ABSTRACT
The Russian Federation was meant to shift from a Soviet system of ongoing bureaucratic control over the individual’s mobility to one that, as in democratic states, exercises less overwhelming control, yet does so effectively. However, migration policy liberalization has not turned out as perestroika-era reformers hoped. The USSR’s migration controls have not been replaced by a consistently enforced migration regime of free internal migration. Nor does Russian policy facilitate the orderly immigration of people from neighboring states, whether as temporary guest workers or as permanent residents and future citizens. Instead, initial post-Soviet migration policy disorder was overlaid by a shifting set of national policies, which in turn were supplemented and sometimes subverted by regional policies.
