National Identity in Russia from 1961 : Traditions & Deterritorialisation

National Identity in Eurasia II : Migrancy & Diaspora

10-12 July 2009

Wolfson College, University of Oxford

Conference Abstracts

Opening lecture

Anne de Tinguy (INALCO, Sciences Po, Paris) ‘Post-Soviet States and their Migrations in Reflection’

The Soviet space was a migratory field which was at the same time closed, cut from the outside world and dynamic. In spite of restrictions to the freedom of movement, in particular through the propiska, mobility was very important in the USSR. The break-up of the Soviet Union, the lifting of the Iron Curtain, and the emergence of independent states was followed by deep upheavals with an immediate impact on the migratory landscape. Using the expression of Lord Curzon, the ‘unmixing of population’ that took place was typical of the end of multinational empires. Conflicts that flared up in several of the new independent states generated flows of refugees. The sudden and general fall of the GNP of the new states caused huge labour migrations. New forms of mobility appeared, new migratory patterns arose. Some of the new states became at the same time countries of emigration, immigration and transit migration. Overall, the intensity of migration reduced after 1991, but new strong flows developed as well, with the migratory field being restructured according to a new dynamic, quite different from the one that prevailed in Soviet times. In Exit and Voice, Albert Hirschman so rightly said that emigration is a barometer of the state of societies: to leave means ‘to vote with one’s feet’. In the case of the new independent states, the movements that ensued in the migratory space were reactions and responses to the upheavals that these states had undergone over the past twenty years, speaking volumes about the transformations that they experienced in the process, including the changing relationship between Russia and the former Soviet republics. Migrations are also crucial factors of change: they contribute to socio-political, economic and identity transformations of those countries and to the redefinition of their relationship with the external world. Certain forces play in favour of Russia, as a pole of attraction in this space, others act in favour of diversification in migratory flows and patterns, with new poles of attraction emerging within and outside this space (in particular the European Union). Nearly twenty years after the fall of the USSR, how should the outcomes of these migratory processes be assessed? Do these migrations give a new coherence to the post-Soviet space? Do they reflect new solidarities between member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States? Do they promote new forms of domination of the Russian Federation or else a process of disintegration of this once unitary space? Do they favour the influence of Europe on this space or new connections with Asia? The purpose of this presentation is to tackle these general questions, assessing their significance and impact on contemporary developments in the post-Soviet space.

Panel 1         Migrancy & Diaspora in the Late Soviet Era

Anne Gorsuch (University of British Columbia) ‘Performing on the International Stage: Soviet Tourism to the Capitalist West in the Cold War’

Internationalism – the opening of the Soviet Union to the rest of the world through cultural exchange, international exhibits, and tourism abroad – was a defining characteristic of the Khrushchev era. The Stalinist regime (after 1936) had prohibited most travel abroad, nourished ignorance about foreign countries, and permitted only domestic tourism. In contrast, under Khrushchev, being ‘Soviet’ now also meant the possibility of travelling abroad. The majority of Soviet international tourism was to Eastern Europe. But for the first time, Soviet citizens (if carefully selected ones) were also allowed to travel to the capitalist West. They travelled as students of West European history, civilization, and technology, and as consumers of leisure and material items.  But their principal function was a performative one. Like the exhibits at the Soviet Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958, Soviet tourists to capitalist countries were on display for curious viewers who were eager for a glimpse behind the iron curtain. This paper explores the performative function of Soviet tourism to Western Europe as part of the Soviet arsenal of ideological, technological, and cultural conversation and competition in the Cold War. It also explores the meaning of travel abroad for post-Stalin understandings of ‘Sovietness’.

Tanya Voronina (European University, St Petersburg) ‘TYoung Workers and the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railroad Project (1974-1984): Social Policy and Life Stories’

The construction of BAM did not only envisage to connect European Russia with distant areas of Eastern Siberia and the Soviet Far East by means of a new railway – this was a long-term project that sought to populate new territories and enhance industrial development in strategically important zones. Labour migration itself was only one part of the story, since the plan was to erect new cities and populate them with new inhabitants from the more densely populated provinces of the European part of the USSR. The Brezhnev-era propaganda campaign, inviting labourers to the BAM project, primarily targeted young people. Although the first kilometres of the railroad were laid by the prisoners of the gulag labour camps, and although forced labour by army units continued to be used right through the 1970s-80s, the BAM project would not have been accomplished if it had not also been made attractive to volunteer workers. The ideological work (or propaganda) deployed in the BAM project appealed to the memory of the early years of the USSR when people sacrificed themselves for the common good of the future generations of their Communist Motherland. At the same time, many new elements emerged in the dialogue between the authorities and the population: social benefits were promised, a new and higher standard of life, higher salaries and housing opportunities were cited among the advantages. The builders themselves also viewed BAM as a vitally important project: they had come from all over the USSR to build a new life of a ‘true’ socialist society that would supposedly be free from the usual corruption, stagnation, deficit of consumer goods, and other shortcomings of ‘real socialism’ in mainland USSR during the 1970s-80s. They believed that the new settlements in the middle of the virgin Siberian taiga would put into practice their dreams of a technologically and socially advanced society, with a real democracy at all levels of administration. High expectations helped them confront the crude realities of everyday life and poorly-paid hard labour. All these difficulties were viewed as only temporary. The end of the construction coincided with perestroika and a severe economic crisis. This led to a mass reverse-migration that left many towns of the BAM project utterly depopulated. However, BAM remained a core element of identity construction for those who returned to European Russia. This paper will dwell on the social policy of the Soviet state aimed at young labour migrants to BAM and it will consider the place of BAM in the life stories of these migrants.

Erik Scott (University of California, Berkeley) ‘Tricksters and Traders: Georgians in the Soviet Second Economy’

Countless Soviet-era jokes revolve around the image of the Georgian trader as a well-connected and ethnically distinct wheeler-dealer in the Soviet marketplace. Similarly, Georgian economic activity was often described as an enthralling performance of trickery, chutzpah, and the pursuit of profit that flew in the face of Soviet convention. What relationship did these representations have to the reality of migration and ethnic specialisation in Soviet Russian cities in the 1960s and 1970s? Based on archival research conducted in Moscow and Tbilisi, I seek to reconstruct Georgian networks of mobility and economic exchange that operated on the margins of Soviet society but became quite central to life under 'mature socialism' as demand for consumer goods grew and the second economy blossomed. Part of a larger project on the Georgian diaspora in the Soviet Union, it is my hope that this paper will shed light on the opportunities the peculiar political economy of the Soviet Union created for a unique group of ethnic outsiders.

Panel 2          Soviet Migration in the Aftermath of WW2

Siobhan Peeling (University of Nottingham) ‘Disorder, Disease and Deviance: The Treatment of Migrants as a Source of Social Contamination during the Resettlement of Leningrad at the End of the Second World War’

This paper examines the conjuncture in Leningrad at the end of the Second World War of a newly formed myth of a purified community based on the experience of the blockade with the mass replacement of the city’s population through migration. In the context of this newly formed heroic local wartime identity and against a background of severe post-war social problems, such as the growing crime rate and threat of disease, the newly arriving population was constructed as an ambivalent category by the authorities. Migrants to the city were treated both as a valuable source of labour for the reconstruction of the city and as a threat to the public order, sanitary condition and cultural traditions of the city. These representations and practices aimed at the itinerant population in the post-war city were bound up with issues of local cultural identity and also the desire of the central authorities to regulate the movements of the population. They can, furthermore, be seen as reflecting a more general tendency of societies to regard migrants as an ambiguous and deviant category, inherently threatening to orders of place and identity.

Nick Baron (University of Nottingham) ‘Reforming the Body Social: The Soviet “Filtration” of Returnees from Nazi Germany, 1944-49’

At the end of the Second World War, millions of Soviet citizens found themselves displaced outside its territory. Most had been taken westwards by the Nazis as prisoners-of-war or forced labourers seized in occupied territory. A small minority of Soviet men had, voluntarily or not, joined the German armed forces. Millions more had been displaced internally within Nazi occupied regions of the USSR. Before and frequently again after their return home, all repatriates and resettlers were subject to ‘quarantining’ and 'filtration' procedures designed to verify their identities, investigate their wartime activities and personal associations and screen them medically. This paper draws on archival records of NKVD interrogations of Ukrainian returnees to reflect on the methods and motives of ‘filtration’. It also considers what the encampment, investigation and registration of returnees meant in the wider context of post-war social reconstruction.

Jeff Sahadeo (Carleton University) ‘First Encounters: Non-Russian “Blacks” in Postwar Leningrad and Moscow’

The opportunity to live in the ‘showcase cities’ of Leningrad and Moscow attracted tens of thousands of migrants from the eastern stretches of Russia as well as the Caucasus and Central Asia following the end of the Second World War. They studied in institutes of higher education, worked as professionals, or toiled in markets. For many who came with official permission, their stay represented the realization of the ‘friendship of peoples’ (druzhba narodov) and allowed them unparalleled opportunities for social mobility. Others, however, recall being labelled as ‘Black’ (chernye) and treated as second-class citizens in their own country. Oral histories of these Soviet migrants display the complex decisions they made to balance their own social and ethnic identities with the desire, or the need, to incorporate into the host society. Efforts to find strong personal networks and professional satisfaction constituted critical tasks that in many cases determined migrants’ evaluation of the success of the ‘friendship of peoples’ and the USSR as a whole in meeting their personal needs and goals.

Panel 3        Post-Soviet Diasporas: Memory, Belonging, Homecoming

Natalya Kosmarskaya (Institute of Oriental Studies, RAN, Moscow) ‘Demythologising Diasporas: Some Lessons from the Study of Everyday Ethnicity in the Post-Soviet Context’

As a result of recent geopolitical cataclysms and the reconfiguration of state borders within the former Soviet Union, millions of Russians found themselves separated from their putative homeland. Russia itself has gradually become one of the world’s leading recipient countries, attracting, in growing numbers, labour migrants whose homelands lie in the former Soviet republics. All this brought about an outburst of interest in these new expatriate communities. Importantly, academic and public debate on this topic in Russia has been severely ethno- and group-centred. The most striking manifestation of this approach is the universal labelling of expatriate communities in and outside Russia as ‘diasporas’, perceived as strongly consolidated entities with a heightened sense of ethnic belonging ascribed at birth. In this presentation, heavily politicised visions of Russians in the NIS as the ‘Russian Diaspora’ and ‘our compatriots’ will be juxtaposed with the view from below. Using Central Asian Russians/Russian-speakers as a case-study, I will analyse people’s quotidian responses to the practices of the post-Soviet ‘nationalising state’ and to the appeals of the ‘ethnic motherland’. Their identity conforms neither to the image of the ‘Russian Diaspora’, hankering for the return to its ethnic homeland, nor to the myth of the ‘Soviet people’, in nostalgia for the lost empire. How then should we call the people that have accepted the status of an ethnic minority, yet claim that their symbolic right and emotional bond to the land are equal to those of the titular population? This paper is based on extensive fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan between 1998 and 2008.

Tsypylma Darieva (Humboldt University, Berlin) ‘Post-Soviet Homecomings: Some Insights into the German, Kazakh & Armenian Diasporas in Motion’

Return migration and so-called ‘homecoming’, recently described as ‘silent’ or ‘structurally invisible’ forms of migration, seem to have become increasingly significant types of mobility in post-Soviet Eurasia. Formerly unimaginable ‘homecomings’ are now becoming perfectly possible. National politics of various post-Communist states play an important role in the development of this form of migrancy by producing recruiting programmes for ethnically-defined citizens. ‘Homecoming’ is often portrayed as a defining moment in the disaporic life cycle of these migrants. Yet recent ‘homecomings’ seem to dissolve into a whole set of different, longer- and shorter-term, 'return visits' and not just full and permanent ‘repatriation’. These trips might include periodic tourist pilgrimages to one’s ‘roots’, business and work-related temporary migration, forms of political engagement, the return of funeral remains, objects or financial assets etc. This paper discusses the changing projects of diasporic ‘homecoming’ from East to West as well as from West to East in post-Soviet Eurasia, focusing comparatively on three quite different cases: Russian Germans, US Armenians and Kazakhs moving to Kazakhstan from other Central Asian states. The paper discusses the impact of the returning diasporas on the local society and the various problems involved in the vindication of homecoming migrants’ identity as ‘Germans’, ‘Armenians’ or ‘Kazakhs’. It explores, in particular, forms of ‘transnational homemaking’ involved in these ‘homecomings’, as well as various attempts to redefine the future relationship between ‘homeland’ and ‘diaspora’.

Ulrike Ziemer (SSEES-UCL) ‘Diaspora and Belonging: Armenian Youth Narratives of Translocation, Dislocation and Location in Southern Russia’  

This paper is concerned with subjective definitions of ethnic belonging among young Armenians in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar. It draws on data obtained during six months of ethnographic fieldwork in this part of Russia. The paper shows that collective historical memory continues to be important in the construction of diasporic belonging and of an overall sense of unity for the Armenian Diaspora. However, the paper also argues that in the age of globalisation diasporic representations are no longer fixed. It demonstrates that while most of the participants in this research were inclined to see themselves as Armenian and to retain a strong sense of their ethnic culture, their ethnic identifications are entwined in a complex web of diverse cultural attachments, involving many ‘routes’ of translocation, dislocation and location.

Sayana Namsaraeva (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle), ‘Liberation from a “Confusing” Past: Social Memory of Buryat Diasporas in China and Mongolia’

This paper discusses the issue of the Buryats’ social memory of their exodus from Russian Siberia to nearby Asian countries shortly after the October Revolution (1918-1930).  Any mention of this exodus was a political taboo in the Soviet past, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Buryat emigrants who formed diasporic communities in Mongolia and China have started to enjoy particular recognition and public attention in their homeland. This fits well into the general discourse of the post-Soviet ‘return of the repressed’. With the recent relaxation of the border regime between China, Russia and Mongolia, many families are now, after almost eighty years of enforced silence, rediscovering their relatives on the other side of the border and are beginning to share stories of their tragic past. Those who have left Soviet Siberia searching for refuge, were subsequently repressed and stigmatised as ‘the betrayers of the October Revolution’ when the Communists came to power in China and Mongolia. Being divided between three countries, Buryats experienced Stalin’s gulags in the Soviet Union, ethnic genocide and years of stigmatisation in Mongolia, and they underwent ‘political corrections’ in labour camps (laogai) during the Cultural Revolution in China. Voices of the families who were neglected now clamour for justice in order to liberate themselves from their ‘confusing past’. Specifically, this paper will discuss the ways in which collective memory about the exodus and the ensuing years of suffering have been preserved in the Buryat Diaspora, and what kinds of remembering (and forgetting) have been chosen for that purpose. For example, the memory of the sacred landscape of the original homeland was transmitted to subsequent generations, and the rising number of ‘nostalgic visits’ by contemporary Buryats to the Trans-Baikal region (Russian Siberia) can be explained by the need to worship at the ancestral oboo in their parents’ birthplaces (toonto nutag) in order to improve their ‘present’ as well as their ‘future’. To illustrate this discourse I focus principally on Aga Buryat communities living on each side of the intersection of boundaries: eastern Mongolia (Khentei and Dornod aimaks), northern China (Hulunbuer, Inner Mongolia), and Russian Siberia (Trans-Baikal region, Aginskii okrug).  My research is based on visits to these areas in 2005, 2007 and 2008, supplemented by a variety of sources: archival documents, oral histories, folk songs and other narratives. It contributes both to recent studies of social memory in Mongolia and Buryatia and to a comparative study of how people across the postsocialist world are currently rethinking their experiences and arriving at a moral consensus over their totalitarian (Communist) past.

Panel 4        Migration in the CIS: Recent Trends

Irina Molodikova (CEU, Budapest) ‘Transformations of the CIS Migration System in the New Century: The Influence of Russia’s New Migration Policy of “Open Doors” on Migration Patterns in the Post-Soviet Space’

To get a proper grasp of current migration processes in the post-Soviet space one must take into consideration that for over seventy years there existed two migration systems within Europe: the West European system and the socialist countries’ system. After the collapse of the iron curtain all countries of the former Soviet bloc, including CIS countries, became part of international migration movements, while many movements that were effectively internal migrations in Soviet times became external due to changes in the system of frontiers. Russia today remains the main attractor-country for former Soviet countries (excluding the Baltic states). However, the CIS migration system, which had retained its efficacy due to a visa-free regime, the common language of communication (Russian), etc. is gradually weakening and has undergone considerable changes in recent years. As a result, Russian migration policy too had to undergo considerable changes since the collapse of the USSR. This paper will address the consequences within the CIS as a whole of the recent radical shift in Russian migration policy – a move from previous migration restrictions to a model of ‘open doors’ that includes the legalisation of irregular migrants, a certain liberalisation of the system of work permits, and the policy of attracting ‘compatriot’ returnees.

Amandine Regamey (Paris I, Sorbonne), ‘Representations of Migrants and Policy-Making in Russia’

From 1 January 2007 the Russian government forbade all foreigners from selling alcohol and pharmaceuticals on Russian markets. The decree to this effect, issued on 15 November 2006, was followed by several weeks of social and ethnic tension (riots in Kondopoga, the Georgian-Russian crisis, news of numerous cases of alcohol poisoning throughout Russia, etc.). Although certain economic interests may have played a part in this policy decision, the decree in question contributed greatly to the representation of migrants as potentially dangerous ‘poisoners’ and a threat to the health of the Russian population. This paper will aim to show in more detail how representations on migrants influence migration policies in Russia, as well as how policy-making contributes to the stigmatisation of migrants. A range of negative stereotypes about migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia are fostered by Russian right-wing parties and by some of the Russian mass media. The overall social impact of these representations can be assessed through the analysis of public opinion polls, Internet forums as well as through in-depth interviewing. However, the question arises whether these stereotypes are also shared by those in charge of migration policy and its implementation in Russia (the Federal Service of Migration and related sections of the administration, the police, various inter-ministerial commissions, as well as the Duma deputies). This paper will analyse the discourse and representational strategies of these political and administrative elites; it will also assess the legislation that is adopted in the process and its repercussions. The focus of this analysis is on the topic of ‘health’ (e.g. the fear of contagious diseases, the requirement of a health certificate, etc.) and on the vision of migrants as a potential ‘source of disease’ (istochnik zarazy).

Franck Düvell  (University of Oxford) ‘(Irregular) Transit Migration on Europe’s Eastern Borderlands: The Case of Ukraine’

Since the European Union, but also the USA, Australia and other major destination countries, increasingly close their borders to unwanted (economic) migrants and refugees these turn to increasingly hazardous paths and long journeys in order to reach their supposedly final destination. In countries, such as Morocco, Turkey and Ukraine, but also Hungary and Poland, amongst others, migrants and refugees are observed that do not intend to stay in these countries but rather transit these on their way west or north. Others, who in fact live in these countries on the periphery of the EU, mentally remain in transit and dream of other destinations. EU countries in response held these countries responsible for irregular immigrants entering into their territory from their neighbourhood countries and expand control policies and technologies to the east and south. This paper will (a) explore transit migration through Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary, (b) critically analyse the policy discourse and (c) discus some of the conceptual, theoretical and political implications.

Panel 5        Astride Russia & Central Asia: Networks, Flows & Pathways

Julien Thorez (University of Nantes) ‘Transport-Traffic-Transfer: Migration Networks between Russia and Central Asia’

Numerous networks structure the international migratory field that has formed between Central Asia and Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Involving various types of actors, these networks correspond to different kinds of mobility – the circulation of migrants, the transfer of money, the transportation of goods, and so forth, establishing new connections between Central Asia and Russia. Based on research carried out in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, this paper will examine different transport networks (by air, railway and roads), paying particular attention to the question of Russia’s accessibility in a comparative perspective. Furthermore, the paper will examine networks of money transfers, which have seen remarkable expansion since the beginning of the 2000s. Both factors will be used to analyse the effects of migratory mobility on the post-colonial reconfiguration of the post-Soviet geopolitical space.

Madeleine Reeves (University of Manchester) ‘Going to Town: Exploring the Micro-dynamics of Labour Migration from Southern Kyrgyzstan’

Drawing on ethnographic and survey data, this article explores the meanings and impacts of large-scale seasonal labour migration to Russia on a group of four kin-related villages in southern Kyrgyzstan. This material explored demonstrates that whilst remittances have come to figure centrally domestic budgets of migrant families, it is to questions of political economy that we must turn to understand the shift away from small-scale farming towards migrant work. The paper examines a range of factors mediating decisions to migrate, including the role of social networks and sibling hierarchies; the emergence of growing economic differentials between migrant and non-migrant households, and the growing importance for young men of a period of work “in town” (shaarda) in proving their eligibility for marriage. This material is used to engage critically with literature examining the “economic subject” of post-socialist change. The paper argues that whilst patterns of economic activity in southern Kyrgyzstan have changed dramatically in recent years, new forms of engagement in distant labour markets can also be used to sustain patterns of ritual gifting and expressions of ethnic and religious identity that are imagined and articulated precisely as expressions of social continuity. This entails re-thinking the analytical utility of “post-socialism” for interpreting such dynamics.

Until the nineteenth century, ethnicity was only one feature among many that defined the identity of the inhabitants of Central Asia. In the Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union Russian ethnographers developed grids classifying Central Asians according to fixed and homogenous ethno-linguistic criteria. Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Tajiks received the status of fully-fledged ‘nationalities’ of the new USSR, and were granted national republics. In 1991, the five Central Asian socialist republics became independent states, endeavouring to legitimate their respective titular nationality. In an intricate multiethnic environment where borders did not match the geographical distribution of ethnic groups, large communities remained stranded outside their ethnic kin-state and became ‘minorities’. More recently, several Central Asian governments are using the term ‘diaspora’ to qualify non-titular minorities on their territories, regardless of the latter’s historic relationship to their land, with the obvious intention of denying them any claim to indigenousness. In the meantime, the same governments are actively engaging members of their own ethnic diasporas residing outside their national borders, through political rhetoric and repatriation programmes, challenging the very notions of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ in the region. This paper explores the relevance of the use of such concepts as nationality, minority, and diaspora in the understanding of the relationship between Central Asian kin-states, their kin-minorities abroad and the host-states where they actually reside, especially Russia. The paper argues that recent labour migrants from Central Asia do not fit into any of these existing conceptual statuses. First, they are effectively abandoned by their country of origin, which proves unable to provide them with any meaningful support. Second, their status is routinely altered by the host-country, such as Russia, in the sense that both the Russian government and the Russian population make a clear difference between long-standing residents of Central Asian origin and more recent labour migrants from this region. And lastly, Central Asian labour migrants remain alienated from members of their own ethnicity living permanently abroad, insofar as they are socialised in completely separate networks and generally do not mix with each other. The paper concludes that recent labour migrants from Central Asia consequently need to be considered as a distinct stakeholder of international politics in the post-Soviet space.

This paper, based on extensive fieldwork as well as archival research, explores the changing national and cultural identities in the Russian southern borderlands during the 1990s-early 2000s. It focuses on Western Siberia (primarily the Russian Steppe and the Mountain Altai), viewed historically and civilisationally as part of Greater Central Asia (a concept developed by R. Frye). With the collapse of the USSR this territory became a borderland-in-construction, acting as source and route of significant migration flows, including a high degree of illegal migration. By the beginning of the twenty-first century migration in the area stabilised, but the economic situation in Central Asian states ensured a continued and better organised movement of people in the area, particularly Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kazakhs (although the latter are relatively few in number because of the specific ethnic composition of Eastern Kazakhstan). The growing communities of ethnic Central Asians now constitute a socially and economically significant part of Western Siberia’s population, but their claims for national-cultural autonomy are not welcomed by the Russian authorities, many of whom are traditionally thinking Soviet-style cadres. The region also has other Asian minorities, such as the Chinese, the Koreans, the Afghans, who moved to Russia in a variety of historical circumstances. The Chinese are a minor group in this region, and are here not perceived by the Russians as ‘the yellow peril’, because the Russian Altai borders Xinjiang – a Turkic-populated and Islamic area of China, where the Chinese authorities are, moreover, severely restricting migration for security reasons. What this paper will focus on is a new kind of ‘Eurasian’ identity developing in this part of the Russian borderland and will examine it in the light of the ideology of ‘Eurasianism’ as expressed by both local and Moscow-based ‘Eurasianists’.

The paper discusses ethnic identity formation of migrant children, natives of the Caucasus and Central Asia, now living in St Petersburg. This research is based on field materials collected in St Petersburg schools in 2006–2007. In popular terms, ethnicity is perceived as an objective and inherent characteristic of a person and correlates with a particular type of culture and “natural” abilities. From this perspective, local people see migrants as belonging to a culturally homogeneous category of “Caucasians” / “Muslims”. The paper shows that under the influence of their living conditions in Russia and their migration experience in general, as well as the social situation in schools and existing Russian stereotypes, migrant children form the ethnicity that they perceive as ethnic, but which in fact refers to some supra-ethnic community, unifying all migrants in Russia as having a common “culture”, system of values and behavioural norms.