CREES Noon Lecture/Rackham Centennial Lecture. “Estimating Unregistered Migration into the Russian Federation: Insights from the United States.”

The Russian Federation is second only to the United States in the number of foreign born individuals residing within its borders. The millions of documented and undocumented migrants in Russia raise serious social, cultural, and economic challenges across the Federation, and play an increasingly prominent role in foreign policy. As in many other migration destination states, questions relating to labor market access, migration management, assimilation, and social service access coverage remain unanswered in the Russian Federation. Unlike destination states such as the U.S., systematic estimates of documented and undocumented migration are rare. Through the lens of the main methodological approaches used to estimate migration into the United States, Professor Buckley will assess published official and independent estimates of Russia’s migrant population, focusing on issues of data availability, data quality, and the politicization of demographic estimates. Findings point towards the need for expanded data collection efforts and the need to revise upward the existing estimates of the Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation.

Cynthia Buckley is professor of sociology at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and a senior consultant for Eurasia at the Social Science Research Council. Her research examines the cumulative effects of institutional and cultural change on individual demographic decision-making and the implications of demographic change for human security. Publications from her previous research projects cover issues of rural development, population aging, maternal and child health, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. For this lecture, part of Rackham’s Centennial Lecture series, Professor Buckley will draw on the research she has collected while serving as Primary Investigator of the project, “People, Power and Conflict in the Eurasian Migration System,” a government initiative that examines the geopolitical implications of Russia’s emergence as an international migration destination state.

Sponsors: CREES, Rackham Graduate School, WCED.