Valdai Club

On December 19, the Valdai Club hosted a discussion on migration issues. The discussion was timed to coincide with the International Migrants Day, which is celebrated annually on December 18.

Over the centuries, migrants have made a major contribution to the cultural, social and economic development of host countries. Today, more than 281 million people, almost 3.6% of the world’s population, are involved in the processes of international migration. The international migration has a tremendous impact on demographic dynamics, labour markets and socio-economic processes in both receiving and sending countries.

Russia has recently become the centre of Eurasian migration. The Eurasian migration system has rapidly become one of the four largest in the world, along with those of North America, Western Europe, and Middle East.

Migration affects not only the economies and societies of the countries involved in migration processes, but also the fate of the migrants themselves and their families. The narrowness of legal adaptation channels, the lack of official services for foreign workers in host countries often form alternative, not always legal practices that help solve such problems. Immigration directly affects the host society: pushing migrants into the “grey zone” increases the service sector associated with the shadow economy, and sometimes with the criminal one.

Is it fair to consider migration an unambiguously negative phenomenon? What are the mechanisms for protecting the rights of foreign workers in various host countries? How can they be improved? What migration problems does Russia face? How can they be solved? These and other questions were answered by the participants of the discussion, who include the authors of the Valdai Club report “The Social Problems of International Migrants”.

Speakers:

• Rashid Alimov, SCO Secretary-General (2016–2018), Professor at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan and at the Taihe Institute (China)

  Maria Apanovich, Associate Professor, Department of Demographic and Migration Policy, MGIMO of the Russian Foreign Ministry

• Nourhan ElSheikh, Professor of Political Science, Cairo University, Member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs

• Gyulnara Gadzhimuradova, Associate Professor of the Department of Demographic and Migration Policy, MGIMO of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

• Andrey Korobkov, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee (USA) (co-author of the report)
  

• Dmitry Poletaev, Leading Researcher, Institute of Economic Forecasting, Russian Academy of Sciences, Director at the Regional Public Organisation “Migration Research Center” (co-author of the report)

Moderator:

• Oleg Barabanov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

Working languages: Russian, English.