ABSTRACT
The regional perspective on the analysis of post-Soviet identity politics and conceptions of ethnicity and migration demonstrates how and why migrants and migration are constructed by the regional authorities, academia and media, using a kind of ethnic coding. The concepts of migrants and ethnic minorities are merged in the quasi-academic expression non-native ethnic groups which impose ethnic, cultural and territorial barriers between those who are identified as migrants and the supposed local population of Krasnodar Krai. This chapter focuses on Krasnodar Krai in its analysis of regional migration and nationality discourses. It develops the way in which academic concepts and regional policy are inter-related. The analysis of regional identity in Krasnodar Krai contributes to a discussion of the role which nationalism and ethnicity play in regional politics in the so-called Russian regions of the post-Soviet Northern Caucasus. Due to the Soviet ethno-territorialisation of national identities in the post-Soviet era the category nation in ethno-cultural rather than citizenship terms.
