this side of the change, by examining prevailing media representations of Ukrainian refugees, who superseded the role of migrants in the summer 2014 in Russia’s public discussion. The chapter shows that dominant discourses of migration create a sort of continuum regardless of these dramatically changed political conjunctures. They evoke similar visions of Russia’s ideal state of affairs in which an ethnicised hierarchy of labour linked to politically contextualised flows of foreigners plays the major role.
