Opposition to immigration in contemporary Russia

Abstract

The study examines sources of opposition to immigration in contemporary Russia. It distinguishes between two types of opposition to immigration: exclusionary attitudes based on national membership and exclusionary attitudes based on race or ethnicity, directed exclusively at foreigners with non-Slavic or non-European origins. Findings indicate that a quarter of ethnic Russians can be classified as “racial exclusionists”; they are willing to admit immigrants who share a race/ethnic group with most of Russia’s people but object to the admission of racially/ethnically different immigrants. Another 42% of ethnic Russians are classified as “total exclusionists”; they object to immigration of all foreigners, regardless of their race/ethnicity. Multivariate analysis focuses on the impact of perceived collective vulnerability, human values, and socio-demographic attributes. Opposition to immigration in Russia is further situated within temporal and cross-national comparative perspectives. Apparently, exclusionary attitudes toward immigrants who share a race/ethnicity with most Russians increased between 2006 and 2016.