Central and Eastern European Migration Review

Labour migration is discussed here in the context of the transformation of the Russian labour market. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of changes in the labour market and to the way these changes affect the structure of employment for migrant workers, their inclusion in local labour markets, and the prevalence of illegal and informal employment. Of central importance is the analysis of migrants’ vertical occupational mobility. It is concluded that the education, qualifications, and professional knowledge of migrants are not in demand in the Russian labour market; the typical path of migrants in the labour market is downward labour mobility – occupying a position that is worse than the one they previously held in their home country. Upward labour mobility is extremely rare and characteristic almost exclusively of unskilled workers.

The paper considers applying post-imperial approach to contemporary migration processes in the post-Soviet area. It presents arguments for and against application of the post-imperial perspective to migration studies on post-Soviet states and tries to answer the question whether we can actually label migrants coming from the CIS states to Russia as post-imperial migrants. Domination of Russia among destination countries for migrants from the CIS, special rights they enjoy comparing to citizens of ‘far-abroad’ countries (e.g. visa free regime), Soviet legacy of infrastructural, cultural, political and economic ties between the sending and receiving countries partially justify a post-imperial approach. However, motivation of migrants in the post-Soviet territory being a continuous area may differ significantly from the one of ‘classic’ post-imperial migrants coming to their former metropolis from overseas. Moreover, recent changes on the post-Soviet migration map may be an evidence of the decreasing role of post-imperial factors in determining directions of migration flows and of growing significance of the demand factor.

This article aims at considering the question whether various migration theories, especially in the fields of demography and sociology, could be useful in the analysis of migration from Poland to Australia in the 1980s. The author is not able to propose definitive answers, however he suggests that the division between political and economic migration, commonly used by researchers, does not provide an effective instrument for describing this specific social group. The article shows that the majority of Poles who did have an official refugee status did not in fact fit well into the definition of a refugee. Meanwhile, among the migrants who did not obtain the refugee status, one could find many active members of the Solidarity movement and also people persecuted by the Polish authorities. Within the research on migration motives, migration transfer, adaptation processes and, to some extent, political activity of Polish migrants in Australia, the author found the following models most useful and applicable: various social network theories, Oded Stark's relative deprivation model, the model of decision-making process developed by Gerald Haberkorn or the concept of Oddyssean and Rubicon refugees by Danièle Joly. None of these theories can provide a universal tool which could allow the researcher to cover all methodological problems related to the subject of Polish migration to Australia between 1980 and 1989 – especially in the area of understanding migrants’ public activity in the new country.

The study of integration policies at the national level of individual countries has been dominant for a long time in Europe. There has been an outstanding set of comparative studies of national integration policies of immigrants. In recent years studies of integration process at the level of cities and municipalities have gained growing interest among researchers. While the European Union started its integration policy in 2003 multi-level governance in this area has become clearly relevant. In this model all three levels: European, national and local have started to play an important role in the development of frames and goals for the European approach to integration of third country nationals. This article aims at presenting the growing role of local level in integration policies and cooperation of cities’ networks with European institutions. In the new model of governance cities have started to evaluate and exchange their practical knowledge in integration policies with the European institutions by bypassing the national level.