Annotations of Lections

1. Tajik labor migrants and their remittances: is Tajik migration pro-poor?

К. Kumo, professor at Hitotsubashi University, Tokio (guest lecture)

Presentation

Tajikistan, the poorest among the former Soviet republics, has been the world’s leading country in the proportion of remittances to its GDP since 2006. Remittances comprise from 30 to 40 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP. The main reason for that is that there are low income levels in Tajikistan. Moreover, it is in a special relationship with Russia. Russia is currently in the phase of rapid economic growth. The study by Kazuhiro Kumo uses household survey forms and examines the relationship between household income levels in Tajikistan, foreign remittance received from international labor migrants and the supply of international labor migrants.

The main question arising is whether the supply of migrants and the receipt of foreign remittances can decrease poverty in Tajikistan. The overall size of foreign remittance did not increase constantly. The rapid growth can be observed between 2004 and 2005. According to internal Federal Migration Service data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, the number of labor migrants coming from Tajikistan was more than 250,000 in 2007 and 390,000 in 2008. 94% of Tajik migrants go to Russia, more than 50% of them head to Moscow. Most of the migrants are usually men. However, the proportion of women is increasing.

The paper uses forms completed for the Tajikistan Living Measurement Survey (TLSS), a household survey conducted by the World Bank in 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2009. The author, due to differences in questionnaires, uses only the data from 2007 and 2009 surveys. The TLSS data indicate that wages account for over 50% of Tajik households’ income. Foreign remittances comprised 19,2% (2007) and 13,2% (2009) of household income on average. If we take into account only the households receiving foreign remittances, they account for over 60% of the total households’ income.

The findings of the study show a positive correlation between income levels and the probability of migrants being supplied. This implies that richer households send out more migrants. It was revealed that Tajik households with relatively low incomes don’t receive comparatively larger amounts of foreign remittance. Tajik migrants may not be pro-poor. Overall migration has expanded, even from extremely poor households. 30% top consuming households managed to avoid poverty. Poverty level decreased from 43.9% in 2007 to 40.3% in 2009, but it is not obvious whether this happened due to migration and remittances or not.

There are still some omitted aspects in the study. Further in-depth examination of individual and household specifics is required in order to understand what kind of people will migrate from what kind of households. Moreover, further examination of political decision and law-enforcement is required, because changes in migration registration in 2006-2007 affect Tajik labor migration patterns significantly. 

2. Migrant children in Russian schools in comparative perspective

D. Alexandrov, Professor at HSE, St. Petersburg (LCSR research project)

Presentation

The project presented by Daniel Alexandrov touches upon the integration of migrant children from different countries in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. The issue is viewed from the perspective of assimilation theories. The traditional assimilation theory telling that all migrants are eventually assimilated is considered to be too holistic. The theory of segmented assimilation (Portes, Zhou) is regarded to be a more suitable one. It claims that migrants are not uniform, there is a diversity of outcomes within and between immigrant streams. Patterns of assimilation are defined by socio-economic status, cultural characteristics of migrants and the specific social context in the receiving society. Conflicts in (with) the receiving society also affect assimilation. Moreover, slow assimilation may lead to better outcomes.

Migrants can be categorized in different ways depending on the research question, for example American studies focus on racial differences, European – on ethnic differences. The most common definition of a migrant (“foreign-born”) doesn’t work in Russia, as more than half of migrants comes from Ukraine and Belorussia. Therefore, effects of ethnicity and migration history were considered separately in the current project.

The project has been carried out at St. Petersburg schools since 2008 (since 2010 also in the Moscow region) with application of a mixed-method approach. The work is based on two original surveys in St. Petersburg (104 schools, 7300 students) and Moscow region (50 schools, 3800 students). Mostly standard schools were included into the St. Petersburg sample. Minority children comprise 9% of the sample. 53% minority children and 20% majority children were born outside Saint-Petersburg.

It was revealed that Saint-Petersburg is divided into local educational markets. The larger a school is, the richer children’s parents are and the better children are educated. Parents don’t tend to choose schools with many migrant children, because they think such schools are poor. As a result, segregation occurs. Minority children mostly go to low socio-economic status schools. It was emphasized that the schools with large percentages of migrant children aren’t concentrated in some specific districts of Saint-Petersburg.

Surprisingly, no achievement and aspiration gaps between majority and minority children were revealed in the current study. Migrants who came to Saint-Petersburg after turning 7 study worse, as they have problems with learning Russian. There is also a significant ethnic school composition effect on GPA. A positive effect on GPA was observed in schools where the percentage of minority children is higher than 20. Migrant children study better in low SES schools than their majority peers, they also demonstrate higher motivation and lower anti-school culture.

When it comes to inter-ethnic relationships in schools, it was found out that popularity and exclusion are not connected with ethnicity. In other words, the majority is “ethnically blind”. This finding is opposite to the trends observed, for example, in the USA, where students are more likely to become friends with members of the same race than with members of a different race. In Europe, for instance, majority children choose friends proportionally to their presence and minority children choose friends from minority more often than from majority. The Russian case is rather similar to European one.

On the whole, social class is much more important in Russia than ethnicity in educational sorting and outcomes. 

3. Human Empowerment Model of Societal Development 

С. Welzel, professor at Leuphana University, Germany,  Germany (guest lecture)

Presentation

Professor Welzel introduced prerequisites and the logics of Human Empowerment Model of Societal Development in his presentation. First, he pointed out three main components of human empowerment. The first one is capability component which means improvement of skills, tools and connections. Action resources contribute to capability and create instrumental agency. The second is institutional component which extends entitlements to work at ones own will by increasing personal autonomy rights and political participation rights and creates legal agency this way. The last one is motivational component which concerns the forming of emancipative values and motivational agency. These values comprise the desire of independent choice (libertarian aspect) and the desire for equal opportunities (egalitarian aspect). For the development of human empowerment all three aspects are crucial and once appeared they reinforce each other and are not dependent upon external conditions.

Human empowerment develops from action resources to institutional freedom through emancipative values. Professor Welzel draws a parallel between action resources and hardware, between emancipative values and software and between institutional freedom and license. With the help of the cube with three axes he demonstrated that the development of these components is correlated to each other.

Professor Welzel demonstrated the chain of deficient and abundant sequence of freedom which leads to empowering or disempowering equilibrium. There are four elements of this chain: recognized utility of freedoms, emancipative values (strong or weak), action or absence of action to exercise freedoms and the level of satisfaction from the process.

Professor Welzel explained the measurement of the components of human empowerment. Action resources are measured by intellectual, material and connection resources of the average person in the society. Index of democratization reflects the institutional values. Finally, he told about his technique of revealing emancipative values through cohort analysis. The most recent survey was taken and the respondents were divided into cohorts. The values of elderly cohorts were considered as a proxy for values of the past.

Furthermore, Professor Welzel spoke about the exogenous causes of human empowerment “syndrome”. Geography is one of the most important determinants of human empowerment. For instance, temperate climate is helpful to development of human empowerment. Geographic conditions like latitude and coastal proximity cause specific environmental conditions (pathogenic security and hydrologic autonomy). In their turn, environmental conditions contribute to values systems formation and influence the reproductive strategies. Existential security and autonomy form priority of workforce quality over quantity by developing building skills and fertility control. Finally, these conditions can contribute to action resources and consequently to human empowerment “syndrome”. Professor Welzel showed distribution of countries to demonstrate historical relations of security path (pathogenic security – skill building – technological innovation) and autonomy path (hydrologic autonomy – fertility control – technological innovation).

Professor Welzel showed that the great shift from exploitation to human empowerment took place around 1450. The first step occurred around 1000. To conclude, professor Welzel emphasized that human empowerment is not the determinant of civilization change.

After the presentation there was a discussion about the decline of geographical factor in future and other possible determinants of human empowerment, about the possible consequences of action resources abundance, about possible barriers and policies of human empowerment development.

4. Geography, Technology and Culture: the Power of Development

S. Tanasa, assosiate professor at HSE, St. Peterburg(guest lecture) 

Presentation

The main point of the presentation of Serban Tanasa is that culture and institutions of contemporary societies have been strongly influenced by historic threats to survival such as scarcity, violent conflict and diseases. Security of life conditions has a positive impact upon formation of loose norms, on tolerance and consequently leads to increasing cultural openness. The best available measure of this syndrome’s cultural component is “self-expression values”.

The main research questions of Serban’s presentation were the following.

1. Why some societies are more developed than the others?
2. Why some societies that were more developed 300 years ago are still more developed today?

First, Serban referred to geographical explanation. According to Pelto and Gelfand, nations that encountered ecological and historical threats have stronger norms and lower tolerance towards deviant behavior and become “tight societies”, whereas nations with relatively secure conditions lead to more tolerant “loose societies”.

Inglehart, Norris, Welzel, Baker adhere to evolutionary theory of society and modernization. They emphasize existential security as the main driver of change in values. Low existential security leads to prevalence of survival values, while high existential security contributes to the development of self-expression values. These survival and self-expression values are very similar to “tight” and “loose” societies.

Serban introduced three major components of insecure conditions: disease, hunger and war and demonstrated how they are connected to existential security.

1. Disease. High density of human population and animals increases the probability of diseases. According to Thornhill and Fincher (2009), societies that are vulnerable to infectious diseases tend to have collectivist attitudes, low level of gender equality and high xenophobia—all of which hinder the emergence of democracy.  Conversely, relatively low vulnerability to diseases has the opposite effects. This is very similar to self-expression values.

2. Hunger. There are different resources that can increase or decrease the probability of hunger like the presence of river, enough rain, and opportunities for agriculture. Here the effect is the same: the less hunger a country experienced, the more tolerant and open it tends to be.

3. War. The third component, war, is not entirely clear. War should be seen through historical perspective (for example, Pinker, 2011).

Serban emphasized that emancipative values (analogous of self-expression values) correlate 80% with GDP.

After the presentation there was a discussion about the changed nature of wars that became rarer but more hostile. Also the case of postwar Germany was discussed. According to Serban’s idea, Germany managed to pull through despite the destruction of physical capital with the help of human and social capital. But in postwar Germany the level of trust was still very low. According to Serban Tanasa, this lack of trust contributed to the human capital accumulation. 

5. Evolutionary Modernization and Cultural Change

R. Inglehart, professor at University of Michigan and HSE, St Petersburg (LCSR research project)

Presentation

In his presentation Ronald Inglehart revealed the essence of evolutionary modernization theory. According to this theory, economic development brings increase of economic and physical security and reduces vulnerability to diseases.  This is conducive to increased cultural openness, which leads to less hierarchical and more democratic institutions. Growing existential security leads to changing values and cultural norms in direction of development of education and access to information. It leads to more open, tolerant, and creative societies, contributes to interpersonal trust, tolerance of foreigners and other out-groups, support for gender equality, openness to social change, a diminishing role for religious authority and democratic political institutions. Existential insecurity, on the contrary, causes xenophobia, strong in-group solidarity and rigid adherence to traditional cultural norms.

Throughout the most part of the history people had to provide themselves with food and there was almost no inequality. A growing gap between elites and masses and consequently decline in freedom emerged in the agrarian societies. Industrialization, urbanization, mass education and rising existential security have brought the trend toward growing human freedom.

Professor Inglehart indicated that it is possible to measure existential security through different types of values depending on the year: postmaterialist values (1970), self-expression values (1993) and emancipative values (2011). These three types of values emphasize autonomy from external authority and strongly correlate with one another.

According to empirical data, the value system of a country strongly correlates with its level of development. Professor Inglehart confirmed this issue with the distribution of countries between two axes: traditional vs. secular-rational authority and survival vs. self-expression values. Countries with GNP per capita below 2000$ (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana) show trend to more traditional and survival values, whereas in most countries with GNP per capita is above 15000$ (Japan, West Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, France, Spain, UK) secular-national and self-expression values tend to be more developed. US is an exception where self-expression and traditional values are more prevalent.

Professor Inglehart emphasized that scholars from other disciplines had developed theories of cross-cultural differences that are strikingly similar to evolutionary modernization theory: evolutionary biologists (Thornhill, Fincher et al., 2009, 2010), anthropologists (Pelto, 1968) and psychologists (Gelfand et al. 2011).

Furthermore, Professor Inglehart looked into how existential security shapes values by showing the share of postmaterialists that was growing considerably from 1970 to 2008 in Western European countries.  This value shift has stagnated in Western Europe in recent years, but at the same time begun to reshape other parts of the world. He emphasized that society’s religious and historical traditions are remarkably persistent by showing that in Eastern European and Post-Soviet countries survival values are very persistent.

Society’s relative emphasis on survival vs. self-expression values is also strongly linked to gender empowerment and the level of democracy.

6. Social or Political Capital? Explaining Variance in Quality of Public Institutions around the World

R. Foa, Harvard University, USA, and LSCR, St. Petersburg(LCSR research project)

Presentation

The presentation of Roberto Foa was dedicated to the impact of social and political capital on public institutions. He challenged the viewpoint that social capital has strong influence on the quality of public institutions. Alternatively, he demonstrated that political capital in the sense of ‘vertical’ obedience and compliance is a vital determinant of institutional characteristics as public order, aid effectiveness and fiscal discipline. Roberto also emphasized the role of long-term historical and political development in the formation of institutional process.

Roberto constructed the indices of social and political capital. The index ofsocial capital consisted of membership in voluntary associational groups (arts, music or educational organizations, religious organizations, labor unions, professional associations, human rights organizations, environmental organizations, women’s groups, sports clubs, youth). The index of political capital included the government effectiveness measure of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures) and survey items for whether “taking a bribe in the course of one’s duties” is “never justifiable” and whether “cheating on tax if you have a chance” is “never justifiable”.

Then Roberto showed the distribution of countries in the frame of two axes (social and political) where the correlation is not very high (10% of variance is explained). Some countries where social forces are strong and the government is weak refer to disfunctional democracies. These are mainly countries of Latin America and Africa (Brazil, Venezuela, Uganda, Nigeria, Philippines). Effective states with weak civil societies are developmental dictatorships. This refers to such countries as Morocco, Uruguay, China, Egypt, Hong Kong, Chile, Korea, Turkey, Malta, Singapore, Japan.

Furthermore, Roberto focused on the problem of measurement of public institutions. In his opinion, it is necessary to take into consideration the following aspects of public institutions: rule of law, delivery of public services, corruption, human rights, accountability and participation and regulatory quality. In his research Roberto mainly focused on the rule of law, which included universal application of law (no-one above law) and public order (low crime and high contract security). The measures of the rule of law could be divided into perception-based (Transparency International, International Country Risk Guide, Polity, Worldwide Governance Indicators) and ‘direct’ indicators (measures of homicide, crime victimization, corruption surveys, business surveys).

Roberto described specific examples of measuring  rule of law directly from the following surveys: Afro barometer (crime victimization), International Crime Victim Survey, Interpol (reported crime rates), World Health Organization (violent death rate), World Bank doing Business Surveys, International Crime Victim Survey (Attitudinal Items) and World Values Survey. He demonstrated that there is a stronger correlation between state history variable and different measures of rule of law than with social capital variable.

The association between state history variable and the rule of law could be explained by the fact that state formation leads to ethnic-linguistic homogenization (Alesina et al., 2004), builds social capital (Levi, 1998) and leads to growth of political capital – some set of norms specific to state functioning, e.g. identity, legitimacy of public institutions.

To conclude, Roberto pointed out the possible areas for future research where he aims to operationalize political capital and examine sub-national variation for both political norms and state formation.

One of the main propositions to Roberto’s research was to strengthen the measurement of social capital as the alternative to political capital, to widen the understanding of political capital (not only the rule of law) and not to consider political and social capital as comparable issues. Another strong argument was to elaborate ‘State history’ variable as it takes only 1000 years of history in consideration and seems questionable to many scholars. 

7. Islam and Modernization. The case of Tatarstan for the post-Soviet context and hypotheses for the rest of the course

E. Ponarin, Professor at HSE, St. Petersburg  (LCSR research project)

Presentation

Eduard Ponarin started his lecture referring to Weber’s definition of nation as a supported team. When a team is winning, its members feel positive self-appraisal. When it loses, members might choose to support another team. Muslim societies began losing the competition with Western countries in 1850. This pattern is common to many modern societies (Iran, Turkey, North India, South Asia, Volgo-Ural region of Russia). According to A. Smith, various reactions to modernization are possible: the “losing” societies might try and emulate more advanced ones, they also can ignore modernization and close themselves in religious communities.

Some Muslims decided to learn from West, e.g. different social technologies. Nationalism was the leading ideology in Europe in 1850. As a result, some Muslims started to create nationalist movements. Nationalism had been growing till the 1920s, for example, in Turkey and USSR. Some setbacks occurred in 1950s: the war between Israel and the Arab armies, Islamic revolution in Iran, Pakistan lost a couple of wars with India. After all, there was no geopolitical victory of nationalism.

Late 70s -80s is another tipping point. An Islamic revolution in Iran against the USA ended successfully. The Soviet invasion to Afghanistan where there was international Islamic opposition also occurred. 1980s are regarded as the beginning of the post-nationalist Islamism period. Gellner refers to nationalism as a civic religion due such traits as mass mobilization, legitimitation and group prestige. There is also a significant difference: religion tends to be universalist, whereas nationalism is mainly particularistic. Greenfeld claims that many nationalists are copycat nationalists. Copycat nationalism results in ressentiment towards the model society. Alternative model was found in pre-petrine Russia and hence Slavophilism. Post-nationalist Islamism can be compared with Russian Slavophilism.

The author hypothesized that failure of nationalism in the Muslim society  would  generally lead to its (partial) replacement with the Islamist ideology. Secondly, post-nationalist Islamism would cross ethnic and national boundaries. An example studied in this project is Tatarstan. It is a thoroughly secularized post-Soviet society. Tatar nationalist movement took place between 1989 and 1994. During this period Tatarstan wins various concessions from the Kremlin, picks up on the neighbouring Bashkortostan, uses Islam instrumentally to back up claims on authenticity, win over Tatar-language Bashkorts, and get support from the richer Muslim nations. Then there is a period of “nationalist monarchy” between 1995 and 2000, “defeat” period from 2000 to 2005. The last period from 2003 to 2009 can be called “post-nationalist Islamism”. A sharp rise in the number of believers has been observed even as the number of mosques stopped growing. Islamization of the nationalist opposition I staking place. Moreover, according to Eduard Ponarin’s data, a there is a positive correlation of nationalism and Islamism with respect to Moscow and Russians and a negative correlation with respect to other Muslim peoples (such as Bashkorts).

8. Social Well-being and Political Loyalty Indicators in CIS

I. Zadorin, “Euroasian Monitor” International research agency, ZIRCON research group (guest lecture)

In his presentation Igor Zadorin focused on the specific features and some results of “Eurasian Monitor” project. This project is conducted by 16 private companies and non-governmental funds. At first the research included 3 or 4 countries; now 14 CIS countries (all the post-Soviet except for Turkmenistan) take part in the project. 

The aim of the project is to compare Russia with neighboring countries, because in this way it is possible to evaluate development process. “Eurasian Monitor” is in many ways similar to “Eurobarometer”.

“Eurasian Monitor” comprises 10 questions about social well-being, which form the basis for the system of general indicators. The main indicators of social well-being include economic position of the country, economic position of family, social adaptation and social optimism. When there is some extra money, some additional items are added to the questionnaire.

The sample for each country is approximately 1000-2000 respondents. “Eurasian Monitor” helped to create a regular survey in CIS countries which was never done before. Now it is possible to compare the development of different countries and public attitudes in most of them.

Furthermore, Igor Zadorin presented some results of the project (on the example of the 11^th wave). He compared different indicators of social well-being across CIS countries. Social well-being in this sample is not always connected with economic situation. For example, estimations of social well-being in Ukraine and Russia are lower than in Central Asian countries. Around half of the Uzbeks consider economic position of their country good. This could be partly explained by the fact that in Eastern countries it is not typical to say anything bad about their lives. Ukraine and Baltic states, on the contrary, estimate economic position of their countries relatively low, because they might compare themselves with Europe.

The population of many countries (Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Estonia, partly Russia) estimate economic position of their countries worse than economic position of their families. This could be determined by information people get from mass media. For instance, informational background in Ukraine is critical. In Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan people estimate economic position of their countries better than many other post-Soviet republics.

Social adaptation (“I’m satisfied with”) is the highest in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Estonia and the lowest in Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. Russia is in the middle.

Furthermore, the level of social optimism is higher in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan than in Russia, Belorussia, Moldova and Baltic states.

From May 2008 to May 2009 (during the year when global economic crisis emerged) there was positive dynamics of social well-being estimations in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and negative dynamics of these estimations in Belorussia, Ukraine, Russia and Moldova. It is worth noting that in Russia negative estimations mainly concern economic position of the country and in Moldova – economic position of the family.

Finally, Igor Zadorin turned to estimations of the authorities. Ukrainians and Latvians give the worst assessment to all the branches of authority (president, government, and parliament). There is a correlation between life satisfaction and positive estimation of the president of the country. The only exception is Ukraine, where the estimation of the president of the country is much lower than life satisfaction. Moreover, estimation of president of the country is connected with economic situation.

9. Major trends in social attitudes and behavior in Russia compared to other European countries: 6 years of European Social Survey

Anna Andreenkovam, Vice director of CESSI, National representative of European Social Survey in Russia(guest lecture)

Anna Andreenkova presented some results of the 5^th round of The European Social Survey, which has been carried out every 2 years since 2002. The major aim of European Social Survey (ESS) is studying different attitudes, behavior patterns, social and demographic structure of European society. Adult population (15+) is surveyed. Many social indicators related to social capital, trust, discrimination, ethnic and religious identity, family and work are covered. Two new modules are new in each wave (so called rotating modules) on a competitve basis. This means that groups of researchers may elaborate new modules and apply for including them into the questionnaire. Some of the new modules included recently are devoted to future subjective well-being, trust in criminal justice, understanding and evaluation of democracy.

There are 30 countries where the survey is held. Europe is treated as a whole region, not only the European Union members are included. The research methodology is rather complicated. As there are many subcategories in the sample, sampling errors occur. There are also measurement errors which are equal across countries. Linguistic issues and issues of the sample design equivalence are also often encountered. Due to all these problems, an experimental part for measurement of quality of measures was included into the last survey in 2010. MTMM (Multi Trait Multi Method) was applied.

Unfortunately, 10 years is not enough big time-span to measure social change, but some conclusions can still be made. Europe is currently experiencing a very special time. It is an extremely divided space, there is no homogeneity trend. There is still a border between West and East, especially in terms of political indicators. North and South differ from each other mostly in moral, religious and demographic issues. Russia occupies a peculiar space: it is closer to East on the East-West dimension and is between North and South on the North-South dimension. Russia's position hasn't changed much over 10 years.

Interest in politics and participation rates have increased in Russia. This trend is related to a negative view of political system. Political participation is declining in new democracies. It is two times less than in old democracies, where participation rates remain rather stable over years. Trust in institutions is declining in most of the countries. For example, there is a negative change in trust in parliament. Trust in parliament has slightly increased in Russia - by 4%. However, there are positive changes in attitudes to social equality. Interestingly, Russia is on average 1 year quicker than other European countries: for example, Russians expect to marry and have children 1 year earlier.

10. Brain drain: European and post-Soviet Scenarios

О. Kamenchuk, Director of Connunications, All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion(guest lecture)

Olga started her lecture with peculiar numbers. According to GALLUP, quarter of people in Middle East and North Africa would like to move. The percentage equals to 19 in Europe, 18 in America, 10% in Asia and 38% in Sub-Saharan Africa. VCIOM data show that 21% of Russians would like to leave. One of the popular reasons is desire for travelling.

There were opinion polls carried out by VCIOM in 2011. 1600 people in all federal districts of Russia were surveyed. The Research and Branding Group carried out the same opinion poll in Ukraine. The polls revealed that 24% of people in Ukraine and 21% in Russia would like to leave to live, work or study abroad. The migration corridor between Russia and Ukraine is among five top corridors. Other popular destinations are Germany, France and Canada. England and Germany are the most popular destinations for studies.

53% Russians and 14 % Ukrainians willing to move abroad don’t know exactly where to go and mostly end up just talking about it and not doing anything. This is in line with the world trend: among 18% people who want to migrate only 3% do. Mostly it is just a way of protesting against reality.

In the framework of the VCIOM’s project semi-structured interviews were conducted with people who already left and with people who came back. Many Russians claimed that their salaries in Russia are too low for their education. That is why they prefer to continue studies and work abroad. Most respondents from post-Soviet countries mentioned lack of technological development, bureaucratic problems and low prestige of science as the main reasons for moving abroad. In general, push factors prevail in the case of post-Soviet countries.

On the contrary, mostly pull factors are mentioned by European Union citizens planning to move to Canada, USA and Japan. Internal migration is also very typical for the European Union: people move to other countries for work reasons.