Mikhail A. Alexseev

Majority and Minority Xenophobia in Russia: The Importance of Being Titulars

Given increases in hostility and violence targeting Russias migrant minorities since the late 1990s, local and international scholars, human rights groups, and others have focused predominantly on relationships between the ethnic Russian majority and the non-Russian ethnic minorities. The emergent xenophobic activism among ethnic minorities, or inter-minority xenophobia, has received much less attention. Mass survey data from the Russian Federation is used in a systematic comparison of attitudes toward migration among ethnic Russians vs. ethnic non-Russians. Attitudes are also compared across select ethnic non-Russian groups to address this growing, if counterintuitive, problem in Russias ethnic relations arising from migrations.

Societal Security, the Security Dilemma, and Extreme Anti-Migrant Hostility in Russia

The societal security theory posits that extreme anti-migrant hostility – such as demands to deport all migrants unconditionally – emerges when host communities see migration as a threat to the survival of their group identity. An alternative interpretation – the immigration security dilemma – attributes extreme hostility to the human tendency to prepare for the worst under uncertainty when central authority weakens. Does extreme intergroup hostility relate more to threats framed in terms of group survival or to those framed in terms of uncertainty about government capacity and migration effects? I investigate this question empirically with the Russian national survey data (2005, N = 680) asking who in Russia supports the deportation of all internal and external migrants, legal and illegal, and their children to their places of origin – an extreme and widespread view that would require forced population movements not seen in the region since Stalin’s Great Terror. In multivariate tests, agreement with the societal security (survival) rhetoric explained about five percent of variation in support for unconditional, wholesale deportation of migrants; agreement with the security dilemma (uncertainty) rhetoric – about 20%. A comparison of attitudes in the same survey to Armenian, Uzbek, Chechen, and Chinese migrants and the association of each ethnic group with different types of security threat further support this finding. Hostility toward ethnic groups viewed as a weak security threat was more diagnostic of public support for wholesale deportation of migrants than hostility toward groups viewed as a strong security threat.

Socioeconomic and security implications of Chinese migration in the Russian Far East.

Several dimensions of migration from China into bordering areas of the Russian Far East (primarily Primorskiy Kray) are subjected to critical assessment: scale of migration economic impacts (for migrants and host regions) attitudes of the host-region population and regional security implications. The analysis suggests that the Russian Far East generally has limited economic attraction for Chinese migrants despite the importance of migration for cross-border relations and trade. The study is based on data from Russian statistical border and migration services; extensive interviews and on-site observations; review of regional newspapers; and a large (N= 1010) opinion survey of the local population. (authors)

From Mecca with tolerance: religion, social recategorisation and social capital

Does participation in mass religious rituals promote intergroup conflict or does it promote intergroup tolerance? We assess these claims by examining the effects of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) on sociopolitical views of Muslims in Russia’s North Caucasus. Participant observation during the hajj and a quasi-experimental focus group study of pilgrims and non-pilgrims produced paradoxical findings. While the hajj strengthened their ingroup pride as Muslims, the pilgrims came through as more outgroup-tolerant and prosocial than the non-pilgrims. We develop a synthetic theoretical solution: in high-identity-value, high-diversity common group settings social recategorisation and social capital become transitive – that is, inclusive views and social capital effects within an ingroup extend to outgroups. This means that intergroup conflict could be reduced by not only maximising contact across conflicting groups, but also by bringing together as many subgroups as possible within each conflicting group in settings where their common identity is positively affirmed in a non-discriminatory fashion.

Mass Religious Ritual and Intergroup Tolerance: The Muslim Pilgrims’ Paradox

The book examines how Muslims from Russia’s North Caucasus returned from the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca both more devout as Muslims and more tolerant of out-groups. Drawing on prominent theories of identity and social capital, the authors resolve seeming contradictions between the two literatures by showing the effects of religious rituals that highlight within-group diversity at the same time that they affirm the group’s common identity. This theory is then applied to explain why social integration of Muslim immigrants has been more successful in the USA than in Europe and how the largest Hispanic association in the US defied the clash of civilizations theory by promoting immigrants’ integration into America’s social mainstream. The book is part of Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics.

Watching out for regional separatism in the Russian far East: Ideological cueing of territorial security, economic incentives and cultural identity

Why has regional separatism failed to materialise in the post‐Soviet Russian Far East despite the regions remoteness from Russias European heartland, its proximity to the Pacific Rim economies, the decline of economic support from Moscow, and a ‘frontier’ culture of resistance to Moscows rule? Focusing on political developments in Primorskii Krai ‐ the key frontier province in the Russian Far East ‐ the study finds that territorial security, economic incentives, and cultural identity affect proclivities for regional separatism selectively, depending on ideological and institutional constraints in which centre‐periphery relations are embedded. In the absence of ideological commitments and enforceable institutional rales and norms, centre‐periphery conflicts devolve into economic bargaining and rule‐manipulation by elites for quick material gains. The changing ideological context amidst post‐Soviet institutional transition in Russia provide the most consistent explanation of conflict dynamic between Prim...