printMigration Attitudes and Preferences of Russian Workers in the Context of the Human Capital Concept
Latova N.V.
Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Senior Researcher, Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, Moscow, Russia myshona@rambler.ru
Latova N.V. Migration Attitudes and Preferences of Russian Workers in the Context of the Human Capital Concept. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2020. No 10. P. 39-51
According to the theory of human capital, migration enables migrants to increase or stabilize their earnings and not to be unemployed. To verify this, the data from a nationwide survey conducted in May 2017 Institute of Sociology FCTAS RAS analyses migration attitudes and preferences of Russian workers and their entourage. It has been concluded that migration for labor reasons is most popular among “weak” subgroups of Russian workers (with poor financial standing and lower than special secondary education). At the same time, residents of megacities and well-off Russian workers (the most “strong” of their subgroups) have nowhere else to migrate because of the capital-centric structure of the country’s development except to foreign countries. Given the absence of significant differences in per capita personal income between the majority of workers who have migrated and those who have not, it is suggested that migration in Russia is more of a supporting nature for workers: it allows them to maintain employment instead of increasing the return on human capital of this professional group.
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