Gastarbeiters - who is this? How many migrant workers are there in Russia?

Gastarbeiters are foreigners who work for temporary hiring. The word itself came from the German language and is literally translated as "guest-worker". In Russia it is a jargon and is often perceived by people as having a negative color. On the territory of our country, the concept of "guest worker" has become widespread since the late 1990s, first in the mass media, and then in colloquial speech.

History of the term

In German, this word was introduced to replace the concept of "fremdarbeiter", which in Nazi times was called people brought to Germany for forced labor. The new term was devoid of the negative coloring inherent in the old one, and had a slightly different meaning. In the understanding of the Germans, guest workers are workers voluntarily invited by the German government to come to the country to carry out their work.

In the Russian language, the word was first used with an accent on the second syllable (in the German manner), but subsequently the stress shifted one syllable towards the end. In the CIS, the flow of migrants was not, as in Germany, caused by government invitations, so the term is perceived ironically. Often in the electronic media, you can see ridiculous visitors to video clips and photos. Gastarbeiters in the CIS consider it offensive to apply this concept to them.

Suppliers of labor migrants

In a general sense, guest workers are from countries that are poorest in the economic sense. They are cheap, but at the same time most often unskilled labor. Previously, suppliers of foreign workers in Europe were Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Russia, Italy, Poland, the countries of the former Yugoslavia (with the exception of Slovenia), Spain, Portugal, Ireland.

Currently, the largest proportion of the total number of migrants in the CIS are Tajik, Ukrainian, Chinese, Uzbek migrant workers, as well as immigrants from Albania, Kirghizia, Turkey, Moldova and India. In Europe, the CIS is the leader in the absolute number of labor migrants, and in the world inferior to this indicator only to the United States, where migrant workers are mainly Mexicans and other representatives of Latin America. Third place in the number of foreign workers is occupied by Germany, where the Turks travel massively, although in the near future Spain can push it from this position, where the majority of labor migrants are Arabs and Hispanics.

Gastarbeiters in Russia

As early as the 1970s and 1980s, Vietnamese citizens began to be attracted to the USSR to work in Moscow's ZIL and AZLK plants . With them concluded four- and six-year contracts, which could not be terminated at the initiative of hired workers. Vietnamese labored in good faith, almost did not drink alcohol and actively bought Soviet consumer goods, which has no demand from the local population. When the USSR collapsed and the plants went bankrupt, many workers dispersed throughout the CIS and began to work illegally. But then no one called them guest workers. This term appeared much later, after 2003-2004. The phenomenon of labor migration flows from Central Asia became a reality in Russia.

Russian migrant workers felt particularly free in connection with the adoption of new legislation in 2007, greatly simplifying the procedure for the temporary registration in the territory of the country of foreigners who arrived to carry out work. Such innovations mainly concerned migrants from the states with which the Russian Federation has a visa-free regime. As a result of such events, the number of legally working foreigners in Russia, according to the FMS, increased by two to three times.

How many guest workers in Russia

As of December 2014, on the territory of our country, according to information available in the Federal Migration Service, there were 11.07 million foreign citizens. Every year, about 1.3 million migrant workers come to Russia for legal work, and somewhere 2.5 million people work illegally. A residence permit or a temporary residence permit receives about 450 thousand foreigners annually. Now you can imagine how many guest workers in Russia! The main suppliers of labor to our country are Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Moldova.

Core Professions

Gastarbeiters in Russia formed a kind of caste by the types of work performed. So, at the lowest level are migrants engaged in unskilled heavy physical labor: digging trenches, digging pits, loading and unloading. Bricklayers, painters, plasterers, tilers are considered more skilled workers. And the most highly paid guest workers are welders and electricians.

In general, the work of labor migrants is low-paid, dirty and heavy. Often foreigners who come to work in their families are the only breadwinners, and at home their wages are several times lower than in Russia. Jobs that are guest workers, from the local population do not cause interest because of low income and hard working conditions. In Moscow alone, according to the FMS for 2013, there are 800,000 labor migrants, although independent experts say that this figure is grossly understated, and guest workers in the capital are about 2 million people.

The attitude of society

As for foreign workers in Russia, there are several different representations. The prevailing opinion is that migrant workers are people who are deprived and unfortunate, whose circumstances forced them to earn money by dirty, heavy, unjust labor. They live like homeless people, in inhuman conditions, suffer from a hostile social environment that does not accept them, they suffer humiliation and an aggressive attitude towards themselves. Russians consider that labor migrants are people of low intellectual and cultural level and therefore can endure harsh conditions of life and work. Russian citizens are repelled by a poor knowledge of Russian by foreign workers, which hinders communication, external slovenliness and an open demonstration of a lack of culture. At the same time, some Russians note the positive communicative qualities of guest workers. As for the issues of obtaining Russian citizenship by migrants, the opinions differ very much.

Finally

Gastarbeiters in Russia are called "dzhamshutami", "churks", "Tajiks". They are hunted by skinheads, they are deceived by employers, they do not eat well and sleep little, but at the same time they do the dirty and hard work for copecks. In distant villages on the expanses of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, they have no opportunity to earn money, and to feed their family, they go to our "hospitable" Russia and work for our benefit. Many Russians find it difficult to answer the question of what is more from migrant workers: benefit or harm. This is really a debatable question, but in any case, we should not allow xenophobic manifestations and speak about derogatory and insulting labor migrants.